Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege and honour to make my maiden speech in this House, having moved up the Corridor after 23 years on the green Benches, and to do so following two distinguished figures in the transport world, the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner and Lord Young. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, he and I served together briefly during my time in the department; he knows a huge amount about this subject. It is a particular pleasure to do so sitting alongside my noble friend Lord McLoughlin, who was the formidable Deputy Chief Whip when I arrived in the Commons as MP for Epsom and Ewell in 2001, who became a good friend sitting alongside me in Cabinet and was, of course, my predecessor as Secretary of State. In many ways it is also a relief to be here, because I have the privilege and honour of having been the only person to serve as both Lord Chancellor and Lord President. That meant that I was constantly introduced at events as “Lord Grayling” and spent quite a lot of time explaining to people that I was not. It is a relief, having arrived here, that I now am.

I would like to express my thanks to all of those who have assisted me in my first few days in this House—in particular to Black Rod and her staff, to the clerks, doorkeepers and members of the House staff who helped me with my introduction and with getting used to this place. It was a particular pleasure to have two very old friends as my supporters when I was introduced: the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who was elected to the Commons on the same day as me in 2001, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, who has the misfortune—or fortune, depending on your view—to have been introduced to the Conservative Party by me in our mutual home area of Epsom.

It is a particular honour to be appointed to this House, and one I shall always be grateful to the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for. In my last few years in the Commons I focused particularly on two issues, and I hope to do the same in this House. The first is international conservation, something I am very passionate about, which in my view is crucial to the future of the planet and of mankind, and also to the future of the aviation sector in this country, which is the other area I have focused on particularly. To some people there may appear to be a contradiction between those two things, but an end to aviation would mean an end to the tourist trade, which eases poverty in so many places and, in particular, is so vital to supporting and sustaining conservation efforts around the world. If there were no tourists, much of the conservation effort in the developing world would not be there. It is my intention to continue to work in these two areas in this House. In particular, I am looking forward to being part of the debate on the sustainable aviation Bill. I am very grateful to the Government for having followed the work that I and others did in the Commons before the election in looking to bring forward that Bill quickly. I urge them to get on with it; it is extremely important.

As a former Lord Chancellor, I very much recognise the need to uphold the rule of law in this country. It is one of the things that makes us strongest as a nation. It is one of the things that has created one of the world’s most highly regarded legal systems. In this House I see one or two familiar faces from my time as Lord Chancellor. I should also say that it is the role of this House and of Parliament to challenge and sometimes disagree with the view of the courts. That constructive tension lies at the heart of our democracy. It is part of the strength of our democracy, and it should never be lost.

As a former Lord President and Leader of the Commons who co-chaired, with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, the first Joint Committee on the restoration and renewal programme, I also intend to play an active part in pushing for us to get on with that. It is far too many years since we started that process. I find it very frustrating that eight years later we still have not made progress. It is vital to the future of this historic building. We are all guardians of an essential piece of our history here, and it is our duty to make sure that it is sustained, maintained, improved and protected for future generations. We must do that.

As a former Secretary of State for Transport, I could not pass up the opportunity to make my maiden speech in today’s debate. I am very pleased to see the Minister in her position. We know each other well from my time in government when we debated the future of transport in Bradford. I very much hope that her time in government will lead to real work. Bradford is a great city that needs better transport links, which I wanted to see and was moving towards trying to achieve. She was part of the review process after the 2018 timetable issue, and I was always grateful to her for the work she did then. Of course, she and the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, are now going to have to deal with the challenges of overseeing an industry in which somehow it is always the Minister’s fault if something goes wrong. I particularly remember being blamed by one of the unions, which called for my resignation after a freight train derailed in the morning peak, causing massive delays in south-west London. I am afraid that kind of joy lies ahead for her, and I do not think these reforms are going to take away the reality that the buck still lands on the Minister’s desk, however much they might wish to change that.

