Railways Bill

Baroness Pidgeon Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

It would also be useful if the Minister could indicate where the steel used by GBR—primarily, in this case, the Network Rail part of it—comes from and whether it imports a lot of steel products and specialty steel for rail, or whether most of that is produced in the United Kingdom. I am not pushing either way; I happen to believe in free trade and that businesses should buy products that best meet their needs, not according to whatever flag they have on them. However, I would be interested to know where Network Rail tends to procure its steel products from. If the Minister does not have that information to hand, which he may well not, I would be perfectly happy if he wrote to me. But broadly, I am supportive of this group of amendments, which push things in the right direction to deliver better and more cost-effective customer service, and innovative products that will benefit the consumer.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting discussion on this important group. My Amendment 325 would add a new requirement for Great British Railways to publish a cyber security and technology strategy. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, it is important for the public and Parliament to understand how Great British Railways will use emerging technologies throughout the railway, including artificial intelligence. These new technologies, of course, may help innovation, develop resilience and improve the passenger experience, but this country also faces increasing threats to our national infrastructure, so we must make sure that our infrastructure remains safe and that passengers and those who work on the railway feel protected.

Alongside this serious cyber threat, we on these Benches continue to focus on ensuring that passengers are at the centre of this Bill and this new structure. Rail passengers will also expect and deserve modern accessible services, reliable wifi, real-time information and inclusive design. Investment in technologies that will benefit passengers and ensure that Great British Railways can develop the quality railway that passengers deserve is really important.

The other amendments in this group are variations around the theme of my amendment. Members want to see innovation and technology at the heart of Great British Railways and Amendment 91A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, also points to the supply chain having greater visibility of planned investment, which I am sure is something we all support.

Open data has also been raised. This has transformed travel in London, under the noble Lord the Minister’s leadership at Transport for London. iBus, when it was rolled out, was an absolute game changer for how people use the public transport network. The importance of allowing such innovation in start-ups developing apps, and the quality jobs that have grown in that sector, should not be underestimated. I hope that this same high standard will be the basis of Great British Railways as well. I will not comment on the debate being based on the 1970s, although, I have to say, many great things happened in the 1970s. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this group.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds, I would just like to make two points. First, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on steel products—the noble Lord, Lord Harper, also mentioned that. After some of the derailments in the last few months, there will be quite strong pressure to look at the quality of the rail and where it is manufactured, apart from whether it is laid properly. I think that this amendment is important so that GBR has the full freedom to procure the rail from wherever it believes gives technically the best quality. I do not know whether that applies also to something such as HS1 and whether Network Rail is involved in it. It would be good to know from my noble friend whether HS1 rails are out of the procurement or separate.

Secondly, I think on previous days we discussed wifi on trains and my noble friend was not very forthcoming about when we might be able to have wifi on trains that actually works. We have proven it on one train in the south-west, and the south-west offered to do the procurement, but, of course, my noble friend said that only the Department for Transport can procure wifi. I have to ask my noble friend about wifi for the whole network. I suppose that it is only the intercity type trains, but which trains will be included and when will we be able to see the result and be able to use it on trains?

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[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I have to say that I take great issue with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said. It is perfectly possible to have sensible housing development that is wildlife friendly; indeed, we have to have that. I remember in my days of political campaigning walking around a new estate in my old constituency and meeting three deer running through. It is correct that we have to develop housing around stations, and in a sensible way that does not damage biodiversity but encourages it. That is just plain common sense.

While I sympathise with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and my noble friend Lord Harper said about writing too many duties into law, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Willis, have rightly raised some extremely important issues that need to be a part of what Great British Railways does. We cannot have the country’s major landowners not focusing on protecting biodiversity in the land they control. The research the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has done highlights that it is indeed important to do just that.

While I am sure he will not accept the detail of the amendments, I hope the Minister can set out for us how, in the duties the Secretary of State provides in the various strategies for Great British Railways, they will make sure that the issues highlighted in this debate are reflected. It matters particularly to ensure that Great British Railways develops the network for the future. Where I probably do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is that, for me, capacity development is the number one priority, as it always was when I was Secretary of State, because the more people you get off the roads and on to the railways the better. There are hard choices to be made about which projects you spend the money on. My personal view is that expanding the capacity of the network, reopening disused routes and so on should be the priorities. As my noble friend Lord Harper rightly said, sometimes there are trade-offs around the cost of electrification. Battery trains and hydrogen trains provide a much better route for parts of our network for the future.

