Great British Railways: Industrial Action

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I remind all noble Lords that questions should consist of up to 100 words and no more than two points.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend’s Question, does the Minister recall a speech that he made on 27 April 2022, when he was chairman of Network Rail, to the Rail Industry Association? He said:

“The industry will not back away from its modernisation and cost reduction drive despite the threat of strike action”.


Does that remain his policy?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I was wondering what I had said in April 2022. When I spoke to the Rail Industry Association, it was in respect of industrial relations in Network Rail, which I had the privilege to chair for nine years with 30,000-odd employees. What was very successfully concluded in the summer of 2023 was a ground-breaking deal with extensive productivity in a public sector corporation. It was not widely celebrated by the Government of the time because they did not welcome that progress, but it was very much in line with what I said in April 2022.

Great British Railways

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have for open access operators following the creation of Great British Railways.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Scott of Needham Market) (LD)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the Minister, the speaking time limit for the following debate is four minutes. When the screen flashes, your time is up.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, for a debate on open access, many noble Lords have applied for the vacant slots. I am delighted that the Minister is in his place to pronounce on the quality of the bids.

Open access did not exist under British Rail, but privatisation, in which I played a modest role, allowed open access train operators to run passenger services. They identify available capacity and apply to the ORR, which then consults on the proposals and analyses their feasibility and benefits. New services have to pass a rigorous abstraction test to ensure that they will add passengers to the railways and grow total revenue, rather than removing passengers and fares from existing services. Open access operators then pay access charges to reflect the additional cost that their use of the railways incurs. They get no direct subsidy and carry the commercial risk of running the railway.

Applications are considered in accordance with statutory duties, including protecting the interests of users of railway services; promoting the use of the network for passengers and freight; and promoting competition and improvements in railway service performance. The final decision rests with the ORR, and neither the DfT nor Network Rail, nor the franchised operators, has a veto.

In 2000, the first open access operator entered the market: Hull Trains. Since then, there have been real benefits from open access—especially to underserved areas that provide the only direct link to London—for cities such as Sunderland, Hartlepool, Halifax, Rochdale and Pontefract, helping regeneration in those areas. With a cancellation rate of less than 1%, open access rail operators are the most reliable. They have focused on affordable fares, with Lumo’s average £40 fare between London and Newcastle as opposed to the £195 walk-up fare. These lower fares from open access operators have in turn attracted a broader demographic to rail travel.

Importantly, we now have a mature, evidence-based, 25 year-old case study on the east coast main line, where three open access operators compete with the Government-run intercity operator, LNER. Passengers travelling to the north and Scotland from King’s Cross enjoy robust fare competition and a choice of operators. Importantly—the Treasury should take note of this—LNER’s subsidy continues to fall, despite it facing robust on-track competition.

There have been wider benefits, promoting the Government’s growth agenda. FirstGroup has invested £0.5 billion in new rolling stock, securing jobs in the north-east, with a further £0.5 billion awaiting a decision. Open access operators account for around 19% of all new train orders placed in the UK in the past five years, although they provide only 0.9% of passenger services.

Last year’s Office of Rail and Road report said:

“An economic appraisal of the impact of open access operators in 2022 concluded that open access operators had been beneficial to the UK economy, and that this was particularly apparent for flows not already directly served by a franchised operator. Our 2023 report noted the particularly strong post-pandemic recovery for open access operators”.


All of the leading European countries with state-run operators, including Germany, France and Spain, have increasingly used open access as a vital tool in complementing their national service operators.

I turn now to the Government’s proposals, which dramatically change the terms of trade and put at risk the benefits that I have outlined. There should have been no cause for alarm because, in September, the previous Secretary of State said that,

“where there is a case that open access operators can add value and capacity to the network”,

as assessed by the Office of Rail and Road,

“they will be able to”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/9/24; col. 18WS.]

However, that is not what is proposed.

The consultation document of 18 February says:

“GBR will become the decision maker for key decisions on access terms that are currently led by the ORR: the duration and form of access rights, developing and setting the access charges framework and the design of performance incentive regimes contained in track access regimes”.


Then, we have the historic understatement:

“For GBR to have the space and authority to take access decisions on the best use of its network, the ORR’s current role must change”.


GBR will, in due course, absorb Network Rail and all the franchised train operators. It will have a massive conflict of interest in deciding whether an open access operator should provide a new service. We know this because, in the last 10 years, Network Rail opposed all 10 applications to the ORR for open access, which then approved five of them, with the DfT either opposing or not responding. The letter which the Minister circulated yesterday—to everyone except me—opposed nearly all the applications. These are the organisations which will decide in the future.

The ORR—the final arbiter, at the moment—will have its powers curtailed. Instead of being the referee, the ORR can overturn a decision only if GBR has not followed its own processes or has acted irrationally. But those processes could include a large increase in track access charges, making a proposition unviable. It could change the abstraction rule, again making current services uneconomic. The ORR would be powerless to intervene. Its role has been crucial to the success of open access, and it will be marginalised. This would be self-harm for the railway, the regions and passengers.

Behind all this is the Treasury—the controlling mind of the new regime, if ever there was one. It is the Treasury which insisted on the letter to the ORR in January, with its primary objective of minimising subsidy, setting aside the wider obligations of the ORR to promote competition and better use of the network. The consultation document does not refer to competition law or the CMA, which will remain in place. In the absence of a strong independent regulator, there is a risk that we could see more competition law challenges, which will be inherently unpredictable for operators and GBR.

Investors need certainty and confidence about the terms with which they engage with GBR. If we want to encourage investors in schemes such as Heathrow southern rail, which will be needed if there is a new runway, there will need to be a strong and independent regulatory regime to protect investors’ rights. These new reforms remove existing certainty and could shrink freight, the private rail sector and wider economic growth.