Clearly there are disagreements across this House and the other House about the best way forward, though I think there is no division between us about the fact that franchising has run its course in its current form, or rather the form that it existed in before the pandemic. Change was needed, which is why I commissioned Keith Williams to do his review. Whether the approach the Government are taking is the right one is a different question, because—I have to say to the Minister—I do not believe that the issues on our railway today are about ownership. The reality is that the people who have been running the railways are going to be the people running the railways in future. The issue is all about capacity and constraints. Frankly, we have had too many trains on too little space, and it just does not add up. Trying to get many trains through our busiest junctions at peak times has been an impossibility. It is what has caused so many of the delays, and that is what is going to carry on happening. Ultimately, if the Government are to deliver what they say they are going to deliver, they will have to invest in extra capacity as well.

The second issue is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, renationalisation brings the railway back into competition with other areas of government at Budget time. Ministers must not close the door to private investment in the railways. If they do, they will find that services do not improve, costs do not come down and capacity challenges remain. If they shut out the private sector from the railway, in my view they will come to regret it. But that is all for another day. The debate will continue, not just on this Bill but on the Bill that the Minister has said will come before this House, and the House of Commons, in due course.

I finish by reiterating that I regard it as a huge privilege to be here, and it is good to be alongside many friends on different sides of the House. I very much look forward to taking part in debates here in future. It is an honour and a privilege that I am very grateful to have been given.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief. As the focus of this is on passenger travel and the noble Lord’s desire to put that at the centre of the objective of the Bill—which is a laudable objective shared, I am sure, by the Government—I cannot help pointing out that one of the major decisions by the last Government, which will of course affect the capacity of the railway network to deliver first-class passenger transport, was their in my view crazy decision to truncate the HS2 programme.

That programme was introduced by a Labour Government, supported by the coalition Government and by Conservative Governments over a period of about 15 years in total and at two strokes—first, getting rid of the Leeds link and, secondly, getting rid of the Manchester link—so much planning, expenditure and work was wasted. I am sure my noble friend the Minister will agree with a lot of this. It means that, among other things, the service to passengers, which is at the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, is bound to be diminished from what it could have been. The network was there to provide passenger transport, freeing up space on the west coast mainline, which is close to, if not beyond, capacity, and helping freight as well, of course, which is a very important part of what the rail network delivers. It would have enabled that by freeing up the west coast mainline, the old mainline, if you like, built by the Victorians and still doing remarkable work, and improving the network overall.

So, when he winds up, I really would like the noble Lord to take the opportunity to apologise on behalf of the Government he served for making those nihilistic decisions to scrap that section of the railway. Ironically, in an attempt to justify the action they took, they claimed that somehow several billion pounds would be saved and one of the ways the “saved” money would be spent—I think the figure was £9 billion—would be on filling potholes. Now I am strongly in favour of filling potholes, but it will not help passenger services on the railway—which the building of the two northern legs of HS2 would have done. So, as welcome, in many ways, as his emphasis is—I do not know whether it is on behalf of the Opposition or not—on supporting and improving passenger services, that has a long way to go to make up for the damage it did by the cancellation of HS2 north.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I rise along with the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, as someone who has worked closely with the new Minister. I congratulate him on his appointment. He knows more than almost anyone about our railway network—the problems, issues and challenges—and, while he may find himself on the other side of the political fence to me, he will be a great asset in trying to sort the challenges of our rail network.

He will know, very much more than anybody else, what the challenges are. He will also know, therefore, that sorting out our railways is not simply about changing the ownership structure. He knows full well, for example, that many of the issues that passengers have experienced in recent years have been laid at the foot of Network Rail—the company he chaired, although it was not his fault, of course—and rightly so. However, all of us involved bear the scars from the difficult times in 2018 with the timetable change. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, knew well the challenges then, particularly in her role in the north. In the north, they were caused most immediately by Network Rail’s failure to deliver an electrification programme in the timetable that had been committed to, which had a dramatic knock-on effect on the rest of the railway.

