Railways Bill

Julia Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I am surely the luckiest MP in this House, as I represent the charming, thriving border town of Shrewsbury. We are in a strategic location: we serve as a hub for Shropshire, we are on the edge of the industrial west midlands and we are the gateway to Wales. Our railway is a major transit point for Welsh services operated by Transport for Wales. With 2.2 million passengers, I am told that we are the second busiest station in Wales. There is also much latent demand for more services.

However, under privatisation, we have been on the edge of other people’s maps for too long. We are the last stop on the west midlands line, and the last major station from Wales. It has held back our investment and limited our inter-city services, such as the much missed direct train to London. While our railway station is a beautiful grade II listed building, with a fabulous team of staff, led by the wonderful, long-serving manager Shelley Hall, we need our station to be more than a museum piece. In order to increase services, we must first have our master plan for bringing together infrastructure upgrades.

The Railways Bill provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Shrewsbury station to fulfil its true potential under Great British Railways. We have such latent demand for additional services that when TFW upgraded our service to Birmingham to four carriages—it used to have two carriages, and 81 people standing—ticket sales went up by 18% overnight. Imagine how many more tickets we could sell to passengers at Shrewsbury when a nationalised service joins up routes and opens up opportunities for my residents. We may have 2.2 million passengers at Shrewsbury, but I am keen to support a new breed: the wannabe passengers, who want to make the modal shift away from cars and on to our rail network, and who need to travel for work, study or leisure, but for whom there are no seats or services yet. They need earlier, later and more frequent trains.

In Shropshire, we still dream of that direct train to London, which would reconnect us to the capital. Research shows that it would add £9 million a year to our local economy. It is not just me who thinks that rail investment in Shrewsbury could unlock bountiful economic growth. I was delighted yesterday to see the report published by Midlands Connect for DFT entitled “Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury: a corridor for growth”, showing that connectivity between the two centres will boost regional economy, benefit productivity and support employment sectors. This corridor supports major employers, such as the i54 enterprise zone, the Battlefield enterprise park and Shrewsbury business park, as well as future developments in Shifnal and Telford. Those sites alone support more than 4,000 jobs and require improved access to rail, bus and active travel infrastructure.

Enhancing that transport corridor will also deliver benefits for Wales because of the cross-border gateway and the freight connections between our two nations, and growth in this area aligns with priorities over the border. In the Budget, the Chancellor committed £445 million in investment over the next 10 years specifically to support transport infrastructure in Wales, highlighting the importance of major investment in cross-border rail activity. As the major border rail hub between an already nationalised Transport for Wales and a soon to be nationalised West Midlands Railway, Shrewsbury offers to be the strategic link that ensures the success of GBR. Only when our regions and devolved nations can co-deliver two nationalised rail systems seamlessly for passengers at hubs like mine will we have succeeded.

The Great British Railways Bill was written to improve services in places like Shrewsbury, and Shrewsbury has been waiting for Great British Railways—not least my wannabe passengers, who are still hoping that it will unlock employment and economic opportunity for them. Shrewsbury will become the beating heart of our reinvigorated railway.

Railways Bill

Julia Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)]

We in this place all recognise the transformative role that railways can play in creating better-connected places and driving the economic growth that our communities and country need, yet that potential remains largely unrealised in some counties. Wiltshire has an extensive network of existing railway lines, but they remain primarily geared towards ferrying passengers and freight across the county, rather than providing a service on which residents can rely for local commuting, business and leisure travel.

Thanks to tireless local campaigning, Melksham saw a significant uplift in its rail service back in 2013, but with an average of just one train every two hours, the service remains too intermittent to meet the needs of a town experiencing rapid population growth. Meanwhile, a 20-mile station-less stretch of line runs between Westbury and Pewsey. It passes within three miles of Devizes, but there is no railway access for over 30,000 people living in the heart of Wiltshire, which is holding back the area’s economy. The Bill acknowledges the importance of local and regional rail, and requires GBR to align decisions with local transport strategies, but making mayoral strategic authorities the sole vehicle for this new co-operation leaves some 60% of England’s population not yet covered and without the tools to harness rail’s potential.

If the Government are committed to sustainable housing growth, town centre regeneration, access to jobs, education and decarbonisation, the Bill must go much further in enabling local rail. Metroisation of our railways is not just for large cities; counties such as Cornwall and Northumberland are already demonstrating how more frequent and reliable rail can transform rural economies. The Government need to ensure that market towns such as Melksham and Devizes are not left behind in economic development and can benefit from the rail network.

The creation of GBR must also be accompanied by a brand-new passenger charter. If we want more passengers to choose rail over road, we must tackle issues such as overpriced tickets and overcrowded carriages with poor wi-fi and little or no catering. I urge the Government to accept new clauses 1 and 58, and set a new bar for value for money, accessibility and passenger comfort in our new Great British Railways.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Ministers both here and in the other place for their hard work and engagement on this important Bill. I will focus my comments in favour of new clause 16.

Great British Railways cannot come soon enough for my constituency of Shrewsbury. Under privatisation, our geography has penalised us, as we sit on the edge of everyone’s maps between regional operators serving either Wales or Birmingham, leaving us under-invested and underserved. As Members may recall—I have mentioned it quite a few times—Shropshire remains the only county without a direct train to London. The value of such a direct service is not just the obvious economic boost for jobs, education and tourism, or the improved accessibility of avoiding step-heavy connections, but the important investment in infrastructure that inter-city services could unlock at our station. We need more frequent and reliable regional services, with much more capacity to cope with the vast demand for services for a county town of 70,000 residents. For example, our local university campus closed last year, and students now have to travel beyond Shrewsbury to access education, training and employment.

For these reasons, I am pleased to put my name in support of five amendments, including new clause 16, which calls for the reopening of services to underserved areas. This new clause calls for GBR to establish a department for the purpose of identifying areas underserved and unserved by railway services, and to assess passenger and community needs for adding services, routes or stations where they are missing. It is crucial that the full opportunities of this new integrated, nationalised railway are felt across the whole country by improving service levels in underserved and often rural areas such as Shropshire, not just adding increased frequency for already well-served cities. Just last month, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will recall that I stood in this very place to present a petition signed by over 10,000 fare-paying passengers asking this Government to recognise the demand for a direct train service at Shrewsbury and to approve extra routes to London.

As we stand together on the cusp of nationalising our rail system, we must ensure that the mantra of “people before profit” becomes a reality in places such as Shrewsbury. Where investment has been lacking, let us take this opportunity to rebuild; where services have withered away, let us deliver for our communities; and where towns have been left behind, let us reconnect them. In short, let us show in deeds, not words, how Great British Railways will deliver more services for more places such as Shrewsbury.

[Monica Harding]

I rise in support of new clause 1, on the passengers’ charter, new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), and my own new clause 60, which addresses reliability, accessibility and refurbishment.

All seven of my railway stations in Esher and Walton are under the stewardship of South Western Railway, making our constituency one of the first to experience the transition to public ownership, and there are significant reliability challenges. The latest performance figures show that, in March, 3% of all services were cancelled and only 65% of services arrived on time, meaning more than one in three trains fail to arrive when passengers expected them to.