There is a devolution angle to all this. If the mayoral strategic authorities are to be empowered to take control over more railway operations, as Andy Burnham would like, they will need confidence about the terms on which they can access rail infrastructure that they do not own, and a strong independent regulator will be needed, overseeing the prices proposed by GBR that devolved authorities will be charged, and their ability to run trains extending across their own and GBR’s networks.

I noticed with alarm the press release of the RMT—which the Government were so eager to placate last July—headed, Why Open Access Rail is Incompatible with the Government’s Rail Policy. That is, by the way, the very same union that, in 2020, demanded

“urgent Government intervention to support the open-access sector and to protect all jobs at Grand Central and Hull Trains”.

The Minister needs to make it clear he does not share the view of the RMT.

To sum up, do the Government accept the need for a genuinely independent regulator if we are to continue to reap the benefits from open access? Can he confirm that he is genuinely open to persuasion on the proposals in the consultation paper?

Passenger Standards Authority

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that, too. He is of course right: it is quite hard to distinguish what is going on on the railway from the general economy, principally because connectivity drives growth, jobs and housing, and he is right about both the features he mentions. In respect of the railway itself, the principal feature I would draw attention to is the one I did in my response to the previous question, which is to say that if you have a lot of white space in the timetable, you can run more trains at relatively marginal cost. That white space, on many parts of the railway, no longer exists.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, you wait a long time for one Secretary of State for Transport and then three come along at once. Will the Minister confirm that the Government remain totally committed to the principle of open access on the railways?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to see so many ex-Secretaries of State on the other side of the House—all of whom I have respect for and at least one of whom appointed me to my previous job. The Secretary of State’s recent letter, which was made public, sets out the precise conditions in which open access is an asset to the railway, not a detraction. One thing we have to be very careful about is that if, inadvertently, revenue that would otherwise accrue to the public purse and reduce the subsidy is diverted, that may not be a good deal for the taxpayer. I am sure the noble Lord has read that letter, and I would refer him to it as a very accurate description of the conditions under which open access is a good thing, and the conditions under which it is not.

Driving Tests: Secondary Market

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to ban the secondary market in driving tests.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has announced measures to review the driving test booking system. It launched a call for evidence on 18 December seeking views on the current rules to book tests. This will lead to consultation on improving processes with potential future legislative changes. On 6 January, the same organisation also introduced tougher terms and conditions for driving instructors booking and managing car driving tests for their pupils.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful for that Answer, but I think the answer to my Question is no—although it was very skilfully camouflaged. This is a racket. Middlemen are hoovering up slots on the DVSA website and then charging learner drivers a premium to access them. I googled this morning “Book your driving test earlier”. I got eight hits on the first page, with lots of inducements: “You can receive a test a month earlier than you would usually find on the DVSA website” and “Get your driving licence faster with early test bookings”. Another one said, “Book a driving test quicker with our booking system”. Trustpilot reveals that some of those are scams, with people paying £90 and not getting a test. Last month, the previous Secretary of State said:

“we will review and improve the rules around booking tests, including”,

as the Minister has just said,

measures to ban the resale of driving test appointments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/12/24; col. 52WS.]

Why do the Government not just get on with it and ban this racket?

Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. I declare my interests. I am a holder of a current private pilot’s licence and a former director of one of our airports. This is a particularly interesting set of measures. I want to ask just a couple of questions and point out one or two things.

Of course, we all welcome the improvement in technology. Technology has come to the aid of, and provides a much safer environment for, those who pilot and operate planes, the airport operators themselves and, of course, passengers. But we are currently going through an enormous shortage of commercial pilots. Training is rightly being more elaborated, but I wonder whether we have sufficient facilities for training pilots in this country. I know it is slightly off beam, but my understanding is that a number of the major operators—I think easyJet is one—are having to train their pilots elsewhere because of a lack of training facilities here in this country. That is rather worrying and not good for this country’s economy. Will the Minister make a comment on that?

The Explanatory Memorandum refers to the instrument allowing general aviation, in which I partake,

“to make use of instrument flight rules”,

which have not been available before. I think we are all aware of the fact that this country is enormously dense when it comes to flying, and there is a lot of danger, particularly in a congested area such as the south-east of England. I published a report of an inquiry I did on lower-airspace controls because of this issue. Most of us involved in general aviation do not operate under the IFR; we operate mostly on a visual basis, although some of us do have instrument capabilities. This extension, referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum but to which I cannot find further reference—perhaps I am not looking sufficiently well at the text—does not seem to have been elaborated on much. I would be grateful if the Minister could comment further on that, perhaps after taking advice.

Other than that, I must say that I am very pleased that we are producing these regulations and maintaining our international standing in aviation.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, unlike my two noble friends, I do not have a pilot’s licence—I will not respond to the shortage referred to by my noble friend Lord Kirkhope by applying for one—but I was caught, as I went through the document, by Regulation 4(21). It says:

“‘fuel scheme’ means a scheme for the use of fuel or energy that is a basic fuel scheme, a basic fuel scheme with variations or an individual fuel scheme”.

That is amplified in the Explanatory Note, where apparently energy is added to fuel. It says:

“The concept of ‘energy’ is a new addition throughout the amendments to allow for the use of non-hydrocarbon-based fuels in future”.


On page 7 of the impact assessment, in paragraph 15, we have this explanation:

“In addition, this proposal also introduces the concept of alternative fuel or energy sources other than hydrocarbon-based fuels. Without this change, UK operators will not be able to take advantage of technological advances in the production of alternative propulsion sources for aviation”.


