Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Gascoigne Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Gascoigne]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Purpose: improvement of passenger railway services(1) The purpose of this Act is to improve the performance of passenger railway services in the United Kingdom.(2) The Secretary of State must, in taking any actions under the provisions of this Act, have regard to this purpose.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the purpose of the Act, namely the improved performance of passenger railway services in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to fire the starting gun on Report with my Amendment 1. In doing so, I express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Moylan for his support with this amendment. I also thank the Minister for taking the time to meet me the other day. I very much appreciated the opportunity he took to address my many questions in his usual cordial way.

This amendment today flows from my first amendment in Committee. Everyone wants the trains to improve. That is a given. As I said in Committee, and when I met the Minister recently, the reason I care about this is that we need the whole rail reform package and we need it not to be piecemeal. Personally, I would like to go down the route proposed under the Williams-Shapps review, but I recognise that that ship has probably sailed. That said, the overall goal is the same: to make it more efficient; to make it easier to travel; to make it more punctual and, ultimately, to improve the passenger service.

In Committee I used the word “Ronseal”: making sure that the Bill delivers what it is intended to, so that it does, in effect, what is on the tin. While I will not repeat word for word what I said, there are three technical points I want to address following on from Committee, for the benefit of the House today.

First, is this Tory language being inserted really a sort of Trojan horse, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting Minister in the Labour Government once they have welcomed it? No. In Getting Britain Moving: Labour’s Plan to Fix Britain’s Railways, published during the campaign, the then Shadow Secretary of State said in the foreword:

“We need a modern rail system—with improved services for passengers and better value for money for taxpayers—to serve as the backbone of a modern Britain”.


Later, she said:

“Labour’s challenge is to put our rail system back on track to sustainable growth and improvement”.


This was followed by:

“Labour’s vision is to deliver a unified and simplified rail system that relentlessly focuses on securing improved services for passengers and better value for money for taxpayers”.


Indeed, in just the foreword alone, there are eight references to either “improve”, “improving” or “improved services”, not to mention countless others in the rest of the document.

The Government and Labour may argue that those references are about the whole suite of rail reform: it is only then that you will get a better service after everything has changed. However, after the election, at Second Reading, in response to questions, the Transport Minister in the Commons said:

“Let me begin by dealing with the issue of public ownership. According to the shadow Secretary of State ... we have no proof that it will improve outcomes for passengers, but that is clearly not the case. We know for a fact that this Bill will save tens of millions of pounds in fees, and if that is not a good start, I do not know what is”.


A little later he went on to say:

“I am confident that public ownership will provide the right foundations to drive forward improvements for passengers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/7/24; col. 1135.]


I could read out plenty of other quotes which all use the same terminology and the same rationale for this Bill, but, as I hope noble Lords can see, this is not about me inserting language into this debate: it is already there from the Labour Party, both in opposition and in government.

Secondly, are we not overlapping existing commitments? My noble friend made the inspired observation in Committee that similar references are made in the Railways Act 1993. He is, as ever, correct that the obligation to improve services is used elsewhere and is not altered by this Bill, so why cannot it, or a reference to upholding that element of the 1993 Act, be put in this Bill?

Thirdly, from a technical point of view, do we need a purpose clause given that this Bill is focused on how nationalisation will take effect? I have said before that some will question whether a purpose clause is needed, given that this is a tightly focused Bill. I will suggest later why it is needed in general terms, but, from a purely technical point of view, in Clause 2 the Secretary of State will have to take a view and make a judgment of the virtue or otherwise of a franchise when deciding whether temporarily to extend the said franchise. By inserting this purpose clause at the outset, it is a necessary barometer setting out exactly what this Bill is seeking to do and what should be the Secretary of State’s overriding concern when making a decision.

This is not about stopping the Bill, nor is it about inserting assessments, reports or tests before anything can happen. There is no bureaucracy being created here, I am pleased to say to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Snape. It would not be costly—indeed, it would not cost anything—and I am not saying that it would lead to cheaper fares, although that is what people want to see and expect. It would not add anything onerous or new. As I said, this is language used elsewhere in legislation. It does not issue specific demands or expectations about cleanliness, the number of guards, ensuring decent toilets—or toilets that are open, which they absolutely should be. My amendment could talk about access and address some of the shocking things we heard in Committee about the experience of disabled people when travelling, which I know will come up later. But it merely sets out what the goal of reform is, to ensure that everyone from top to bottom knows what the Government are doing this for. We wish them to succeed in improving the service. It is language that Labour has used, and which is used elsewhere in legislation, to make it clear what the Bill will deliver. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on his Amendment 1 and will speak to Amendment 14 in my name. My noble friend very kindly referred to our debate on the same amendment in Committee. I note the reference in the Railways Act 1993 and that I see two merits in my noble friend’s amendment.

First, it is always a good thing for Bills to be clear about their purpose. Unless I am mistaking something, this amendment accurately reflects the Government’s purpose in this legislation. We may debate whether it will be successful or otherwise, but the purpose seems to be straightforward, and to have that in legislation is always helpful.

Secondly, because this Bill is essentially about amending parts of the Railways Act 1993 and nothing else, it is clearly subsidiary to the existing provisions of that Act, as amended. There are 10 general duties in that Act. The first is in Section 4(1)(zb),

“to promote improvements in railway service performance”.