Therefore, I am not clear, and it is why I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, why a move of ownership is going to deliver a transformation for the passenger. I hope that the Minister, with his experience, will be able to talk a bit about that as he responds to the debate. Fundamentally, on both sides of the House, we are all about improvement for the passenger, and simply transferring ownership from public to private and private to public does not solve the challenges. Ironically, I was reading at the weekend—and I am sure it is true—that the Government are looking at bringing the private sector in to run Euston station, at the same time it is planning to take the private sector out of the railway to run the trains that go into it.

So I would be grateful if the Minister could set out why he thinks this change will deliver improvement for passengers and why, therefore, the amendment being proposed by my noble friend is wrong.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am in the slightly unusual position of speaking to Conservative amendments that have not been spoken to already. However, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, will correct me if I interpret them wrongly.

The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, set out the failures of the current system. Prior to the laying of the noble Lord’s amendment, I had taken the theme of this group of Conservative amendments as displaying a welcome, if overdue, conversion on the road to Damascus. After more than a decade of increasing confusion on railway services, declining levels of passenger satisfaction and rocketing fare prices, the Conservatives are actually looking at improving public train services.

Amendment 2 touches upon something with which I definitely agree: the inevitable winding-down effect of a four to five-year transition period. As I said at Second Reading, there is bound to be an impact on staff morale and the inevitable likelihood is that the best staff will move to other industries when faced with an uncertain future. There will also, of course, be cost pressures. For example, there is bound to be a tendency to level up across very different terms and conditions from one employer to another within the train operating companies. Last week, I was speaking to some train operating companies, all of which recognised the problems that will be faced as the Government try to bring together and harmonise terms and conditions without exposing the taxpayer and the passenger to higher costs. Of course, the most obvious problem is how to deal with rest day working. I know the Minister is fully aware of the problems to which I am referring, so I will be interested in his response.

Amendment 26 refers to costs. At Second Reading, I asked questions about several issues, such as station ownership and operation, which were not really answered. I also asked about British Transport Police, which is encompassed in Amendment 40, put down by the Liberal Democrats. The Labour manifesto contained a supposedly cunning plan for low-cost nationalisation, but there are still bound to be significant costs for such obvious things as new livery and uniforms. We all look forward to an integrated fare structure; that, of course, will come with upfront costs.

Amendment 22 refers to the establishment of an independent public body to assess performance, while Amendment 21 refers to an annual report from the Secretary of State. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, will explain exactly what he is aiming at in these amendments. One of them asks for the sort of close supervision by the Department for Transport that we have had since Covid, which clearly has not worked terribly well; the other refers to a more arms-length approach. Which of those approaches does the Conservative Party in this House believe will be better?

Liberal Democrats would establish a railway agency —a nationwide public body to act as a guiding mind for the railways, putting commuters first, implementing wholesale reform of the fares system and holding train companies to account. We do not believe that the renationalisation of passenger rail will automatically deliver cheaper fares or better services. From speaking to members of the public, we have concluded that they really do not care who runs the railways; they just want cheap, efficient and reliable services.

I do not doubt the Government’s good will or their wish to make this huge change, which we all want to happen. However, as a signal of their intent and an upfront signal to the public, I hope the Minister will speak with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure that in next week’s Budget, we have a fare freeze and the public see from the start that there will be a difference under this Government.

--- Later in debate ---

These are questions. I think that we were told about legal advice and various other things, but the truth is that legal advice is always cautious on any of those questions. What politicians have to do is to decide whether they are prepared to take a risk, and what might be the consequences of that risk. Therefore, I urge the Minister to explain to us how we can speed up this process and get it done in the interests of the public.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I shall raise a question with the Minister, as we are on the subject of the termination of franchises. I should say to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that I have been there and wanted to terminate franchises. I have never had a problem with a mixed economy, but I have an issue with a uniform economy, because I cannot understand the logic of terminating a very good private sector provider, any more than the Mayor of London believes in terminating his private provider of the London overground—and I suspect, if we see more devolution in future, other parts of the country may want to see a mixed economy as well. Clearly, the Government are very happy to see that in stations, as we learned at the weekend.