COP 29 is under way at the moment, and I understand that the airline industry is committed to net zero by 2050. It is therefore quite important that we know a bit more about these alternative propulsion sources. My understanding is that sustainable aviation fuels are already available, but is it the case that up to now it has not been legally possible to use these SAFs, because we have not made the change yet and without this change UK operators will not be able to take advantage of technological advances? My understanding is that Virgin Atlantic is trialling plant-based fuels and that recycling cooking oil is one of the alternatives. Is it the case that at the moment one cannot blend sustainable aviation fuel with conventional hydrocarbons but after this instrument we will be able to? Can the Minister say a bit more about the progress being made? Net zero by 2050 is quite a tough target because the aviation industry is one of the tougher ones in which to remove hydrocarbons, so I would appreciate hearing a bit more about what the current position is—the legality of using SAF at the moment—and the prospects of hitting our target by 2050.

Shadow Great British Railways: Chair Appointment

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I should concentrate on my noble friend’s right description of the chaos of the last 30 years. The railway is not functioning properly; far too much of the time of everybody concerned with managing the railway is spent on blame attribution and contractual negotiation, and far too little is spent on delivering a decent service for passengers and freight and making the railway do what it should do for the economy. That is what the Government’s policy is designed to change.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, following the privatisation of the railways, in which I played a modest part, decades of decline in passenger traffic was reversed. Once the dead hand of the Treasury was removed from investment, there was fresh investment in new rolling stock and modernising the stations, passenger fares were pegged at RPI minus one—a policy reversed by the Government adorned by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—passenger safety improved, and we developed a market in train operating companies to replace the monopoly of British Rail. What was not to like about that?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Since Covid, the railway has got only four-fifths of its previous income. The train operating companies are now, in effect, flat contractors to government and their owners are unable to take much, if any, financial risk. The service to passengers is not as good as it should be, and the Government’s policy is designed to make that significant change.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, from listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I think there is a misunderstanding about what the Government are trying to do. As I understand it as a humble Back-Bencher, we are trying to get rid of the franchising system because, as it is, it does not help us to run a railway in the way we want to. In his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said that one of the points is to have a simplified fare system that will greatly raise the prospects of increasing passenger revenue and passenger use of the railway, because the fare system is an obstacle to that. We cannot do that while we have the franchise system, so we have to get rid of the franchise system.

If there is any fault in what is happening at the moment, it lies on the opposite side of the Chamber and with the Transport Ministers who gave operators such as Avanti the very loose targets that they have to meet. I advocate that we should be tougher with Avanti, have it in every month, and if things have not improved, we should take the risk of taking the franchise off it and saying, “See you in court”. That would be my approach, but the problem is what the Conservatives have left us with, and that is very difficult to solve. I do not support this amendment, which would result just in extending the existing system.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad I let the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, speak before me, because I listened very carefully to what he said at Second Reading, when he made a powerful speech in favour of pragmatism. I think that was an expression that he used; I see him nodding in assent. Pragmatism is the reason behind Amendment 10. It is a question of whether we let ideology trump pragmatism. The amendment is very similar to one I proposed in Committee. It is less ambitious—the one I proposed in Committee would have allowed the franchise to be renewed for a longer period than 12 months—and therefore one that is it easier for the Minister to accept.

There is an additional reason that has not been mentioned so far, which is that there will be pressure within the Minister’s own department to absorb the franchises as they fall due. I think his department would welcome the flexibility under Amendment 10 to enable an existing franchise to be extended for a further 12 months, but no longer. The Minister will get his way: all the train operating companies will be nationalised and all the franchises will come to an end. What we are arguing about is some flexibility. If a franchise is being run perfectly competently, if the existing company would be happy to run on for another 12 months, and if the department is having to recruit more civil servants to absorb the existing ones, I honestly cannot see why the Minister has set his face against Amendment 10. If there is the word “resist” in his brief, perhaps he will reflect on whether a little bit of flexibility would be in order.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I expressed some sympathy with this amendment, or an amendment similar to it, in Committee. Without repeating anything I said in Committee, I put it to my noble friend the Minister again—having said one thing, I now contradict myself—that it does not really make any sense to terminate instantly or as soon as it runs out, which is pretty close to instantly, a franchise such as Greater Anglia, which has generated enormous public support for the efficient way that it has run its train services, or c2c, the line from Liverpool Street to Southend, which recently scored a 94% approval rate as far as its passengers were concerned, although I imagine they, like most other sensible people in this country, think the franchising system has been pretty disastrous for the railway as a whole. Coincidentally, those two franchises run out fairly quickly. Although the noble Lord who speaks for the Opposition would not mention specific franchises for some reason, I will. I have been tormented by Avanti since the last Government were unwise to give it the franchise around 2017 and take it off Virgin, for no apparent reason. The last Government then gave Avanti a nine-year extension, despite all the complaints from both sides of your Lordships’ House. Does it really make any sense to terminate franchises that have enormous support from the travelling public, two of which I have just mentioned, and not take any action for another few years—about seven years or so—for companies such as Avanti? Surely there is some flexibility here that my noble friend could press.

If there are good reasons to terminate franchises then surely those reasons, good or bad, have been realised as far as Avanti’s performance is concerned. Perhaps my noble friend can tell us exactly how much it would cost in public funds to dispose of Avanti’s services and how the contracts were drawn up and interpreted in the first place, when a company like that can get away with the shoddy service that it provides daily.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Scott of Needham Market, for their amendments in this group—Amendment 2 and Amendment 10 respectively. The amendments seek to test the Government’s approach of transferring services as existing contracts expire. I also thank my noble friend Lord Liddle for saying that the intention is to get rid of franchises and for explaining why. He is right. I should also say that I and the Government do not believe that we should either pay compensation for termination or keep paying fees to owning groups of train operating companies when we do not need to.

