Railways Bill (First sitting)

Daniel Francis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

As it says in the register, I am a member of GMB, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and Community union.

[Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)]

As outlined in my entry in the register of interests, I am a member of GMB and USDAW. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group for wheelchair users.

[Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)]

As per my entry in the register of interests, I am a member of Unite the union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olly Glover]

Q Emma, further to your previous comments, will you say a little more about the current general duty in the Bill to promote the needs of disabled passengers being vague and unenforceable? Do you have any further suggestions for how it could be strengthened, perhaps using examples from other sectors? I am interested to hear what the rest of the panel has to say about that as well.

Emma Vogelmann: In the Bill now, the power is very much centralised with the Secretary of State. We feel that there is already a lack of sufficient safeguards in place to make sure that accessibility does not become beholden to political will and the discretion of the Secretary of State. The Bill as drafted depends too heavily on discretion, future strategies and changeable licences. We want to make sure that the accessibility considerations and requirements are meaningful and enforceable and do not leave disabled people politically vulnerable.

Michael Roberts: For my part, rather reiterating my earlier comments, what is important is the expression of what GBR wants to achieve in accessibility, which is not necessarily to be written on the face of the Bill but should be part of the long-term rail strategy or the business plan. Alongside a duty, however it is expressed in the legislation, there must be some clear milestones and outcomes to which GBR aspires—for example, a milestone for the proportion of stations that should have step-free access by a certain point in time, as the Mayor of London and TfL currently have in the capital, or aspirations for the quality of provision of passenger assistance. There has been a rapid increase in the demand for that sort of service by mobility-impaired passengers, but the level of resource has woefully fallen behind the need. Expressing the stepping stones to a truly more accessible railway in strategic documents needs to go alongside the duty, however it is expressed.

Alex Robertson: I agree with Michael about the important milestones. We need to see real shifts in the ambition on accessibility. One of the other things that has been mentioned is that we will have the ability to set the consumer standards for accessibility. Alongside taking over sponsorship of the Rail Ombudsman, I want to see a really good, strong set of standards on which we would consult and engage with disabled passengers. If they were not complied with, they would be passed to the ORR for enforcement.

On complaint handling, at the moment, if you have a failed passenger assist, it is possible for some of the train operating companies to refund you only the price of your ticket, and not compensate for the distress and inconvenience that caused you. That is completely wrong. We would be in a position where that could be looked at properly and changed, so we could take an individual’s complaint and get better redress for them, but also use it to identify systemic issues that might be affecting other people as well. It puts us in a stronger position to do all those things.

Ben Plowden: It is not clear to us that the Bill gives GBR a sufficiently strong incentive to increase accessibility over time, in the same way that it does not give an incentive to increase passenger use over time. One issue might be whether you could amend the Bill to require an increase in accessibility over time to be determined through the other documents that the Government and GBR will produce.

Michael Roberts: I want to pick up a point that Transport for All made separately on the public sector equality duty, which GBR will be obliged to fulfil. The observation from Transport for All is that the impact of that duty is felt retrospectively and depends on disabled members of the travelling public challenging a failure in service when they find it. There might be some merit in the industry—GBR, ORR—co-creating a definition of what the exercise of that duty feels like in practice. That should be up front, as part of the strategic documents against which GBR will be held to account, with the passenger watchdog monitoring and the ORR enforcing.

[Daniel Francis]

Q This question is predominantly for Michael and Alex, but others can come in. On the watchdog and current enforcement, I understand that under the new regulations, the enforcement power would go to the ORR. Could you expand on whether that is an improvement or a backwards step from the current arrangements? Many years ago, I was a member of the London TravelWatch board. There are clearly continuing issues with cross-borough arrangements in London—I speak as a London MP. How do you see the new arrangements working for my constituents, for instance, who will sometimes take a London-only journey but sometimes take a London-into-Kent journey?

Alex Robertson: I will pick up the first point. For us, it is quite a significant increase in our powers and it might be worth setting those out. I will start with the duty on GBR to consult us so that we do not get into a position where we are having to call out something that is not right. That is there in both particular documents and strategies and in decisions made by GBR that might affect passengers. That is an important change. We have the power to request information and require it to be provided to us within a reasonable timeframe. That is a stronger power than we have now, as is the ability to ask for improvement plans.

You highlighted the ability to refer across to ORR. Making sure that works in practice will be important, but the ability is there. One thing we have said that we also need, which we understand the Government will include in the licence, is the ability to call officials in front of us to explain and account for what they have done. We have talked a lot about accountability. There will be ways in which we can work collaboratively and publish information to try to make sure the right thing happens, but a big part of the change we need is GBR being held to account in public, and the powers we have will assist with that.