My noble friend has accurately reflected the first of those 10 general duties, one of which we will come to debate in a subsequent group in relation to my amendment.

It seems to me that one of the abiding issues for public agencies, often including government departments, is the multiplicity of duties that are imposed upon them and the risk of conflict between those duties. Here, for these purposes, that would be clarified if it were made very clear that this important change to the way in which the provisions of the Railways Act are structured and to be used is to improve railway service performance. To raise that general duty in importance above the others would be helpful in clarifying the balance which the Government and the other agencies should take. I support Amendment 1 for that reason.

Amendment 14 refers to the new subsection of Section 30 of the Railways Act, inserted by the Bill, which provides that the provision of railway services can be made only via

“a direct award of a public service contract to a public sector company in accordance with regulation 17 … of the 2023 Regulations”.

Noble Lords will be aware of those regulations. Subsequently, the requirement for pre-award publication is disapplied by this legislation. However, paragraph (2) of Regulation 17 states:

“Where a competent authority makes a direct award of a public service contract under this regulation, the competent authority must, within one year of granting the award, and while ensuring the protection of commercially sensitive information and commercial interests, publish a notice on its website”.


The information required about the contract and the contractor is then listed in the regulation. Is one year right? Is it desirable that we should, in any circumstances, wait so long to be given information about the direct award of these contracts, given that they are instrumental to an understanding of whose responsibility it is to provide passenger railway services?

I have discussed my amendments with the Minister, and I am grateful for his time and that of his officials. I hope he has had a chance to think about my amendment and that, if he will not accept it, he will at least be able to tell us that it will be the Government’s intention to make new regulations quite soon, and in those new regulations to reduce to as little as three months after the granting of an award of a contract of this kind the publication of the notice and details. To assist later consideration, I say that it is certainly not my intention to press Amendment 14 when it is reached.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I was referring to the people who drive and operate the trains. There are more of them on Waterloo station than there are employees of Network Rail.

To finish what I was saying, most people on the railway refer to their employer and their work as “the railway”, which tells you something about the way in which the franchise system has dealt with loyalty to employment.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for Amendment 14 and the discussion we had in the last few days. He is right that Regulation 17 requires the publication of a specified list of information within one year, following the direct award of a contract, where that information has not already been published. However, we expect the majority of the information included in Regulation 17 to have already been published well before one year has expired. That is because Regulation 23, which covers post-award publication, requires a competent authority to publish a similar set of information within two months of contract award. The information which must be published is set out in Schedule 2. Regulation 23 also allows interested parties to request the reasons for a direct award within one month of the post-award publication. I agree that a year would be a very long time to wait before the information is published. However, I do not believe that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed because similar and, in many respects, more detailed publication requirements are already provided for in Regulation 23. I urge him to withdraw the amendment, and I note that he does not intend to press it.

I note that Amendment 16, from my noble friend Lord Berkeley, is somewhat novel constitutionally, as it would constrain parliamentary sovereignty by imposing limitations on when primary legislation relating to the railways could be introduced. I am very happy to confirm to my noble friend, to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and to others who mentioned it that the Government intend to set out their key proposal for the railways Bill in a consultation document that I very much hope will be published before the end of this calendar year. This will give all interested parties, including Members of your Lordships’ House, the chance to review and scrutinise it and to feed in their views before the Bill is introduced later in this parliamentary Session. The Government do not intend to publish a draft of the Bill before it is introduced, as I would expect that to delay progress in implementing the Government’s planned reforms.

It is now more than six years since the previous Government declared that the structure of the railways is

“no longer fit to meet today’s challenges”

and appointed Keith Williams to lead his review. Passengers, freight and everyone on and who uses the railway have waited too far long already to see meaningful change. I have to say that my own experience is that the previous Government went through pre-legislative scrutiny in a desultory manner, and frankly, we all concluded that they did not intend to bring a Bill before either House any time soon.

While the Government are keen to hear the widest possible range of views on their proposals, including the noble Lord’s, I do not on this occasion support the idea of publishing a draft Bill. It also does not seem necessary, given that noble Lords can submit their views during the consultation I have committed to and will be able to debate the Bill once it is before the House. I am of course happy to meet with my noble friend Lord Berkeley and other noble Lords at the time of the consultation launch to seek their views, as we have done during the course of the Bill before us, if that would help persuade him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, to all those who spoke in this relatively short debate, and to those who supported my Amendment 1. I am pleased to see that the Government Chief Whip is on the Front Bench, and I am conscious that many people have sat through days of Committee and we are about to head into recess, so I will not detain noble Lords for long.

As I said in Committee and earlier, I want to make the case for why this amendment is not against the spirit of the Bill. It does not stop it, and I want to ensure that everyone knows that these changes are not being done through ideology and that they are focused on the passengers. Effectively, it forces the department, Ministers, civil servants and everyone to deliver this mission and this mission alone. Otherwise, we will enter into what President Ronald Reagan called “trust me” government.

Without boring on for too long, and to repeat the point I made, Labour has used this language repeatedly, in opposition and in government, so I am still not sure why the amendment cannot be included, especially given that the Minister, who I respect greatly, warmed to the sentiment behind it and understands it. As I said, we risk entering into the world of having to trust the Government that that is the intention. Despite those words of reassurance, the Bill still needs something on the face of it—Ronseal, like I said. With that, I would like to test the opinion of the House.