I am happy to begin with a reassurance about the Government’s position. We will not hesitate to take decisive action if Avanti, CrossCountry or any other operator’s poor performance means that the contractual conditions that allow for early termination are met. The contracts we have inherited from the previous Government make it far too hard to get rid of an underperforming operator, but if we have the opportunity to put passengers out of their misery by ending a failing operator’s contract early and bringing their services into public ownership, we will do just that. In those circumstances, we will not wait for those contracts to expire.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, asked whether the public sector operator will have the capacity to take in services from a failing operator whose contract has been terminated early, at the same time as other planned transfers. I reassure them that current contracts allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate this. All but two of the current contracts with private operators give the Secretary of State significant discretion to select an expiry date within a range of possible dates specified in each contract. The Secretary of State simply has to give the outgoing operator a minimum of 12 weeks’ notice of expiry. This means that if a contract can be terminated early for poor performance—be it by Avanti, CrossCountry or any other operator—the Secretary of State will be able to adjust the planned expiry dates of other contracts if necessary to ensure that the failing operator’s services can be transferred as quickly as possible without overwhelming the public sector operator. Of course, we also need a programme of return that is reassuringly steady for the good management of the operations as they come back into public ownership. I hope those observations will be sufficient to persuade the noble Baronesses not to press their Amendment 10.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, my previous comments address the first part of his Amendment 2. The Government will not hesitate to exercise its contractual rights if an operator’s poor performance means that the conditions for early termination are met. The Secretary of State, my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds and I have all made the Government’s position on the matter very clear and on the record. There is no need for a statutory obligation to cover this point.

The noble Lord knows very well that I cannot accept the remainder of his amendment because it would substantially delay the programme of transfers to public sector operation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, thanks to decisions taken by the previous Government, the two most poorly performing operators currently have the longest contracts, with terms that make it very difficult to terminate them early for poor performance. I cannot say quite what the cost is, but I will write to my noble friend Lord Snape to tell him the rough quantum. In fact, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would mean it would be impossible for the Secretary of State to exercise any contractual break clause, as defined in his amendment, until after the worst-performing operator’s contract had ended. That could be as late as October 2027, so it is difficult to see this as anything other than a wrecking amendment. I hope the noble Lord will prove me wrong by withdrawing it.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, can he just clarify something that he said? Is it the case that under new Section 30A inserted by Clause 2(3) he has the flexibility already to renew two of the franchises mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, by using that particular paragraph in the Bill—namely, that he

“is satisfied that it will not be reasonably practicable to provide”

the services in any other way?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Is that the two worst-performing franchises or two others?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Any franchises. Can he use that section to renew the satisfactory franchises, because it would “not be reasonably practicable” to do so otherwise, and take them in-house?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his intervention. I think he is right, but he will forgive me if I consider it further and write to him.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

9: Clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert—
“30ZA Annual report of public operator liabilities(1) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, within six months of the day on which this Act comes into force, and on each anniversary of that date thereafter, a report on the public sector financial liabilities arising from the award of public service contracts to public sector companies under subsection 30(1A).(2) The report published under subsection (1) must include details of rolling stock leasing liabilities.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report examining the impact of train company rolling stock liabilities transferring into the public sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 9 in my name would require an annual report on public operator liabilities. This might sound rather a dry subject with which to lead the last group on Report, but it is an important one, as it has the potential to totally disrupt the Government’s ambitions for Great British Railways. I begin by thanking the Minister for the meeting that we had last week with the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. He listened patiently to my concerns and was able to allay some of them—though not, I am afraid, this one.

This amendment has grown in prominence since last week’s Budget with its clear fiscal rules, and these were needed to give confidence to the markets that the Government could borrow the substantial sums needed to fund their expenditure; we will debate all that on Monday. In a nutshell, my concern is that, if liabilities which are currently off the Government’s books cease to be off balance sheet, we will revert to the position when I was Transport Secretary, with transport bidding for investment against schools, hospitals and defence and always missing out because of political priorities.

I believe the noble Lord has conceded the risk of this happening, because he has said repeatedly that it will be for the Office for National Statistics to decide in the future how GBR liabilities impact the public sector balance sheet and, specifically, public sector net debt. However, it simply cannot be prudent for the Government to embark on a programme of nationalisation without fully understanding the financial consequences of the ONS classifying GBR as “central government” and without taking the necessary precautions.

We can have a shot at what the ONS will do, because it has stated that in circumstances such as GBR it would run what is called the market body test, and we know that GBR, as the Government envisage it being structured, would fail that test. The integration of track and train within a single entity, as set out clearly in Labour’s Getting Britain Moving document, will mean that GBR will fail the ONS market body test, meaning that its liabilities will be consolidated into the department’s accounts. The Minister has argued previously that the position will not be different from where we are now, but it will be. The creation of GBR as a permanent public monopoly will create a completely different system, which will change the way in which the ONS categorises expenditure.

The Labour document is clear that GBR will be a “single employer”. If so, it will simply fail the market test and its accounts will be classified as “central government”, rather than a public corporation, as LNER is currently. The accounts will then be required to be consolidated into DfT’s accounts, like other bodies that fail the market test, and then classified as “central government”. Crucially, these different accounting treatments will make investment, for example, in rolling stock harder, as it will be in competition with other demands for public investment. The Minister has made it clear that GBR will use its purchasing power to commission new rolling stock through the roscos: rolling stock that will then be leased to GBR. He stated:

“GBR will enable a longer-term view of the rolling stock market, and it will reduce the margins it needs to make”.—[Official Report, 23/10/24; col. 736.]


Those long-term liabilities, totalling potentially some £15 billion, will score immediately on the Government’s balance sheet, increasing national debt, even if the money to manufacture the trains comes from the roscos and is raised on the capital markets.

What I hope the Minister has done—and if he has done it, no one would be happier than me—is get an undertaking from the Treasury that, if the ONS so classifies GBR debt, the Treasury will ensure that the DfT is insulated from that decision. He may have such a letter in his breast pocket. If he has not, we know what is likely to happen because it happened to Network Rail, which was reclassified by the ONS in 2014. The Minister said at our meeting that there was scope for economies at Network Rail when it was reclassified, and I am sure he was right. But those measures were never going to compensate for all the consequences. Network Rail had to divest £1.8 billion by selling property assets; it had to defer renewal works; it had to postpone completion dates; and it had to renegotiate a lot of contracts. Do we honestly want that to happen to GBR?

