Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

I had a feeling that my hon. Friend might mention Avanti, and he knows my views. One of the first meetings I held as Secretary of State was with Avanti. I called in representatives of its Network Rail business unit for being one of the worst-performing operators—a meeting that was not held by any of my three predecessors while I was shadow Secretary of State. I made it clear that Avanti’s level of performance will not be tolerated, and we will use all measures under its national rail contract to hold it to account. That does not exclude terminating the contract before it expires if Avanti defaults.

We were promised High Speed 2 to Manchester, yet that was axed—in Manchester, no less—leaving a west coast main line that is now bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, passengers continue to suffer, with overcrowded trains and poor facilities, record-high cancellations—almost one in three trains is late—some of the most expensive fares in Europe, and regular bouts of industrial action.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I welcome the Minister to her place and wish her well in her new role? I thank her for bringing forward a Bill to modernise the railways.

I make a plea on behalf of those who are disabled. Whenever we have had debates on the railways in this Chamber, including Adjournment debates, the issue of disabled access has come up over and over again. Does the Secretary of State agree that disabled access at all railway stations should be a bare minimum and must be a priority, given that we have commuters who must still take private taxis to get to a wheelchair-friendly station? Further, does she agree that rural communities should not be disadvantaged by the closure of small stops in order to provide more streamlined timings?

[Louise Haigh]

I marvel, as always, at the hon. Gentleman’s ability to find something of interest and relevance to the debate at hand. He is absolutely right to say that accessibility is far too often overlooked, and we made it clear in the plans we set out ahead of the general election that accessibility would be one of the key measures against which we would eventually hold Great British Railways to account. The way in which people with accessibility needs are treated by our public transport system is undignified.

The broken model that our railways rely on is holding back talent, holding back opportunity and holding back Britain. It must be fixed, and we are wasting no time in doing so. By amending the Railways Act 1993, today’s Bill will fulfil one of our central manifesto commitments: to bring rail passenger services into public ownership. It overturns the privatisation by the John Major Government and allows us to take action as soon as contracts expire, or earlier if operators default on their contracts. It is a sensible approach, ensuring that taxpayers do not fork out huge sums to compensate operating companies for ending contracts early. Public ownership will become the default option for delivering passenger services, instead of the last resort.