Railways Bill (First sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Laurence Turner]

Q I have one final question for Mr Hynes and Mr Westlake. We talked on the Transport Committee some time ago about progress with shadow GBR and the preparations for implementation. As it has been some time since that was discussed, and this Bill has subsequently been published, could you give us an update on the work that shadow GBR has been undertaking?

Alex Hynes: Shadow GBR continues to meet very frequently under Laura’s chairship, and it is really helping to drive alignment and convergence between the Department for Transport, DFTO and Network Rail in this pre-GBR state. Whether it is developing a leadership academy for Great British Railways, looking at where the Great British Railways headquarters is going to be, in Derby, or working with the mayoral strategic authorities on how GBR will work in partnership with said organisations, it is helping to drive the alignment of the industry in this pre-GBR state.

On 1 April, about 200 civil servants will TUPE transfer out of the Department for Transport and into DFTO. One of the things that Jeremy and I are doing is trying to get our organisations and teams—of course, there is lots of good will in this area—to work together as though we were GBR, so we can start capturing the benefits of a more integrated railway system in advance of GBR. That is going well. It is Jeremy and I working together that is enabling us, for example, to put integrated leaders in place.

You talked about the public ownership programme, which I agree is going well; I pay tribute to John’s colleagues, who work well on the safety aspects of the transfer. Jeremy and I are working—in fact, we are discussing it this week at shadow GBR—on whether and when we can put integrated leaders in place, once we have brought the businesses into public ownership, to make track and train work together and create a single point of accountability by having one person in charge for certain chunks of the railway.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q This question is directed at the chief executive of DFTO. You talk about the benefits of uniting track and train in terms of management and not having too many organisations. Transport for London obviously goes further, by working across buses, trains, cycle and tube. Is there anything in the Bill that improves the connectivity of rail with other forms of transport? I am thinking not just of my Isle of Wight constituency’s connectivity with privatised, unregulated ferry companies, but of probably every constituency with buses under different ownership models. Does anything in the Bill help to the improve connections between rail and other forms of public transport?

Alex Hynes: The answer to that question is yes. GBR will be required to take into account places’ local transport plans, and there is a process by which partnerships exist, particularly with mayoral strategic authorities—that obviously does not include everywhere, but does include some places. There is also a right to request mechanism, by which people can request further devolution from GBR to their area. There is very much a place-based focus on devolution, because the whole philosophy of GBR is that, other things being equal, decisions made closer to where rail services are delivered will be better than those made hundreds of miles away.

I also think that the combination of the creation of Great British Railways—a unified, publicly owned railway for the nation—with the Government’s intention to publish an integrated national transport strategy and the changes that are happening in the bus market will very much enable us to join up transport modes in places, so that we can deliver a better service to customers.

[The Chair]

This will probably be the final question; this session has to end by 10.10 am.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Can I just check that you do not have any oversight of ferries?

Alex Robertson: We do not.

Michael Roberts: Your question prompts a slightly different line of thought from me. I apologise, because my focus is very much on travel in and around the capital, rather than the Isle of Wight, as important as it is. I have a concern about the extent to which the provisions in the Bill about fair and open access to GBR’s assets—the future of its track and signalling systems, for example—may compromise the degree to which effective integration can happen in the capital. I say that because TfL runs a significant number of services over GBR assets today. The busiest line in the country—the Elizabeth line—is a GBR asset that is run by an operator that is mandated by TfL. The London Overground runs over GBR assets, and so do parts of the London underground; if you are a user of the District line or the Bakerloo line, you are using GBR assets.

The ability of TfL and the operators under its oversight to have fair and open access to those assets is extremely important to the travelling public, in whom I am particularly interested. I know that open access is a broader issue, rather than a London-specific one, but, for the Committee’s deliberations around that, I would flag that it is not immediately clear from a London perspective that the provisions are strong enough to give TfL, for example, the comfort that it will have the degree of access that it wants, to continue providing those services effectively.

[Sarah Smith]

Q Ben, I want to come to your proposals around the duty to grow passenger use. Could it not be assumed that that runs throughout the Bill? Why do you think it is needed as an additional explicit provision?

Ben Plowden: Clearly, in broad terms, GBR will be incentivised to increase passenger demand, not least because of the revenue that would flow from that, as well as its ability to deliver its other duties, such as the public interest duty. It seems odd to us that there is a difference between the way that incentive is expressed for passengers versus freights; there is a very clear requirement in the Bill to promote the use of the network for the carriage of goods and for the Secretary of State to separately set a freight growth target.

We think that, for consistency, and to give a statutory incentive for GBR to grow passenger use alongside its commercial incentives, there should be an equivalent duty to promote the use of the network for passengers and disabled passengers, and a separate duty for the Secretary of State to set a growth target for passenger demand over time. The Secretary of State will obviously need to determine that growth target in the light of financial circumstances, network capacity and all the other things that will determine what could realistically be achieved. But, unless there is a statutory incentive for GBR to grow passenger use over time, we think it may find itself perversely and unintentionally, or at least in terms of its other duties, reducing service frequency and crowding people off the network through fares, because of the specific requirements about passenger service standards that we discussed before. I think it would be very helpful in the drafting to provide an equivalence for GBR for passengers so that is like the freightduty.