So, in a nutshell, I am concerned at the gamble the Government are taking with the future of the railways by going back to the pre-privatisation system, where Ministers will have to compete against other spending departments for what the railways need. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I have one very brief question for the Minister, following the warnings by the noble Lord, Lord Young. Have the Government looked at this from the point of view not just of what I would call the finished product of the nationalised railway system but of how the categorisation of a mixed economy would work? We, the nation, will be in a situation of a mixed, some-and-some economy for a significant number of years to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for tabling Amendment 9 and for our productive meeting the other day. I recognise that there is a question of whether public ownership will lead to certain liabilities moving on to the public sector balance sheet and therefore counting towards the public sector net debt. I cannot speculate about future balance sheet treatments and impacts as those will always depend on classification decisions that are a matter for the independent Office for National Statistics.

What I can say is that four train companies are already owned by DOHL, including LNER for six years and Northern for four, and the position has not changed so far. The Office for National Statistics recently considered the classification of TransPennine and concluded that it should remain classified as a public non-financial corporation. The mixed economy that we already have is relevant to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about the categorisation of a mixed economy. We are going to be there over the next several years as the train operations come back one by one.

It has been suggested in debate that, if liabilities move on to the public sector balance sheet, that would affect public sector net debt and unduly constrain future investment. The noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to events at Network Rail after it was reclassified, many of which I witnessed when I went there in 2015. In fact, a large number of the things that happened were really good. The organisation was not on the public balance sheet. It had spent an enormous amount of money: when I turned up in July 2015, it had debt of £54 billion, roughly equivalent to the whole of New Zealand’s national debt. With the last chief executive and the present one, we have put it into great order and reduced its expenditure. It has reduced capital expenditure too, which I think was also wise. The list of enhancements that it was proposing to carry out were beyond its capability then, and beyond the funding of even the unlimited amounts of debt that it could call on.

Nevertheless, the existing publicly owned train operators are the driving force behind the current multibillion-pound pipeline of new rolling stock orders. Network Rail is still investing in the railway infrastructure, and it shows that public ownership need not be a barrier to investment.

Looking more broadly across the public services, noble Lords may have seen that, alongside the Budget, the Chancellor announced changes to the fiscal rules to measure government debt in a way that recognises the need to better support capital investment. This Government recognise the pressing need to rebuild our economy and invest in our public services after years of underinvestment.

It might be helpful to provide the noble Lord, Lord Young, with some specific reassurance, and I can reassure him that we are not seeking to close the door on private investment. Where there are genuine opportunities for private investment—which, for example, might well be, and in the future should be, in relation to property development around stations or car park investment—we would expect Great British Railways to work with relevant local authorities and the private sector to promote these opportunities. I reassure the noble Lord that securing appropriate private investment will be an absolute priority for this Government. I hope that provides him with enough reassurance to withdraw the amendment.

Next, I will address Amendments 18 and 19 in turn. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for these amendments. Amendment 18 would require the Secretary of State to lay a Statement before Parliament within three months of the Bill’s enactment. The Statement would need to set out the Government’s intentions concerning the terms, conditions and pay rates of staff of existing train operating companies as they transfer to become employees of public sector companies.

At that stage, it would be a very simple Statement. The Government fully expect that the TUPE regulations will apply, preserving employees’ existing contractual terms and conditions as they transfer from private operators to subsidiaries of directly operated holdings, in the same way as they have done in previous transfers. I can also confirm that the Secretary of State’s contracts with public sector companies would ensure that staff could continue to be members of the railways pension scheme. That being the case, there is no need for a further Statement of the kind mandated by the amendment.

The noble Lord asked what the Government intend should happen to pay, terms and conditions in the period after employees have transferred to a public sector operator. Although this is beyond the scope of the amendment the noble Lord has tabled, I am happy to address the question by saying three things.

First, public ownership under this Bill does not give rise to any imperative to harmonise or otherwise amend staff terms and conditions. Decisions about any such changes are for the future. In contrast to the previous Government’s approach, we would expect to discuss these matters openly and constructively with the workforce and their representatives before settling on any specific proposals. If the noble Lord was serious in his proposal, he would be able to tell me, for example, that the previous Government consulted the staff of LNER when it was transferred into the public sector. I think he will find that they did not. I am not going to speculate about the outcome of any such future discussions.

Secondly, resolving the long-standing disputes with the rail unions, as we have done and are doing, clears the way for vital workforce reform to modernise our railways and do away with outdated working practices. We do not need to wait for Great British Railways to start this essential work—although we have needed to clear up a number of disputes, including one so long-standing that it has been a dispute since 2015—and we will do this by working with the workforce, not against them.

Thirdly, looking further ahead to Great British Railways, the overall structure for GBR and the mechanics of how staff will transfer into it are still to be decided. We will want to make sure that GBR retains and treats fairly the committed and talented staff who are essential to keep the railway running for its customers. We will have more to say about this when we publish our proposals for the railways Bill.

Amendment 19 would require another report, this time on the impact of national insurance employer contributions on the operational costs of public sector companies. I am sure that the noble Lord will recognise that employer national insurance contributions are just one relatively small component of train operators’ overall costs—less than 2.5% of total costs in this financial year. Furthermore, other significant costs, such as diesel and electricity, are volatile. It would therefore take significant resource to routinely report on all these different costs, which are subject to change all the time.

This reporting would add little value, particularly when any national insurance costs incurred by a DfT-contracted operator are simply paid to another part of government. Public ownership will make no difference to the net cost to government of the relevant train operators’ employer national insurance contributions; the Government are already both the funder and the recipient of these.

