Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I think that on behalf of my noble friend I can thank her for her explicit support of this piece of legislation, but perhaps she will need to wait for another date for a response to the rest of her speech. It is a pleasure also to welcome my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds to her place on the Front Bench today and to commend her on an excellent opening speech. I am pleased too to welcome both the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to your Lordships’ House. I watched them while they were making their respective maiden speeches; it is perfectly clear to me that they have both secured the ear of the House, and I look forward to their contributions in the future.

It will be no surprise to anybody that I rise in support of the Bill before your Lordships’ House. It is legislation for which the Government have a direct mandate and which commands a great deal of public support. Perhaps most importantly, the Bill is pragmatic, protects the taxpayer from the penalties incurred by ending franchises precipitately, and offers greater flexibility for the deployment of rolling stock.

Perhaps I should start by declaring an interest like my noble friend Lord Liddle. I am a regular passenger on Avanti West Coast, the worst-performing train operator in the UK. I could end my speech with that statement, given the chronic frustrations hazarded by anyone intrepid enough to venture on to one of Avanti’s services. Almost 60% of its trains were late in the second quarter of this year, and cancellations ran at double the national average. I mention this not merely to describe my own experience of travelling on our rail network—I am sure that many other noble Lords have worse stories to tell than I have—but to emphasise the asymmetry of performance between the different franchisees.

Conversely, there are franchises that have performed rather well. As we were reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, Greater Anglia, for instance, has some of the highest punctuality rates in the industry, has invested £1.4 billion in rolling stock and, since Covid, has consistently generated a financial return to the Treasury. West Midlands Trains has invested £1 billion in its fleet, with half its current trains replaced with new vehicles built in the UK.

With this asymmetry of performance in mind, can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government plan to take a purely chronological approach to renationalising, ending different franchises in order as their contracts expire, or does she envisage a more targeted approach where the performance of different franchises is taken into account? It would be somewhat quixotic to start this process by bringing Greater Anglia into public ownership as soon as its contract expires, which is imminent, while Avanti continues for years to run a grossly underperforming service. Surely we should take performance into account and ensure that those passengers suffering from the least effective service see changes first. From the fact that the Government, through the terms of the Bill, have given themselves discretion to focus on the worst-performing routes and operators first, I infer that such a course of action is at the very least under active consideration.

In addition to that question, I draw the attention of my noble friend the Minister to the briefing we all received from Transport UK in advance of today’s debate. That briefing contains specific questions and supporting amendments for debate in Committee and the later stages of the Bill’s progress. In particular, I would be grateful to know, first, what she envisages by way of reporting obligations to Parliament in respect of the future performance of publicly owned train operating companies, and, secondly, whether the Office of Rail and Road will be required to assess the ability of a publicly owned company to operate a franchise effectively in advance of contracts being awarded. If so, will the details of such assessments be made available to Parliament for effective scrutiny?

We have heard and will hear “privatisation” and “nationalisation” invoked today but, as it stands, passengers have the worst of both worlds. We have a system run by private companies for profit which, at the same time, rely on implicit and explicit public subsidies, some of which end as dividends for the franchise holders, nobody else gaining. We are all aware that the former British Rail enjoyed a somewhat ambivalent reputation. But in 1989 British Rail was recorded as being 40% more efficient than eight comparable European railway systems; rolling stock was an average of two years younger in 1996 than it was in 2013; and British Rail’s punctuality rating, at 90% PPM in 1995, has only once been exceeded in a calendar year since privatisation—and that was in 1996.

The shadow Secretary of State suggested during Second Reading in the other place that this legislation is ideologically motivated. Leaving aside the dissonance of such an accusation issuing from a party which has been setting ever more rigorous tests of ideological purity of itself since Brexit, I believe that the motivation behind this Bill is far simpler—it is that the railway system across Britain does not work. Our railways are a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe. Despite EU directive 91/440 promoting rail privatisation, as we have heard from other speakers, European nations have looked at our system and decided to stick with a state-run operation.

Depending on your means of comparison, we have either the highest rail prices in Europe or prices that are among the highest. We have a fragmented ticketing and timetabling system that works in the interests of franchise holders rather than passengers. Subsidies run at twice pre-pandemic levels, while tickets have risen by around 25% in real terms since the privatisation experiment began. The legacy of privatisation on our railways is more government subsidy; more expensive tickets; endemic industrial dissatisfaction; and HS2, that artery of levelling up, repeatedly promised before being questioned and then cancelled.

There are some, thankfully not apparent in our debate today, who suggest that privatisation has worked and that we must merely persist with this experiment in the face of observable evidence. I will remind them of the words of John Maynard Keynes who, when tasked with an apparent inconsistency, responded:

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions”.


This Bill is before your Lordships’ House today precisely because the public have all the information they need; they are dissatisfied with the cost and unreliable standards of service on our railways and know that we need fundamental change. Two-thirds of the public support renationalisation, and that figure rises to 73% among those who regularly use the railway network. It is no coincidence that those most frequently exposed to the reality of our railways are precisely those who support them coming back into public ownership.

At this juncture, I would like to remind your Lordships’ House of an historical advocate for state control of the railways. Given the shadow Transport Secretary’s apparent belief that this is a nakedly ideological measure, I am somewhat surprised to be claiming Winston Churchill as a socialist ideologue; he may have been at one time in his life. In 1919, he gave a speech in Dundee in which he explained that:

“So long as the railways are in private hands they may be used for immediate profit. In the hands of the State, however, it may be wise or expedient to run them … develop industry, place the trader in close contact with his market, and stimulate development”.


Compare that with the notes to the King’s Speech, in which the Government described the changes that this Bill would make. They described a system in which the railways would

“serve the interests of all users and the taxpayer, rather than focusing on maximising financial returns to private-sector operators”.

The aesthetic difference between these two passages may be pronounced, but the sentiment is absolutely identical.

Critics have suggested that nationalisation is somehow an easy option. On the contrary, as my noble friend has been reminded today, the Government will take on enormous responsibilities. As more franchises come back into public ownership, the Government will be held directly responsible for people’s journeys; shortcomings in respect of service and punctuality, fare costs and overcrowding will be laid at their door. If that is an easy option, I would be intrigued to hear such critics define a grave political risk. The fact that this Administration are prepared to countenance such political risks is surely testimony to their disinterestedness and their freedom from selfish motives, which therefore allows freedom to act fairly in seeking to improve our rail network. I shall support this Bill as it journeys through your Lordships’ House and gives effect to the mandate the Government were given at the general election.