However, it is more difficult than one might wish, and as a Minister you have to take a judgment about how much legal and therefore financial risk you are willing to take, and also about the disruption that the termination brings. Nobody should be under any illusion that making a transition between two operators has to be managed extremely carefully and, done at gunpoint, can actually lead to a deterioration of services.

I come to my question to the Minister. This set of amendments discusses the process of termination of franchises and when and how they happen—the order in which they happen. My memory is that, in a private system, at the end of a franchise, there is a payment to be made by the successor franchise operator to the franchise operator handing over control of that franchise. There are various capital costs and other costs incurred. If the public sector is coming in and saying, “Right, we’re taking over the franchise”, what can the Minister tell us about that equivalent process? Will payments be made to the companies that are being phased out, as there were between private operators? What will those payments be and what will be the total cost incurred by the Government in making those payments? After all, the private operators will have invested in capital aspects, on the stations or elsewhere. Therefore, logically, the Government will also have a legal obligation to go through the kind of process that happened in the past when a franchise simply moved between two private operators. Can the Minister address that specific point in his closing remarks?

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I honestly believe that the amendment so ably moved by the noble Baroness opposite is extremely sensible. Like her, I can see no reason why we have a chronological system for dispatching the current franchisees based on the run-out date of their particular franchise.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, I am in favour of a mixed economy. There are certain aspects of privatisation, heresy though it might sound to some of my colleagues, that were successful. The fact that some of the railway system—rail freight, for example, which rarely gets a mention in these debates—remains in the private sector is indicative of the success of those who took what was, under British Rail, a very much declining sector of the railway industry. I do not wish to do an “all our yesterdays” speech, but my recollection of the freight sector in those days is ancient wagons clanking around the system, being shunted from one marshalling yard to the next, and with an average journey speed between loading and destination of around 12 miles an hour. Since privatisation, the rail freight side has improved greatly.

To return to the very valid point made by the noble Baroness, Greater Anglia is not just a success so far as its operations are concerned; it is a financial success as well. Because of this unfortunate coincidence of the run-out date of franchises, Greater Anglia is forecast to repay to His Majesty’s Treasury around £100 million in the current financial year. As my noble friend Lord Liddle said, presumably—unless my noble friend the Minister can reassure us otherwise— we are going to dispatch Greater Anglia to the railway knacker’s yard while pursuing with Avanti Trains, as he and the noble Baroness said, a franchise operator that, quite frankly, should not be there.

The previous Government, in the run-up to the election, were stupid enough—or ideological enough, perhaps—to give Avanti an extra nine-year franchise, on the grounds that it was showing some improvement. Those of us who travelled on Avanti regularly—thankfully, it is an experience that is now behind me since I moved home—could not find any improvement whatever. Indeed, it seemed to me that the service was deteriorating on an annual basis.

Again, it might be heretical for some of my colleagues to hear this, but aspects of the passenger railway that were privatised were successful. At Second Reading, I mentioned Chiltern Railways. Thanks to the financial constraints that British Rail had to operate under as a nationalised industry, Marylebone station was proposed to be a coach station by Sir Alfred Sherman, if I remember rightly, Mrs Thatcher’s transport guru at the time. The existing railway management, again through no fault of their own but because of financial constraints, had to run the service from Marylebone down, single much of the line and reduce the overall train service. Under the able leadership of the late Adrian Shooter, and with a long-term franchise of 20 years, with various break-off points, my noble friend Lord Prescott and the then chief executive of the Strategic Rail Authority came up with this 20-year franchise, but insisted that not only had the service to be improved but some of the infrastructure had to be restored. Under Chiltern Railways, lines that had become single were redoubled, and a pretty poor commuter rail service now has two trains an hour as far as Birmingham—with a price, incidentally, as my noble friend Lord Liddle might be interested to know, which considerably undercuts the fare of Avanti trains.