I hope the Minister will take on board much of what has been said. I hope the guidance he gives to the future organisation will be clear on this issue. Sometimes there have to be compromises on what is perfect for the railways. I profoundly disagreed with the engineering standards of Network Rail, which scalped huge amounts of earth out of the route along East West Rail. It used a railway track bed that had been in existence for a century and needed restoration. It clearly needed better drainage, but was it really necessary to scalp all the biodiversity from a largely redundant corridor and leave it as brand-new open grassland?

There are compromises to be made when that capacity is put in place, but that what the two noble Baronesses have said, supported by others, about the need for biodiversity to be protected by Great British Railways is extremely important. I hope the Minister will make sure that, in whatever way it is best achieved, that happens.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments looks to consider the environmental impact of the railway and to ensure that Great British Railways take steps to meet climate change legislation, reducing the carbon footprint of the railway and using every opportunity to support the environment and indeed electrify the railway, whether that is through rail, battery or other means. There are amendments are in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lord Russell also has several in this group and has spoken clearly about the importance of these matters and the increasingly extreme weather we are all experiencing. This brings home how important this topic is to us all; we are seeing this increasingly every year.

The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, also has her really good Amendment 129, in which she talks about the deployment of solar panels and transport infrastructure —as did the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—and the solar reporting duty. We can go much further in this space. In the planning legislation last year, I spoke to some amendments I tabled on using our transport infrastructure for solar panels. In places such as Switzerland, they have installed solar panels between the tracks, while France, as is well known, is using coverings in car parks. There is so much innovation that we can learn from globally, and we must do better to capture solar panel on our transport infrastructure. I really welcome these amendments.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is really valid, but these are probing amendments, trying to make sure that this is absolutely on the Government’s agenda. The long-term rail strategy, which was mentioned earlier, may well cover some of this, but I look forward to the Minister’s response on this really important area.

[Lord Reay (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Willis, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for their amendments. There are parts of the railway that are vulnerable to flooding, extreme weather and other climate risks. GBR clearly needs to understand those vulnerabilities and ensure that the network is resilient. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and my noble friend Lord Harper say, we need to take into consideration the administrative burdens and obligations that many of these amendments would likely engender.

There is also an important point to be made about electrification. We should recognise the contribution already made by open access operators. Lumo’s east coast fleet is entirely electric, while Hull Trains has invested in modern bi-mode trains that operate electrically wherever the infrastructure allows. Open access operators and private investment have become even more important given that, just last year, the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander, said that any further electrification of the lines is “not affordable right now”. This demonstrates that private operators and private investment is the best way to achieve the Government’s environmental objectives.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to several amendments in this group. They cover the role of the ORR. As my noble friend Lord Grayling has just said, it is arguably a bit weird continuing to have a regulator when you are bringing track and train together in GBR. He also highlighted the reason why it matters: the ORR has an important role in making sure that fair decisions are made. We will talk about it a bit at various stages during the Bill. Fair decisions should be made for access to the network for open access operators and freight, and that those powers are exercised in a fair and reasonable way. We will have some debates later about whether the way in which the Bill is set up for GBR means too much marking of its own homework.

I speak first to Amendment 134 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley; he is sadly unable to be here today and asked one or two of us to speak to his amendment. It has been co-signed by my noble friend Lord Moylan. It would have the effect that the ORR’s duty to promote competition continues to apply to its functions under Chapter 1 of Part 3, relating to access and use policy, infrastructure capacity, the working timetable, the capacity duty, the charging scheme, the performance scheme and appeals in respect of those policies.

I shall listen carefully to what the Minister says when he responds to this group. It may be that he says that the reason why the role of the ORR is being constrained in the way it is in the Bill as drafted is so that the ORR does not use its powers to undermine the directing mind of GBR. That is a flawed argument. The great majority of passenger services and ownership of assets are in the hands of GBR, or will be when the remaining franchises have expired and GBR has taken over those routes. The promotion of competition operates at the margin. However, that does not mean that competition does not have enormous value because its role can demonstrate the value of particular routes, and more efficient and consumer-responsive services.

Let me give an example that may appeal to those who are particularly keen on the European Union. The European Commission, in a report based on services in Spain and Italy, found that open access on their high-speed rail network could reduce prices, improve quality and frequency, enlarge the rail market and passenger numbers and—this should be attractive to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—encouraged modal shift. It is important to recognise that the duty to promote competition is linked to the benefit to consumers. It is important to preserve that element of potential challenge. The ORR has limited powers, but we should maximise the extent to which it can use them.