Having said that, I will be pleased to provide an estimate of any impact as soon as I am able to. At that point, I will happily write to the noble Lord and place a copy of the letter in the House Library. In the light of this, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, not to press his amendments.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, as this is the last debate and possibly the last speech on Report, I commend the Minister for the patient way he has dealt with the proceedings on Report, drawing on his unique knowledge of the industry we are debating. It has been a pleasure to watch the contrasting debating styles of him and the more flamboyant style of my noble friend Lord Moylan.

I welcome what the Minister said about private investment, but I have to point out that the Bill specifically precludes the sort of investment we saw with the franchise. For example, Chiltern widened single track into double track and built new railway stations. That sort of investment by a train operating company is specifically precluded by the Bill.

On the substance of my concern, he said right at the beginning that there is a question about how the liabilities will be classified. He then sheltered behind the well-known phrase that he “could not speculate” about what the ONS will do. I think there is a distinction between the present position with LNER within the department, with relatively short-term liabilities for rolling stock, and the position with a 20-year liability and GBR. I remind the Minister that, in order to avoid Network Rail being reclassified as public sector body, Treasury Ministers specifically asked—this is under the Labour Government—other Ministers not to criticise the salaries of Network Rail for fear that the ONS would classify it as a public body.

Having said that, the Minister has gone as far as I could have expected him to. He does not have in his breast pocket a letter from the Treasury giving him a guarantee against the consequences of reclassification, but against the good-natured reply he gave me, I seek leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 34 in my name, which would allow franchises to be led by local authorities. It goes a little further than one of the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Moylan, who wanted partnership boards, and is more in line with what the noble Lord, Lord Snape, wants to do with his Amendment 43.

We need to be clear about what new Section 30C does. Basically, it says that the only people who can run a railway in future are a public sector company owned by a Secretary of State. Unless the Minister is going to repeal that in the forthcoming Bill, it means that for ever and a day, as we have heard, we are going to have a central monopoly for all franchised rails.

My noble friend went to the Labour Party document on transport to inspire his speech. I looked at the document published in March this year, Power and Partnership: Labour’s Plan to Power Up Britain, which pledged to devolve new powers over transport, employment support and energy out of Whitehall. That was followed up by the manifesto promising “landmark devolution legislation” to transfer power out of Westminster and into communities across the UK. So we could have expected the first pieces of legislation in the new Parliament to fulfil that ambition of devolving power out of Westminster, particularly in the field of transport, where there has been significant devolution of powers in rail, as we heard in earlier speeches. Like my noble friend, I was surprised to read in the letter from the Minister—and I got a slightly different wording—that:

“The Government has no current plan to devolve responsibility for further services to local authorities”.


As we have heard, Transport for London has taken over services that used to be run by British Rail, and then by South Western Railway and the other TOCs, and it now runs the Overground. I think that has worked well, and it has enabled TfL to integrate the Overground with the Underground and provide a better service to Londoners.

Outside London, many local authorities have successfully introduced light rail lines. There are 11 light rail systems in the UK. Manchester Metrolink is probably the best known, with 99 stops and 64 miles of track, run by Transport for Greater Manchester. We have also heard about the smaller West Midlands Metro, run by Transport for West Midlands. So local authorities are perfectly capable of building, maintaining and running serious rail systems.

The Minister’s statement seems to preclude the sort of arrangement that works well in London from happening anywhere else. All that local authorities are promised in the letter is a statutory role governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network, but not taking it over and integrating it with the system that they already have.

I think the Minister is in some trouble on this issue. We have had a powerful speech from his noble friend Lord Snape, and there is a feeling in the Committee as a whole that the commitment to devolution is simply inconsistent with new Section 30C as it stands. I do not think this is the landmark legislation that we were promised, so I hope the Minister thinks again about the implications of new Section 30C.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 36 in this group, which has exactly the same purpose as the amendments from my noble friend on the Front Bench and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who has just spoken. All their points and those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, demonstrate the potential value and benefit of having the legislative opportunity for publicly owned companies responsible to devolved authorities to be able to run rail services. If we do not have this, it can be only a public sector company owned by the Secretary of State. I was going to instance examples, but I think we have had so many that it is very clear.

The only difference between my amendment and others is the kind of authority appropriate to own a company which runs rail services. I fixed on mayoral combined authorities simply because of the relative capacity and their importance in the Government’s devolution agenda, and because it might commend that thought to the Government.

From my own experience, not least from being a Member of Parliament in a mayoral combined authority, I think it is increasingly important for the Government to recognise—which clearly they have put at the front of their argument—that the co-ordination of the railways is of the first importance, including ticketing, timetabling, provision of services and so on. In many of these places, as was amply demonstrated by earlier speeches, the co-ordination of transport services and of transport with planning and spatial development is equally important. If the Government go down the path of central control by the Secretary of State for every aspect of rail services, I am afraid that they will severely impede, in many significant areas of the country, transport and spatial development being conducted in the way that we would prefer it to be.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

42: Clause 2, page 3, line 32, at end insert—
“30D Annual report of public operator liabilities(1) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, within six months of the day on which the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 is passed, and annually thereafter, a report on the public sector financial liabilities arising from the award of public service contracts to public sector companies under section 30(1A).(2) The report published under subsection (1) must include details of—(a) rolling stock leasing liabilities;(b) pension scheme liabilities;(c) property leasing liabilities;(d) other financial liabilities such as debt.” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report examining the impact of train company liabilities transferring onto the public sector balance sheet under nationalisation.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this is not a great time to address the rather arcane subject of what is and what is not public expenditure. But it is absolutely vital to the future of the railways, and this group of amendments is one of the most important in the whole Bill.

