Railways Bill

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB) (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, I am most grateful for the opportunity to say a few valedictory words before I retire as an active Peer, and I am honoured to follow some very penetrating speeches from all sides of the House.

The date I have chosen to retire from active service in the House is 6 September. I chose it because it is the 60th anniversary of my joining the Civil Service as an assistant principal in the Board of Trade, at a salary of £900 a year.

I spent a lot of my early years in this House. I was private secretary to two Peers, and I spent much of the Swinging Sixties in the official Box. It has been a great pleasure to have been a Member as well, for the last 23 years, and a great privilege. My Cross-Bench colleagues are an impressive group, rich in talent, and I thank them warmly for their comradeship, particularly of course my former colleagues from the Civil Service and the Diplomatic Service.

I have also much enjoyed seeing my former ministerial bosses sitting quietly glittering on their Benches on both sides of the House. I occasionally see a complete Bench of people who I have worked for, and I call it a “full house”. I feel lucky in the Ministers I have served and I thank them most warmly. I can see several here today.

The world of government, over the 60 years that I have been a member of the Civil Service and of this House, has changed profoundly. That is not a complaint. The world keeps changing and Governments have to keep up with it. The Civil Service that I left in 2002 was not the Civil Service that I joined in 1966, and it is not the Civil Service that is now in operation in government. However, that change, although profound and important, does not change the world in which we work; under the surface of government, there are always the same issues that successive Ministers have in their short time in office to tackle.

The railways are a good example of that. Successive Governments have been debating the position of the railways in our economy and how to run them successfully for many decades—since the 19th century, I suspect, although I cannot swear to that, but certainly since the Beeching report. I recall that, in 1988, the Secretary of State for Transport, the late noble Lord, Cecil Parkinson, wrote to the Prime Minister proposing that the Government should privatise the railways. I was working in the Cabinet Office and I was asked to give her advice. I suggested that she should have an awayday at Chequers with all the interested parties to go over the options and to discuss what was the right way forward, as she had already done with electricity privatisation. She had a small meeting and we went through the options with her. She listened carefully, and at the end she shook her head and said, “No, privatisation of the railways is a bridge too far—it’s a privatisation too far”. Those remark, coming from an unexpected source, echo through my mind when I listen to the comments that we have had today.

Two or three years later, I was in the Treasury and we had an instruction from No. 10 asking us to put forward proposals for privatisation. There was a great debate. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, contributed; I think he wanted to go back to regional railways, but that may be wrong. Some wanted a privatised monopoly. I was moved on before this concluded, but the argument came in favour of separating track and train, although I do not hear many people arguing for that now. The point I am making is that the issues we are discussing today are ones that have been with us for a long time, and the penetrating arguments that we have heard mean that we do not yet have the answer.

The issue that I want to spend a couple of minutes on is the difficulty and the burden that Ministers in high office carry. The change we have seen in the last 60 years is nothing compared with the change and the turmoil that will face Ministers in the next decade or two. Not only do we have war in Europe and war in the Middle East but we have the end of NATO as we knew it as the alliance is weakening. We also have the problems of climate change and the challenge of technology, which is changing the workplace very fast. Ministers’ jobs are almost impossible. I think the learning curve for a Minister in ministerial office is at least a year and sometimes more than that, while for a Prime Minister, if I may say so, I think it is two to three years. It is hard from outside to understand what the pressures and the range of issues are and the permanence of the problems that you have to deal with and try to solve.

The role of the Civil Service is crucial in supporting successive Governments. It provides corporate memory, experience and advice, as well as the ability to deliver results once decisions are taken. I want to say for the record that I believe the model we have is the best model we could find. The Northcote-Trevelyan reforms have stood the test of time and been a success. There is always a tension with patronage. Even at the time when the reforms were introduced, people wanted the ability to bring in their political friends, their allies or their stooges. Disraeli invented the post of First Civil Service Commissioner for a friend of his who needed a job, and that says it all. So it has always been tense, and there have been many changes in the way that we operate, and rightly so, but the basic model has proved itself over and over and must be safeguarded.

What is the model? It is selection on merit through fair and open competition: a Civil Service which is politically impartial but committed to giving the best service it can to the Government of the day with integrity and objectivity and honesty. It is a winning formula. I am very proud of the Civil Service we have and proud to have been its head. It has an outstanding new leader in the new Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, and I support her decision to conduct a review of performance and organisation to fit it for the future. I wish the Civil Service every success in going from strength to strength under her leadership in accordance with its best traditions of continuity and change.

I wish the House of Lords all success as its own reforms move forward. I thank the doorkeepers, the staff of the House of Lords and the police, because they keep the show on the road while we talk. Thank you very much.