I shall give an example in this country. The importance of capacity—we have had this debate previously—is that you cannot have competition unless there is capacity. It is important that when decisions about capacity are being taken, they must make sure that we can have competition. The line that has capacity is the east coast main line. There, three open access operators—Grand Central, Lumo and Hull Trains—all provide competition against LNER. That is valuable not just because those three open access operators provide different types of services to those of LNER, and a number of them are focused on providing very low-cost rail services, but the effect of having those three operators—this has been documented by independent economic analysis, I understand—is that it holds down ticket prices on LNER. Even people who never use open access operators but use the existing main operator benefit from the existence of the open access operators. That is why it is important to make sure that we preserve that element of competition.

I listened very carefully to the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, on his Amendment 142 about promoting regional growth. He is right that there is a lot of evidence that improving rail connectivity—it is true of improving road connectivity as well—can deliver economic growth. We have seen that very clearly in what happened—and it is not even complete yet—once we got to the point where we were constructing the first phase of HS2. Anybody who has been to Birmingham will have seen that, even before the rail line is completed, once it was clear that it was going to happen, there has been an enormous amount of investment and economic development in central Birmingham with companies relocating their operations. That has happened on a prospective basis because people knew that that was going to happen, so the noble Lord is correct that regional economic growth is driven by rail.

I think I can reassure him a little bit. When the Government make these decisions about where they invest—the investment that Network Rail and GBR make in the infrastructure is public money—they look at the cost-benefit ratio. Some of the things they look at are not just time savings, but wider economic benefits. That is not the easiest thing to capture when you are looking at prospective benefits and economic growth. Being able to nail that down and produce an economic analysis that is robust that you can turn into numbers that you can then weigh up against the cost is not that straightforward. I do not know exactly how many, but the Department for Transport has a significant number of economic analysts who produce all this information for Ministers when they are taking these decisions. Whether we need to add it to the Bill, I am not quite sure, but the thrust of the noble Lord’s arguments about the importance of the rail network for regional economic growth is absolutely spot on. There are already a lot of things that make sure that that is taken into account, but I support the thrust of what he says.

I will listen, as will the noble Baroness, Lady, Jones, to the Minister’s response, but I take a much more positive view about the benefits of competition on the rail network. As I said in the points I just made, competition helps to keep down costs to consumers and drive passenger growth, particularly by attracting people on to the rail network who perhaps cannot afford to travel on some of the existing services. Some open access operators have specifically gone for no-frills, low-cost services that attract people who would not otherwise use the rail network. You therefore get modal shift, with people shifting off more environmentally impacting forms of transport that produce more carbon per passenger mile on to the rail network, which I think is a good thing. It is good for consumers and the environment, and competition helps to drive that. That is, in effect, as I know my noble friend Lord Young would say if he were here, what happened post privatisation. There was a vast increase in investment and in passenger numbers, which took a lot of people off roads and aviation and put them on to the rail network, which was good for them, the economy and the environment. I want to make sure we maximise the extent to which competition exists with this new model as we move to GBR.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments on the Office of Rail and Road is clearly seeking a different role or structure for the office than that envisaged by the Government. For many, it is more of the same. The amendments are, on the whole, trying to allow the Office of Rail and Road to assess competition on the railways to allow, it seems, more open-access operators. While I absolutely understand and have seen the benefits that open-access operators have brought to the railway, as noble Lords have described—and I hope those operators can continue to bring their services to passengers—there is the issue we have debated on the setting up of Great British Railways and the Secretary of State having so many powers. We have warned about the marking of their own homework.

I think the Government will not move on these amendments, because this is an area they set out clearly in their manifesto, but I fear there is a real challenge here in how the structure will work in reality and what open access will be allowed. The clarity that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is seeking will be helpful. Freight is also an open-access operator, although obviously a different type of service. I think the freight industry would appreciate some assurance from the Minister about its role. We have other groups on this issue later, because it is concerned about the legislation as drafted.

I am interested in Amendments 286 to 288, which would give the ORR a role in monitoring and auditing Great British Railway’s statutory functions. That could help with this whole issue of being judge and jury, while marking one’s own homework.

I really like Amendment 142 from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. First, I should welcome him to the transport enthusiasts’ club, which has many members across all sides of the House. He is welcome to stay through the many other days of Committee on this Bill.