There are aspects of the future of the railway industry where a mixed economy would make some sense. I hope that, in those circumstances, my noble friend the Minister will look with some degree of favour on the noble Baroness’s amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for explaining their amendments in this group, which consider some of the practical aspects of the Government’s plans to transfer services to public ownership. Amendments 1 and 48 focus on the contractual arrangements that allow the Secretary of State to terminate a franchise early, following a breach of contract or other sustained poor performance. I make it absolutely clear that this Government will not hesitate to act decisively where an operator’s unacceptable performance means that the contractual conditions for early termination are met. The Secretary of State has made this plain on a number of occasions and I am happy to reiterate it to your Lordships today.

However, I am very much afraid that the terms of the contracts we have inherited from the previous Government do not make this easy. It is far easier for an operator to return the contract to the Government than it is for the Government to take back a contract for poor performance. It is deeply regrettable that in the past couple of years, some of the poorest performing operators have been awarded the longest contracts.

Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that we have looked very hard at the form of the contract. We are closely monitoring train operators’ compliance with their contract, but at present we are not in a position—with any operator—where the Secretary of State has a contractual right to terminate for poor performance. Noble Lords might be amazed to know that Avanti has not yet triggered the need for a remedial plan, although it may well do so. While CrossCountry has triggered the need for a remedial plan, we need to let that work through, together with the timetable reduction that the Secretary of State was deeply reluctant to agree to, before we discover whether its performance then merits some further contractual remedy.

Unless and until that contractual right arises, the only sensible approach is to transfer services to public ownership when the existing contracts expire. Any other approach would require taxpayers to foot the bill for compensation to operators in return for ending their contracts early, which the Government made clear in our manifesto that we would avoid, if only because of the state of the public finances we inherited.

I have also heard representations on behalf of operators—or, rather, their owners—that, rather than transferring services as contracts expire, we should leave their services in private hands for as long as possible. All the owning groups knew of these dates and would have planned financially for them in any event. The concern seems to be that service quality will suddenly collapse, or that current plans for service improvements, or for the rollout of new train fleets, will suddenly grind to a halt.

There is no basis for these claims. DOHL is experienced in transferring services into the public sector smoothly and without disruption, as it has proved in the difficult aftermath of past franchise failures. As services transfer, the same trains will be operated by the same staff as before, and no doubt often by the same management, as happened with LNER six years ago. The improvements that are already in train will continue. I have no reason to think that performance will deteriorate. Extending specific operators’ tenure will simply delay the process of bringing services back to public ownership, where they belong, and the financial savings that will result.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, while there have been transfer costs from franchise to franchise, he will of course recognise that the incoming franchisee would not pay that cost gratuitously; they would simply add it to the subsidy bill for the franchise they were inheriting. In the end, the public sector pays, as it has always done. In fact, since Covid, the operators have not funded anything at all, so the quantum in the future is likely to be extremely limited.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

I would like some clarification from the Minister on that point. Has the department added up that liability? Does he have a total number for the transfer into the public sector of all the franchises?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The answer to the noble Lord is: not yet. He will recognise that those costs materialise only when the franchise transfers, so the department will never have had that total number in the past, and I do not expect it to have it now. As the franchises transfer, the number will become obvious.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th October 2024 Lords Chamber

That is why we are having this debate. Who takes precedence, and which model is right? If it is good for London, surely it is good for the rest of the country. Why can other parts of the country not be granted these freedoms? My noble friend Lord Houchen of High Leven—the Mayor of Tees Valley—and others should surely be granted that freedom to decide how their trains are run, just like in London. Do the Government think it right that London gets such empowerment and financial support that other mayors do not deserve? I know the Labour Party has scrapped levelling up and that the Minister, who I respect deeply, does not believe this, but do his colleagues in wider government believe it right that vast swathes of England outside London should, in effect, be second-class citizens?

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s amendment but perhaps from a slightly different perspective to his, given his—and indeed the Minister’s—track record, which had a strong focus on London. I believe it is very important to ensure that there is a clear explanation and, frankly, that there are detailed rules about how the interaction takes place around the London boundary, simply because there is a democratic issue here as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made reference to the attempt by the mayor to take control of the Southeastern franchise some years ago. I blocked that, for two reasons. First, there was a significant level of opposition outside London to that transition taking place—the sense that the mayor should not be running services that cross into Kent, Surrey and so forth—including strong opposition from local MPs. Secondly, there is the issue of fragmentation: who operates which depot, how do you divide the franchise in half and so forth? It is important to maintain a system that is simple and as easy to run as possible.