Michael Roberts: There are two separate dimensions to your line of questioning. First, there is the model where the national watchdog sets standards and monitors compliance, but enforcement ultimately rests with the ORR. I think we are comfortable with that approach. It has been mentioned that the more the watchdog moves into the role of regulator, the more its ability to act as passenger champion and to speak in an unvarnished way on behalf of the passenger is diluted, because as the regulator it has to take into account a broader range of considerations when opining. I think the model is fine. The “but”, or the “if”, depends on how independent one feels that watchdog will be in its ability to point out failures and speak truth to power, and the Committee may want to come back to that later.

Your other point was about how the two watchdogs work together. At one level, I think we are reasonably comfortable. Transport Focus and London TravelWatch have a collaboration agreement whereby we share resources within our respective areas for the common good. It is not quite fit for purpose for the new world. We will need to refresh that and set out how we expect to work together in a world where Transport Focus, or whatever it is called in the future, has a standard-setting role.

Where we have a concern, and where we think the Bill is currently flawed, is with regard to our independent ability to be consulted within key industry processes. I heard the evidence given by the chief executive of the DFTO, and I believe that he was slightly mistaken. Transport Focus—or passengers’ council, to give its formal title—is not the only statutory passenger representative body. We are that body for London, as you will know.

We have responsibility for reviewing the provision of rail services within what is known under statute as the London railway area, which covers approximately 400 stations out of a national total of about 2,500— so getting on for about 20% of the national footprint. Around 70% of all railway journeys start or finish within our remit, yet there are probably four or five places within the Bill where GBR’s duty to consult is with the passengers’ council—for example, on its business plan—but there is no explicit reference to us, despite the fact that we are a statutory body. We think that needs remedying.

[Joe Robertson]

Q My question relates to the interconnectivity of rail services and other public transport. We have heard evidence today about the Bill supposedly offering potential for integrating rail-to-rail connections. Let me give an example: a rail ticket from London Waterloo through to Ryde Pier Head can be bought through National Rail—one ticket, one payment—but the train that leaves Waterloo at, say, 3.30 pm will get into Portsmouth Harbour five minutes after the ferry departs for Ryde Pier Head to complete that journey. This Bill gives no powers over, for example, Isle of Wight ferry companies, which are privatised and unregulated. Is there anything in the Bill that might help to deal with that? I use ferries as an example, but clearly buses and other travel providers are relevant elsewhere. Is there anything in the Bill that can deal with that sort of timetabling issue, so that it becomes a thing of the past? If not, do you see an opportunity to bring in some provisions in this Bill, and perhaps you could identify what that would look like?

Ben Plowden: As we heard in the previous panel, the provisions in the Bill for GBR to engage with and to take account of the strategies and interests of communities in the regions and localities are very important, because understanding of anomalies is likely to be much greater closer to where they occur.

Whether the Bill could require the list of people that GBR is required to engage with to be extended—for example, to ferry operators—to make sure that services, including the planning of timetabling and fares or ticketing, were more properly integrated, is an interesting question. I do not know how you would do that in the Bill, but certainly the involvement of mayoral combined authorities and local authorities in this process will help. It is an interesting question whether the Bill could make specific provision for the additional transport providers and operators that GBR would need to engage with to achieve that integration.

Emma Vogelmann: At Transport for All, we very much look at every journey as multimodal—exactly what you were describing. We have found through our research that interchanges, specifically those between modes of transport, are one of the most significant barriers that disabled people experience on any journey. Where in the Bill this could be dealt with is a really interesting question, but as well as integration with other transport modes, such as ferries and so on, we also need to look at the immediate surroundings of stations, where I do think this Bill could have some influence.

We know that disabled people may not use a particular station because, although it is step-free, there is no blue badge parking around the station, meaning that there is no way for them to get safely to it, or there no dropped kerb to allow them to use that station. If we are going to look at journeys as multimodal, we really need to see this as an opportunity, potentially in this Bill, to look at the areas surrounding railway stations themselves.

Alex Robertson: I do not know what could be changed within the scope of the Bill to directly address your issue.  It is partly a question of how effectively local transport is integrated, and then how that integrates with national transport.

I did want to mention that we are passenger watchdog not just for rail, but for buses and the strategic road network, and we look at it through the lens that has already been talked about. Emma particularly highlighted that the perspective we would bring is to ensure that, when decisions are made and priorities are set, they are thought about in the round—how they affect people in their door-to-door journeys—and not narrowly in terms of rail.