[A noble Lord]

If he can bear it.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

If he can bear it—exactly. It is a joy to have him here, but it really is interesting hearing him describe the Docklands Light Railway and Crossrail, and the economic growth those railways brought to those parts of London and further afield. It is a really interesting point: the Office of Rail and Road should recognise the economic geography of the country, as well as the economics of the railway. His point about the impact of High Speed 1 and the fiasco in parts of Kent explains this issue really well. I hope the Minister might be sympathetic to that point. Although there may be issues in finding a way to develop that, it is a really important area that this whole new Great British Railways should look at as we go forward. I look forward to the Minister’s reflections on these points.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group dealing with different matters. I may take slightly longer than my customary brevity, because I also wish to speak to some amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley, to which I have put my name. They are not those to which my noble friend Lord Harper has spoken, because there is no need for me to repeat what he has said, but there are others that have not been addressed.

Before I come to those, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. I understand very much what he is saying. During the 2012 Games, I was chairman of the Olympic park, and it was a great ambition and hope of mine that we could, at some stage, get Eurostar trains to stop at Stratford International station, which is on the line and was available to do that, in the interests of promoting growth and regeneration in Newham and that Olympic park area. It was hopeless: there was never any chance of doing it and no interest whatever on the part of Eurostar, which was a great disappointment and an opportunity missed. To be frank, there is little point in that station if those trains do not stop; I know that the Javelin trains stop, but it is a bit pointless in a way. We need the Eurostar to stop.

Then I moved on and, later, I was a member of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation for three or four years, and we did have trains that stopped. That was absolutely marvellous. We had not only the Javelins, so that you could get to Ebbsfleet in 19 minutes from St Pancras—as I used to do to go to board meetings—but the Eurostar trains. I think they did not stop at Ashford, which is what the noble Lord mentioned, but they stopped at Ebbsfleet until Covid came along. Without a doubt, Covid was why they stopped stopping at Ebbsfleet, but Eurostar took that opportunity never to resume.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggests that this is inevitably all driven by commercial considerations and a railway company’s choice of where to stop its trains to maximise its revenue. The implication is that if the Government want to do something and make use of these stations, to get the sort of advantages that the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, referred to, they need to provide some subsidy or something of that sort.

Actually, the new competitor, whoever it may be, who wants to provide a service, needs a depot in London. The only person who is working hard—I know this for a number of reasons—to secure that depot in the Walthamstow area is the Minister. I do not think he needs to supply subsidy to achieve his aims; he has leverage, and we should use that leverage to secure the economic and connectivity benefits we have built the stations to secure. So, I have considerable sympathy with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said. If the Minister does not accept this precise amendment, I hope he will show some gumption about this and try to get something done.

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This is one of those occasions where I can agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in her amendment. We do not get those opportunities often, so, particularly since she has had to stay later than she intended, I thought I would give her that positive news in concluding my remarks.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, my Amendment 92 would require the rail strategy to cover a 30-year period. At the start of this session, the Minister talked about a paper published today on the strategy. I have not seen it or received any email about it, and I am completely up to date on my inbox. I would have hoped that officials could have sent that to us before we had come in today, so I would be grateful if that could be sent round to noble Lords who are working on this Bill so we can look at that.

So, without having seen what was published today, which may do exactly what I want, I say that this rail strategy should cover a 30-year period. I am sure that noble Lords will be only too aware that an organisation such as Great British Railways, with its vast infrastructure and multiple services to deliver—including the growth in rail freight and, we hope, in passengers—is complex. Different parts of the railway will have different needs for investment and decisions on rolling stock, electrification, station modernisation, workforce planning and passenger experience. They simply cannot be taken on short political cycles.

The rail strategy needs to ensure that it meets the needs of every part of the country. Rural communities are not always well served by the railway, and they need to be considered fully as part of a long-term 30-year strategy that will provide the vision and the clear steps to make that vision a reality. I hope the Minister will consider my amendment and its request carefully.

Other amendments in this group require consultation with lots of organisations as part of the strategy development. Surely, any good organisation will do that, and I would hope that the Minister can assure us of that.

As the discussion has shown, Amendment 105, from my noble friend Lord Beith, is very important. It highlights the importance of integrating the railway with other modes of transport and ensuring timetables align. If you want people to buy tickets, which then can move on to include bus travel and so on, the co-ordination infrastructure needs to make this easy. As we have heard, the bus, the ferry or whatever, should not be leaving three minutes before the train arrives. That, to me, is part of the added value of Great British Railways, whether it is the model I support or not. What difference are you making to people’s onward travel? What difference will this new structure make? That co-ordination is important. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, makes a similar point and I hope we will hear something positive from the Minister on that.

The noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Faulkner, who have a special interest in heritage railways, made their points clearly, and I hope we can hear a positive response on that.

