Railways Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I agree with a huge amount of what she said, and I welcome her support for the Bill.

As he is still in the Chamber, I want to pay my own tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, whom I first had the pleasure of meeting around 40 years ago when he was a senior civil servant and I was a desperate lobbyist for a particular interest that was affected by his department, the Home Office. He will be missed; that was a wonderful valedictory speech.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill for the way in which he introduced this debate. I endorse the compliments paid to him from the Benches opposite. He is an extraordinarily successful and popular Transport Minister in your Lordships’ House, and I hope that it will not blight his career if I say that I hope he will remain where he is when Mr Burnham forms his new Government in a couple of weeks’ time.

I have a number of railway interests to declare. The noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, referred to one of them: I chair the Great Western Rail advisory board. The noble Baroness is a most diligent and valued member of that board and I am delighted that she is on it. I am also the president of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group and the Heritage Railway Association. That was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay; I am sure that we will come to the issue of heritage railways, which he raised, in Committee. All of these organisations, along with numerous others that have written to me, have interests in the Bill, and we will consider issues that relate to them in Committee.

For me, the most important issue facing the railways is ensuring that they can rise to the challenge of constantly growing public demand from passengers and the freight industry in a cost-effective and well-managed way. An essential ingredient in this renaissance will be ensuring that Great British Railways is the industry’s directing mind, firmly in charge of the railway. Otherwise, capacity will not be enhanced and performance will not improve. It must have the power to decide how the network is best used, as is defined in Clause 50, and doing that is likely to produce more capacity than we have now.

The other great issue is that a long-term rail plan from the Secretary of State will give GBR the opportunity and the obligation to form a business plan to carry out the enhancements that will improve the network the most, as well as the right money to keep the network running reliably. Neither of these documents exists now and they have not for over 30 years. That is why the network is less than optimal and why the need for a future list of enhancements with business cases is so important. If we have this list, we can solicit third-party contributions through Section 106 and other agreements. We all know how landowners and developers benefit from railway improvements but are seldom asked to pay anything towards them.

I will take the Cotswold line between Oxford and Worcester as an example. The case for enhancing this route is overwhelming, but it has not made the cut as far as the Department for Transport is concerned over the last 15 years. Even though the line’s popularity has grown year by year and trains are regularly overcrowded, the service’s reliability is undermined by two stretches of single-line working. Developers have great plans for housebuilding, particularly at the western end of the line, including a new town on the edge of Worcester. They have the strongest possible incentive to contribute. It is an easy win, yet for some reason it seems to be very hard to persuade the department of the case.

I have no doubt that the principles behind the Bill are right and the only effective approach to simplifying and reducing the huge cost of our railways, which is required by the complex structure that was set up when BR was privatised. I do not share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, on the merits of the privatisation that he introduced, for reasons that I have explained to him. However, there are no credible alternatives being advanced to take the railways into their next stage of development other than those proposed in this Bill.

In 2023, I co-authored a book on railway power and politics, Signals Passed at Danger. Our conclusions on privatisation were that the policy was “a leap in the dark, a radical experiment where neither the Government nor the British Railways Board could predict the outcome”. This time around, we know the results of the privatisation experiment. That is why the principles of this Bill have widespread support from the public and throughout the industry. It would be wrong not to recognise that some good results were achieved over the last 25 years. I am happy to recognise them: notably, new trains, reopened lines, more services and a dramatic improvement in safety standards. However, the costs have been high, involving levels of financial support that British Rail in its day could only dream about. Too much has been spent on lawyers, consultants and administration to meet the plethora of new regulations. This Bill offers the chance of radically simplifying the structures and reducing unnecessary regulation and costs. Much of the debate has been about passenger services. On these, I encourage my noble friend the Minister to build on the brand strength and loyalties built by the TOCs.

Turning finally to rail freight, the Bill gives us the opportunity to see that it takes a much larger share of the nation’s transport needs than is currently the case. Here, I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has just said. The political view was always that “freight does not vote”. It is true that the financial targets set for BR on freight back in the 1980s and 1990s meant that much of the infrastructure had to be abandoned as it failed to meet the Government’s stringent financial criteria, despite the strong environmental advantages over heavy lorry traffic.

Some of this has been regained by rail, and efficiency has improved so much that more traffic has been won by the freight companies, particularly intermodal traffic. More can be done. With active government support for rail freight terminals, electrification and full-length freight loops, the growth can be even greater. The great underused asset is the Channel Tunnel. It is shocking that less rail freight currently passes through the Channel Tunnel than was carried by the train ferries before the tunnel opened. GBR will be able to help the development of international freight with gauge clearance work to carry the largest containers and provide wider access to the rail network. The inclusion of a requirement to set a rail freight growth strategy is welcome and a complete change from the framework of the 1970s, where rail freight was seen as a lost cause and not worthy of support.

There is much in this Bill to welcome. There are bits in it which we want to improve in Committee, but overwhelmingly I give it my support.