Any Government have limits on how much they can borrow, and we discovered two years ago what happens if a Government go through those limits. Within those limits, there is fierce competition between spending Ministers for access to borrowing to fund their projects. That process is probably going on as we speak, with competition between social housing, new hospitals and the rest.

Historically, as I said on Second Reading, transport fared very badly under that system when it was nationalised. Final decisions are made in a star chamber, or equivalent, and as I know from experience, transport gets squeezed. One advantage of privatisation was that a big chunk of investment was shifted off the government balance sheet on to the private sector, and as a result there was a huge increase in investment.

Railtrack was clearly in the private sector. When Network Rail was set up by the previous Labour Government, they were very anxious that it should be a private company and so kept off the PSBR. They devised a rather elaborate form of corporate governance. It was a company, but it had no shareholders. Instead, it had 114 members—some licence holders and some members of the public. That kept it off the books for a bit, but the Treasury was so worried about this that it told Labour Ministers at the time to stop criticising Network Rail bonuses in case the ONS should use that as an excuse to reclassify it. Eventually, reality caught up and Network Rail was reclassified, in 2014. It could no longer borrow what it needed to keep the projects going. My concern is that what happened to Network Rail is going to happen to GBR, and the Government are taking a gamble in setting it up.

When Network Rail was reclassified, it had to divest around £1.8 billion by selling property assets, including retail units and spare capacity on the telecoms network. It deferred renewals works and postponed completion dates. It had to renegotiate a whole lot of contracts. As a result, its underlying costs increased. The question is: how will GBR be classified? It will not have the pretence of a private company like Network Rail; this will be a nationalised industry. The Minister is unable to give any assurance that it will not be reclassified or classified as public sector, as he said in response to my noble friend on Amendment 19.

The Minister has argued that this will not make any difference because the TOCs do not spend capital. I recognise that that was the case during the pandemic and after it, but it certainly was not before. I will not repeat the example I gave earlier of Chiltern, which spent a substantial amount of private capital investing in the railway, including building new stations. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, endorsed that comment.

The Minister has also argued that, because the roscos remain in the private sector—this is an amendment the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, may speak to—the investment in new trains they made during the franchise system, by borrowing money privately and purchasing the rolling stock, will continue to flow. He told us during the first day of Committee, on Monday, that, whatever the position regarding the future nationalised industry,

“it must already apply to the four publicly owned train companies”.—[Official Report, 21/10/24; col. 506.]

He has used those four TOCs ordering new fleets as evidence to support his claim that ordering new trains will continue as before.

However, to compare the present accounting arrangements for TOCs that are now in-house, which the current law treats as being prepared to be returned to private sector competition, with the accounting arrangements that would exist for a permanent public monopoly—which GBR is—is to compare apples with oranges. The creation of GBR will create a completely new system, which will change the way in which the ONS categorises expenditure. Those different accounting treatments will make investment in rolling stock harder, as it will be in competition with other demands for public investment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to this discussion. First, I should say that the objective of this limited Bill before the Committee remains to unify track and train, to provide better services to passengers, to reduce the cost of the railway and to increase the railway’s income. The phrase I would use to start with is, “We are where we are”.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, referred to Network Rail. I am very familiar with its arrangements post being put back on the Government’s balance sheet. All I can say to the noble Lord is that managing it is and has been a difficult job. However, it has still managed to make significant investment in the railway infrastructure of Great Britain. In some ways, its exposure to being in the public sector did it a great deal of good. I was paid significantly less to chair it than my predecessor was; its chief executive is paid significantly less than any of his predecessors and to my mind, he does a very good job. The organisation is a good deal more frugal than it used to be, yet it still does some very good things in operating the railway infrastructure.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, knows that Chiltern was always an outlier. There was no other plausible large-scale investment in railway infrastructure by a train operating company; certainly, there has been no recent interest in it. If you looked at the owners of the train operating companies now, you would see that their balance sheets simply would not support it.

Of course, the noble Lord knows that I cannot predict what the Office for National Statistics will or will not say. Although the suggestion is that, after six years, LNER was still capable of being put back in the private sector, there was absolutely no evidence that it or Northern, which was in public ownership for four years, was being prepared at all. There was also no move in the previous Government’s department to do so. Nevertheless, there was no change in the status of the public accounts of those companies. The noble Lord may speculate that there might be in future, with these arrangements, but I could equally assert that experience suggests that there will not be.

My noble friend Lord Sikka made a further point about the treatment of the assets and liabilities of Network Rail. I will write to both him and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, about that.

On the other hand, I recognise completely the passion with which my noble friends Lord Sikka and Lord Hanworth spoke about the rolling stock companies. Again, we are where we are. I heard my noble friends’ arguments with interest, but the Government will not buy back the rolling stock companies. Great British Railways will enable a longer-term view of the rolling stock market and it will reduce the margins it needs to make. Everybody is right to say that rolling stock lasts for 30 to 35 years, but a railway that is more accurately able to predict how long that rolling stock should last and where it should be used will reduce the uncertainty of relatively short-term leases. It will also significantly reduce the cost of those leases and will actually enhance competition in the market. We will see how that market evolves over time.

Having said all that, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said that the Treasury would like to redefine what is public expenditure and what is not. I am sure that is the case—it would like to get some liabilities off the balance sheet. The whole point of having an independent ONS is so that the Treasury, led by politicians, cannot adjust the figures and the liabilities to suit its convenience.

