Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

11: Clause 2, page 2, line 21, at end insert—
“(1D) The relevant franchising authority must ensure that any public service contract awarded under subsection (1A) includes provisions to mandate rest day working.”

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I rise to move Amendment 11 and to speak to the other two amendments in this group. This is very much a probing amendment to explore where the new railway structure is going to improve waste, delays and costs, which many people have attributed to strikes, go-slows and all the other things that they blame the trade unions for.

I have three examples. The first is to do with rest-day working, which I suffered the other weekend—three trains from Cornwall cancelled in a row. Other noble Lords present tonight have mentioned the cancellations due to rest-day working failures. I will quote from an email from First Great Western in reply to my complaint about sitting around for hours. It says:

“As you will be aware, while all new drivers who have joined the business in recent years have a Sunday commitment, the majority of high-speed drivers still do not. Without a change in terms and conditions we will remain reliant on volunteer overtime to cover Sundays”.


So it looks as though, in 20 years’ time, we will still have the same problem. I ask my noble friend the Minister what the Government intend to do to deal with this and to reach agreement with the trade unions. Of course they need time off—on the other hand, the passengers would like to have a train going at the weekend sometimes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her intervention. In fact, I did not say that there was no need to sort out the terms and conditions now; I said there was no need to sort out the particular matter of how the overall pay and conditions might be dealt with, including with the pay review body. As a matter of fact, the employees would transfer under the transfer of undertakings regulations. At that stage, no change is possible on the transfer. That will need to be resolved and I am sure that changes are in fact needed, if only because, at least in my view, some of the existing train operating companies have failed to develop the terms and conditions in the way that they should have, both to operate a better service and to reward the staff more effectively.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this short debate. My amendment was a probing one, as I said, and I have no regrets about tabling it because we have learned a great deal this evening. It has been easier to blame what has gone wrong in the railways and the strikes in the last few years on the trade unions or even the present Government, but most of the passenger franchises that have been operated in the last 10 or 20 years have had Department for Transport puppet-string holders behind them, telling them what they can and cannot do, which is not the way to negotiate. Most successful negotiations take place on the background of a client, customer or owner who knows what they are doing and has done it before, and trade unions that also know what they are doing.

I am pleased that my noble friend has given us a progress report on where this is likely to go and I thank him for the information and for updating me on some things, but I hope that it will not be too long before we see an even better arrangement for the workforce, whether it is a workforce plan or whatever, including Network Rail workers. Then everybody could get their heads down and get on with providing a good service to the customers—which is, of course, what everybody wants. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.