None the less, there is and will always be an issue around how the mayoral responsibility for services that cross the boundary interacts with services operating under the control of shadow Great British Railways and subsequently Great British Railways, how they interact and work together, and how the whole system is managed. While I do not support my noble friend’s level of enthusiasm for devolution because I worry about fragmentation, it is none the less important in this new world to have very clear guidance, rules and methodology about how the system in London will operate with the system that crosses paths with it around the London boundary and, indeed, into the termini in London.

I think my noble friend has put forward an important point here. Although we have a slightly different perspective on this, I very much hope that the Government will adopt this proposal, because I think it is the right one.

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

My Lords, I start by reminding the Committee that this is a short Bill, simply to bring back the national railway operations into public ownership. This is a popular policy with the public, absolutely necessary to making the railway run properly, and a necessary precursor to a more major Bill next year.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for this amendment, which would require not a report this time—although he has sought to require many—but Statements to Parliament about the relationship between services in Greater London provided under contract to TfL and those for which the Secretary of State is responsible.

There is no reason to expect the Bill, which allows train operations to transfer from private operators into public ownership, to have any adverse effect whatever on the existing collaboration between operators and TfL. The Bill makes no change to the existing duties on the Secretary of State for Transport and on Transport for London under Section 175 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 to co-operate and co-ordinate passenger rail services in London. Like many noble Lords in the Committee, I know from my own experience how that works. I think we can all conclude that it has worked very satisfactorily so far and there is no reason why it should not continue.

The Bill will not have any adverse effect on those services: substantially the same staff will be running those trains under public ownership on the national railway network, as they do now, so there should be no concern about a sudden deterioration of service. In fact, I expect it to improve: publicly owned operators will prioritise the interests of passengers, rather than exploiting contractual conditions in pursuit of short-term profit.

The Bill says nothing about the devolution of further passenger rail service to the Mayor of London. It would not prevent further devolution, and nothing I have said would prevent that. If they were devolved, they could be operated in the same way as the current London Overground services are operated, under a concession from Transport for London.

When I said, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, quoted, that there is no current plan for further devolution, that was an accurate statement. Of course, it may not be an accurate statement in the future, but when I wrote the letter to him and other noble Lords and Baronesses, it was true. We will see what happens. It is only a few weeks since what the mayor said in July and, if he does have aspirations to operate further services, I am sure there will be a cordial discussion under the auspices of Section 175 to discuss whether and how that is carried out and the costs of doing it.

The noble Lord is also mistaken on Manchester. Certainly, the evolving situation I described with the Mayor of Manchester and Transport for Greater Manchester is that services would be operated not by Network Rail, because that is currently an infrastructure provider, but by a train company. In fact, it is most likely to be Northern Trains, which is already owned by the public sector and has been for four years.

As I have already said, I give a commitment that the future, wider Bill will give a statutory role for combined authority mayors that is better than any they have now. I have just repeated it for the avoidance of doubt. In that case, it is under Section 24 of the 1993 Act. If they were to want to operate train services, this Bill does not alter Section 24 and that would be a discussion that could be had. I described the situation as I understand it currently unfolding; in fact, they do not wish to do that, but the Secretary of State could devolve more under Section 24 if she chose to.

At the moment, if I have counted correctly, the operation of rail services in London is currently the responsibility of eight different franchised operators, plus two more under contract to Transport for London. That is without the long-distance operators whose services start and finish in London but do not otherwise serve the London market directly and, indeed, Network Rail, which is responsible for the physical railway infra- structure. Public ownership and subsequent integration into Great British Railways will simplify all this by bringing the currently franchised services together in ownership in one place. If TfL wishes to discuss or influence the provision of other rail services across Greater London in the future, it will have an easier job of engaging with Great British Railways. It will be assured that the train operators that are performing will be interested in acting in the interests of passengers.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked where I think it is all going. I will come back and answer that on Report.