What has not come out in this debate is that there is competition between the roscos to supply the wants of the train operating companies. Originally, there were three, now there are four, and there have been two recent entrants. The competition between them has driven down the costs. The Government, who on Monday spent time trying to persuade foreign investors to invest in infrastructure, will have been a little disappointed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, being less than complimentary about the investments that they have made in some important parts of the infrastructure.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

It is not just the train operators, it is also Network Rail. There was a report published by Nichols Group in July 2022—two years ago—comparing how maintenance and renewal was carried out compared with the water, aviation, energy and roads industries. It was about the failure to introduce flexible rostering and multiskilling teams and to bring in new technology. All these matters could have been resolved and can be resolved. It is not much different from running a different type of transport service such as air or road, and I hope my noble friend will be able to comfort me that this is well on the agenda and that negotiations with the various trade unions involved and the Government will make sure that we end up very soon with a good lot of new agreements with the unions and the operatives concerned, and that that will result in a reduction in costs, which should be 20% or 30%, I am told, and a reduction in delays which, of course, is what the passengers want. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 18 in my name, which proposes the creation of an independent body responsible for pay and terms and conditions of employment for employees of the public companies that are going to be set up under the Bill.

In the long term, I assume that GBR will be responsible for settling these particular issues, but, in the meantime, the question is: who is going to do that? By default, I believe and assume it will be Ministers. That is going to be a real challenge for Ministers, because the department will inherit from the current train operators a whole range of different terms and conditions for their employees, some of them anachronistic. There will then be a difficult process of harmonising all these different terms and conditions into one composite terms and conditions for the new public sector employees that are going to be created. I would have thought that the Government should welcome an independent pay review body to help them through this potential minefield, with the trade unions, understandably, arguing for everybody to be levelled up, with all the implications that will have for current subsidies of the railways.

Also, I think that an independent pay review body which would, of course, receive representations from the Government as to what they thought was affordable, should look at some of the practices that have grown up over the years that might be due for reform: for example, the refusal of trade unions to fit track sensors to trains in order to identify faults in the tracks. That has been held up because there is no agreement.

Likewise, information about changes to speed limits is now put on a board, but it is proposed that it should be put on an iPad; again, there has been resistance to that. Then there is a hangover from the 1980s. As I understand it, an employee who uses a microwave is entitled to paid leave to have a health check.

An independent pay review body could look at some of these practices and see whether they might be modernised. If the alternative is that we should leave all this to Ministers, I am afraid that what happened in the summer does not leave me full of confidence. I am sure that the trade unions, if they had been really pressed, could have set out their new relationship with the new Labour Government by conceding something by way of reform before the near 15% pay settlement. An independent pay review body could look at issues of productivity and management to see if the costs could be managed more effectively.

I turn briefly to Amendment 19, picking up the discussion we had at the end of the last group of amendments about the impact of private investment disappearing, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. As I understand it, the Minister’s reply is basically this: the train operating companies have provided a minimum level of capital investment. I happen to challenge that. The examples I gave—Chiltern opening new railway stations, double-tracking, single-track lines—disprove it; nearly all the investment was self-financed by Chiltern.

Putting that on one side, the Minister’s argument is that the roscos—the rolling stock companies—will continue to buy the rolling stock and, therefore, there is no impact on the public purse. But he has left out a crucial element in the dialogue: the roscos then lease the rolling stock to the train operating companies by way of a franchise. At the moment, the fag end of those franchises, which the department has inherited, score as public expenditure, I believe. That is a liability of a public train operator to discharge the cost of a franchise.

When we move over to the new system, in which all the train operators are run by the Government, surely the franchise costs—the liabilities to pay the rolling stock companies—will score as public expenditure. That was left out of the Minister’s recent exchange. It was also glossed over in the letter that he kindly wrote to us over the weekend. Perhaps he can clarify what the view of the ONS will be on the franchise liabilities of GBR when it takes over the rolling stock from the train operating companies.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I express some degree of surprise that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has tabled this amendment. If you make rest-day working in the railway industry mandatory, it ceases to be rest-day working, does it not? The whole purpose of rest-day working is to see that people take a break from their work. While my noble friend outlined the difficulties that have arisen in various parts of the railway system because people have declined to work their rest days, that is not really the fault of the people themselves or their much-maligned trade unions.

The fact is that, particularly since privatisation—although it happened under British Rail as well—railway staffing has been reduced as much as possible. The first thing that Stagecoach did when it took over South West Trains was to make lots of train drivers redundant. Not surprisingly, the ones who were left declined to work their rest days; they declined to work overtime. The number of cancellations in the first two years of Stagecoach’s operation of South West Trains rose accordingly.

I recommend to my noble friend a book called Red for Danger, written by a man called Tom Rolt—LTC Rolt—who sets out railway accidents since the 19th century, many of which were caused by tiredness because of the number of hours worked by drivers and signalmen. I will give one example. In 1892, the Thirsk accident, which killed some 35 people, was caused by a signalman falling asleep. He fell asleep because his infant daughter had been ill, and he had spent two days trying to find a doctor for her, but she had died. He tried to get time off after her death—he was on nights at the time—but the stationmaster refused permission. He had been awake for 46 hours. Two express trains crashed as a result.

Following that tragic accident, in 1906 the House of Commons at least debated the question of railway hours and the fact that many railway workers worked excessively. Perhaps noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that the debate did not spread to this end of the Corridor—obviously, noble Lords at that time had other things on their minds. Coming reasonably up to date, my noble friend Lord Berkeley will remember the Clapham Junction accident in 1988, where a considerable number of people were killed. That was caused by an error by a signal lineman who had worked every single day for the previous three weeks.

Arising from accidents like those, rest days were introduced by the railway industry around the time of the First World War. If train services cannot be maintained at a particular depot without rest-day working, then that depot is undermanned—it is as simple as that. Whether my noble friend the Minister can promise that such circumstances will not happen under Great British Railways is something I will leave with him.

I hope I have made it quite plain that I am not one of those people who thinks that everything about privatisation was wicked, but one of the downsides of privatisation was at least the tendency to run railway operations with a minimum number of people. I hope my noble friend Lord Berkeley will reflect on, understand and accept the fact that rest days are there for a particular purpose, and that he will withdraw his amendment.