Railways Bill

Debate between Helen Maguire and Olly Glover

Report stage
Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Olly Glover]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we need new clause 1 to provide a railway passengers’ charter fit for the 21st century. With rail fares as high as they are, things like functioning wi-fi or phone signal, enough space for luggage, functioning toilets or even a seat should no longer be seen as indulgent luxuries. I note that the Government have recently announced some serious intentions to improve wi-fi and phone signal, and I wish them all the best with that endeavour.

The new clauses and amendments I mentioned could deliver significant improvements to passenger safety and security at stations and on trains, and they would require higher standards for those, if adopted.

[Helen Maguire]

On passenger experience, will my hon. Friend extend my thanks to the Minister and Lord Hendy—I have made them aware of my intention to mention this today—for taking forward new clause 36 via operational arrangements, which will permit a bereaved family member of the armed forces to a fare exemption on Remembrance Sunday?

[Olly Glover]

I am happy to thank the Minister here and Lord Hendy for engaging with my hon. Friend’s amendment to better enable members of our armed forces, veterans and their families to travel to services on Remembrance Sunday.

New clauses 6 and 2 and amendments 2 and 3 would require GBR to deliver meaningful fares reform and innovation, such as tap-in and tap-out contactless payment, as is currently available in the entirety of the Netherlands, and other forms of convenient digital payment, as well as our rail miles scheme, which would extend the concept of air miles and promote domestic tourism by making journeys on our railways as valuable a commodity as air miles are today.

New clause 9 would reduce the ability of the Department for Transport and the Treasury to meddle in the affairs of GBR, because interference and micromanagement by those organisations has caused a lot of the issues afflicting our railways today. To that end, amendments 7 and 6 would align track and train budgets, putting right what I feel is a detailed and structural flaw in the Bill. The Bill’s current intention to have infrastructure subject to five-year funding cycles, but funding for passenger services and train operation subject to spending review timescales, undermines the ability to achieve a “whole railway” way of thinking, planning and funding.

Amendments 8 and 9 are intended to deliver stronger accountability and transparency for GBR in relation to capacity allocation and network access fees, powers and decisions, particularly given that freight will remain in the private sector and as an open access endeavour.

Amendment 5 and new clause 3 counter the Bill’s poverty of ambition for the railways’ potential to further tackle road congestion, improve access to work and productivity, and cut carbon emissions, as shown by the Government’s repeated and, frankly, bizarre and incomprehensible refusal to include a requirement for a passenger growth target in the Bill. This is an area on which Liberal Democrats, Greens and Conservatives all tabled similar amendments in Committee—how often does that happen? Not very often, in my experience. Myriad stakeholder organisations have made the same point, as indeed has the Transport Committee.

Perhaps the noble Lord Hendy’s recent comments to the Transport Committee partially give the game away. When I asked him about summer service cuts to Avanti West Coast services, he said:

“It is a perfectly reasonable proposition to reduce train services in the short term when there is less demand for them.”

On one level that is an understandable view, but where there is lower demand for train services, we need to look at the reasons for that, and perhaps Avanti West Coast’s outrageous fares and poor track record are part of that, or it may be less attractive because of the lack of open access on the west coast main line compared with the east coast.

[Olly Glover]

The county of Norfolk suffered particularly from the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, so that needs to be looked at. That is a good example of the potential for rail to improve rural connectivity.

I would not mind so much that the Government are so keen to reduce train service where there is less demand if they or the rail industry appeared to have a comparable appetite for increasing services when there is very clearly high demand, as there was recently on the 10.30 from Reading to Penzance. Who could have anticipated that at the start of a bank holiday weekend, during half term, with extremely warm weather forecast, there would be high demand? That train was, to use a technical term, “rammed.” That is why we need a passenger growth target, to ensure that we are not just amending the timetable for a bit of penny-pinching, but to match customer demand. We must ensure that people who take the train to the west country do so again because they have a good experience.

[Helen Maguire]

Post covid, the number of trains from Epsom and Ewell was halved. My new clause 37 would ensure that there is community consultation on the frequency of train services. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sensible thing to do would be to consult the community?

[Olly Glover]

I commend my hon. Friend for her industry in the number of amendments she has tabled to the Bill. I hope the Government will listen and consider new clause 37, as they did with her new clause 36 regarding veterans.

New clauses 7 and 8 would make more explicit commitments for GBR to have greater environmental and carbon emissions reduction obligations than those currently drafted. Our amendments as a whole would increase GBR’s potential to avoid making the mistakes of the past. They would encourage it to take bold new steps on electrification and deliver truly joined-up journeys and integrated transport and timetables. They would encourage it to have a real, ambitious rail devolution agenda to bring decision making far closer to communities than is currently the case with Whitehall’s domination.

Our amendments would also avoid the total mess of projects led by the Department for Transport, such as the ongoing situation of having no trains between Oxford and Milton Keynes on East West Rail, despite the railway being commissioned 18 months ago. We have HS2—it goes without saying what a mess that is, and that has not been an endeavour led by the private sector. We also have the inter-city express programme for GWR and LNER, which was wildly expensive.

Let me move towards my conclusion. The key test is this: do the Railways Bill and the proposed creation of GBR make my key constituency asks more or less likely to happen? Simpler and better value fares on GWR, particularly during peak times; an end to five-car, overcrowded inter-city operations; a new station at Grove; full electrification between Didcot and Oxford, bringing Oxford into equality with Cambridge, which benefited from such electrification in 1986; an hourly service for Culham; accessibility improvements to Cholsey; and East West Rail actually happening, as I mentioned—only with our amendments do I feel that those things are likely to be within reach.

Although the Government are right about the need to better align track and train and to tackle the current dysfunctional industry structure, the Bill has too many flaws. Do not take that from me—the Transport Committee reached a similar conclusion, with most of the recommendations of its inquiry being rejected by the Government. Absent the Government embracing at least some of the Lib Dem amendments that I have spoken to, we risk creating a GBR that is mired in bureaucracy and overseen by a Department for Transport that is distracted by dubious GBR train colour schemes and somewhat gimmicky social media videos, rather than adopting good practices from other countries and truly transforming our railway. Absent the Government embracing some of our amendments or the House voting on them, the Bill is not fit to go forward.