It was a pleasure to hear the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, talking about the particular circumstances of Bexley, and it is nice to see her in her place. I do not envisage any immediate change to the railway geography of south-east London. I cannot answer for much of the rest of what she said in the way that I once could, as the commissioner of Transport for London, but I am sure that she knows where to go to make the points about the Superloop, ULEZ and the other things she referred to for the benefit of her borough of Bexley.

The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, referred to Crossrail 2. It should be evident—I hope it is from what I have now said about Section 175—that, were Crossrail 2 to be promoted and come into effect, it would, like Crossrail 1, be complex, but the outcome would be a significant transfer of services to the mayor, because it would, and hopefully will, eventually take over some national railway services. The ease with which Crossrail has taken over former national railway services in London and transformed them into a coherent service for the benefit not only of London but the national economy would be replicated in Crossrail 2. Nothing in the Bill would change that; nor would it change the way that Crossrail was funded had it been proposed now, or the way Crossrail 2 would be funded if it were proposed in the future.

The answer to a lot of what has been said about the Overground is that the Bill primarily seeks to remedy those parts of the railway network that patently do not work well. I would contend—I have always contended in all my roles and in this one too—that the railway service in London works. It works because it is coherent, and there is no reason for the Bill to interfere with it.

I was very interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Grayling. I remember well his position on the devolution of Southeastern services, and he is right that many of them go well beyond the London boundary. There is a democratic issue about how well they serve the areas outside the boundary, and his recollection is correct that at the stage at which it was proposed— I recall it well because I proposed it, even if it was politically advocated by the mayor—it cost more to operate those services separately than it did together. That would be quite a good reason to think carefully about whether a proposition could now be made to do it differently. In a sense, he is making my case because one of the things that we need to have some regard to in a post-Covid railway, with less revenue but similar costs, is the cost of the whole thing. One of the reasons for the proposition in the Bill is to start to sort out the costs of the railway, increase its revenue and improve its performance.

I listened carefully to the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, on devolution and I intend to come back to them on Report.

The Government’s plans will improve co-operation, not hinder it, so I see no need for the statement envisaged in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I am sure that all involved will work together to ensure that publicly owned and TfL services can co-exist effectively side by side. On that basis, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 16, which is in this group. I am, as ever, grateful to my noble friend for sparing the time to talk about this. My amendment is designed to be helpful. It is designed from experience of previous railway legislation, in which we got bogged down in massive detail, with hundreds of amendments; we may get somewhere, but it takes longer.

Given the discussion that we had on a large number of subjects in Committee, and will probably have today on Report, I thought it would be useful to probe the Minister’s view of how long it will be before what I call the definitive Bill is published. If that is going to take until spring, as some of us have been told, it might be useful to publish a draft Bill or a draft Command Paper that we could read several months before and have the opportunity to debate. That might help us resolve what the real problems are and how to deal with them, rather than on the Floor of the House for many days in Committee and on Report.

That is the purpose of my amendment, and I look forward to my noble friend’s response. I am not going to press this amendment, but it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on some of the themes that my noble friend Lord Gascoigne has been pursuing around reporting on performance. The Government seem to be a little reticent about being willing to accept amendments which increase reporting requirements. However, there is an important issue here: will public ownership do what the Government have promised it will and improve performance on the railways? I have my doubts about that. I think the challenges of the railways are much more complex and not about ownership but the complexity of our system.

I have a very simple question for the Minister. When you arrive in this House as a new Member, one thing that is very noticeable is the extraordinary level of expertise that exists on Benches on all sides. He brings a very considerable degree of expertise in this House after a long and distinguished career in the rail and transport sector. Can he set aside for a moment his ministerial hat and give us a professional judgment about the likely performance? To take a comparison, can he reassure us that the London Overground, for example, would perform better if run directly as a public body by Transport for London rather than being contracted out to a private operator as it is at the moment? Can he reassure us on that, for the precedents that will exist elsewhere?