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, supported by my noble friend Lady Brinton, is so important and would be part of this 30-year strategy as I see it. It should not be rocket science to be able to book the tickets and the support you need to use the railway in one simple way. This should be part of a programme and strategy. The debate about mobility aids is really important. E-scooters, as in the two-wheeler devices that many people use, were banned on buses in London. The very next day, I had people with mobility scooters who were unable to get on buses in Kingston because this rule had been interpreted wrongly. That was affecting disabled people’s ability to use public transport to get about their everyday business, so it is really important that this be looked at.

This has been a really good debate, and I know the Minister has a strong track record in some of this. I look forward to hearing his response and to whether he will support this 30-year strategy.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, has said, but I will go a great deal further. I am genuinely very angry. We are here today to discuss the long-term rail strategy. Looking at the groups coming up, I think I am right in saying that this is our only opportunity directly to discuss the long-term rail strategy, and yet the Minister has announced that a new document has appeared today setting out the parameters, I believe, and the instantiation of the long-term rail strategy. I am a little further advanced than the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, because I now have access to it on my iPhone. It is a lengthy PDF document which I find very difficult to read, with my eyesight, on my iPhone. It is worse than useless; none the less, I at least have a link to it now. We do not know what it says, and the Minister said during an earlier group that he hopes to give us, in the course of debate, an idea of what it contains, but he is speaking last. We will have the debate, and only then will we get the summary of what the document contains; and after that we will, over the next few days, have an opportunity to read it. This is completely contemptuous of the Committee, and I am genuinely very angry about it.

As far as the debate we have had is concerned, one is obviously very sympathetic to the horrendous stories told by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. One is supportive of the heritage rail industry in general, though I note that, unlike the long-term rail strategy, we will return to have another debate on heritage rail later on.

The speech by my noble friend Lord Grayling was also very wise. Are we moving to a monopoly? At the moment, 25% of rail movements will not be GBR. What is the target for that? What is the vision? Some 20 years from now, is GBR going to be doing 80% or 85%? Are the private sectors being squeezed out, as my noble friend said, or is the target for them to be doing less? What is it? We do not know what the future will hold. We are giving all these powers to Great British Railways with very few constraints and checks, and we do not know where they are taking us.

I refer briefly to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, to which the noble Lord, Lord Harper, spoke. I do not need therefore to say what it contains, but it essentially requires a form of parliamentary scrutiny of the long-term rail strategy before it is adopted. I want to particularly refer to that because my Amendments 96A and 97A have both been drafted in the light of recommendations of the Transport Select Committee in the other place; I have had an opportunity to discuss them with its chairman. The first amendment refers not to the parliamentary scrutiny of the long-term rail strategy, because that has been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Lansley’s amendment, but to what happens when changes are made to that strategy.

The thrust of the amendment, and very much the view of the Transport Select Committee, is that those changes should be subject to a similar form of parliamentary scrutiny as the original document. The fear that the Transport Select Committee has expressed is that the long-term rail strategy, because it can be changed by the Secretary of State, will become what it thinks of as a series of short-term rail strategies, which is of course no strategy at all; it is simply lurching from one plan to another in the light of the money made available by the Treasury. Putting some form of check on the Secretary of State, so that those changes have to be considered equally, is an important consideration in Amendment 96A.

Amendment 97A is again from the Transport Select Committee. The committee specifically recommended that mayoral strategic authorities

“should be statutory consultees on the Long Term Rail Strategy”.

Evidence to that committee described their absence as

“a little bit out of kilter”,

with the Government’s wider ambitions for devolution. Surely Scottish Ministers, the Mayor of London and mayors across England should have a formal opportunity to contribute when it is prepared, revised or replaced. The Government say they want greater devolution and these amendments would give effect to that.

Amendment 100 is similar. The British Transport Police has unique expertise in the safety and policing aspects of running the railway. There should surely be an obligation on the Government to formally consult the British Transport Police—and the chief constable, in fact—about the long-term rail strategy.

Amendment 98, which is not in my name but in that of my noble friend Lord Lansley, has a similar effect in relation to the Office of Rail and Road. Should not the Office of Rail and Road be consulted about the long-term rail strategy before it is prepared and published?

Amendment 102 would strengthen the obligation of GBR in relation to the long-term rail strategy. At the moment, GBR is required to “have regard to” the objectives set out in that strategy. My amendment would improve on that and require it to “seek to achieve” those objectives, so there is a strong sense of direction from the Secretary of State embodied in the long-term rail strategy.

Those are my amendments in relation to the long-term rail strategy. None of them is revolutionary. All of them make it more effective and more relevant and I hope the Government will be able to accept them, but I cannot sit down without repeating that there is something of a farce involved in having this discussion when the Minister is now going to explain what it is we have been discussing.