Railways Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in the course of preparing for this Committee, I have had a number of meetings with the Minister and his officials, and I thank them for making themselves available for those meetings. I say that now because I shall almost certainly forget to say it at more appropriate times later on, but if I do it is not because I do not mean quite seriously how grateful I am for the contribution and effort that they have made.

We are here on the first day of the Committee to create a Soviet-style railway in the United Kingdom and to go back—and we now know explicitly that it is the Government’s and the Prime Minister’s intention—to the warm and fuzzy 1970s. The 1970s are now the paradigm of where our nation should be. Those of us who remember the 1970s—there may be a number of us in the Room—do not have such fond memories of the standard of public services then compared with what we have today. We do not today have bodies unburied, we do not have refuse piled high in the streets as a result of government folly and we have railways that run broadly on time compared to the—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is not here to be annoyed by this—relative catastrophe of British Rail in its worst days as it trundled towards its final station. Now it is to be resuscitated. We are to get Great British Railways in place of British Rail and we are going to have it on a totally nationalised basis.

There are two separate things going on here. First, the Minister makes a case that the railways would operate more efficiently if, as he puts it, track and train were united. That argument can be debated. I do not wholly accept it, but it can be debated, but it is not necessary in order for track and train to be united that they should all be owned by the Government in a single company. We know that because the Williams review, which was warmly welcomed by the Minister when he was chairman of Network Rail and was supported by the Conservative Government at the time, gave an alternative way forward, so the decision to nationalise the whole thing is particularly spiteful. The only explanation for it—because it is not necessary for the purpose of achieving the Government’s stated objectives—is that it has been done to pay off the trades unions that made such generous contributions to Labour’s victory at the polls in 2024.

We know that privatisation has been a huge success on the railways and that passenger numbers increased enormously after privatisation. It would be astonishing if the Government nationalising the railways achieved anything like that increase in passenger numbers. New operators entered the market and competition stimulated improvements.

I have four amendments in this group, but one of them is consequential, so three that I intend to speak to. My Amendment 2 addresses a particularly vicious little clause in the Bill, which says, first of all, that the body designated as Great British Railways has to be owned wholly by the Crown. In other words, a future Minister would have to pass primary legislation to redesignate or designate a different body in the private sector to carry out Great British Railways’ activities. What is the need for that? It is simply to gratify the trades unions. A second part almost seems to impose a penalty of some sort on any Minister who makes even a suggestion that Great British Railways should be transferred to the private sector. My Amendment 2 deletes that part; it does not stop Great British Railways going ahead as a nationalised body but it allows a future Secretary of State without the need for primary legislation to redesignate a different body, not necessarily owned by the Crown, to carry out the role of Great British Railways.

Amendment 1 is addressed at sloppy drafting more than anything else. The Bill talks about a body corporate being designated as Great British Railways, whereas later, in the next clause, it is implicit that the body corporate should be a company constituted under the Companies Act. But the Bill does not actually say that the body corporate has to be constituted under the Companies Act; it only says that it has to be wholly owned by the Crown. Other bodies corporate could be designated, as long as they were wholly owned by the Crown. It is simply sloppy drafting not to say at this point that it is to be a body constituted under the Companies Act.

When I mentioned this to the Minister, he said, “Oh well, everybody knows it’s going to be a company constituted under the Companies Act”. Well, they do not, if they read the Act—it needs to be written into the Act by him that that is what the intention is. It should say quite explicitly that that is what he intends to do. We will come back to this when we discuss amendments later in Committee that relate to the board of this company. There are some from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I have added my name, about the board of this company and how this corporate structure works, because the Bill is very silent on that. This needs to be done.

Finally, Amendment 8 probes Great British Railways’ organisational structure. To this day we still have no idea at all—and maybe the Minister has no idea at all—how Great British Railways is going to be structured. Let me give a couple of options. It could be that it will be structured geographically, roughly mapping the existing structures, so that one division deals roughly with the south-western main line, one division deals with the east coast main line, and so forth. It could be structured like that, but you could have a totally different structure. There might be an argument for saying that we should have one division that deals with operating the railways, one that deals with managing the major stations, another division that deals with the minor stations and another again for retail. You could have an organisation that was completely functionally based rather than geographically based. These are important questions, which I think Parliament should have a chance to have a say on, yet not only is the Bill silent about them but the Government are silent as well. The effect of Amendment 8 is to require the Government to publish their organisational structure before the Bill can come into effect.

That is enough for the moment—I understand that other noble Lords have things to say. I will just say in advance—and I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me for pre-empting her—that I have taken note of the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. They are not wholly aligned with my view of the role of the private sector and she will not therefore, I think, be surprised if I find myself not able to support them. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join this first group in Committee. I am sitting to the left of the Liberal Democrats because that is where I now find myself; I always want to be sitting behind my noble friend on the Front Bench in Committee to back him up, but I cannot do that because there is no back row in this Room, so I cannot be self-effacing in the back row. Anyway, I look forward to Committee. I do not have the experience of railways that the Minister and my noble friend speaking for the Official Opposition do—I do not pretend to that intimate knowledge of the railways—but I hope to bring something of my interest in how competition should be applied in the delivery of public services to some of the issues that we will be debating.

I turn to this group. There are a number of amendments in my name which are just about trying to find out, as I was going through the Bill, whether it works in the way described or precisely what it means. Rather in line with what my noble friend was just saying, we need to be sure that we understand that the Bill is functionally correct in the way that it works. I have just two amendments in this group.

Amendment 3 relates to the question of what must be wholly owned. As my noble friend said, Clause 1 is constructed around the proposition that Great British Railways not only must be wholly owned by the Crown but cannot be anything else. That relates to GBR itself. The purpose of Amendment 3 is to test whether that also applies to GBR companies. We do not encounter GBR companies in Clause 1, but we do subsequently as a means by which GBR will undertake its activities. This is not surprising. As my noble friend said, we do not know how GBR will be corporately structured but, by way of example, we know how Network Rail is structured. It has a significant number of wholly owned subsidiaries and quite a number of joint venture subsidiaries, including through Platform4.

For example—and here I declare my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and others—Platform4 is a Network Rail subsidiary company that has just recently, happily, entered into an agreement with partners to develop at Cambridge North station as part of the Government’s proposal to develop around stations, with 450 homes around the station. It is a joint venture company; it is not wholly owned by Network Rail. So my starting proposition is that this prohibition on companies not being wholly owned must apply to GBR itself but cannot apply to GBR companies. I want to be sure that that is the case. If it is not absolutely clear in the statute then it ought to be, which would be the purpose of my amendment.

That differentiates the amendment from those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to which we will no doubt turn in a minute, who wants precisely that to be the case. For the reasons I have just explained about the many joint ventures for things such as housing developments and commercial developments around stations through companies such as Platform4, if I may respectfully say so before she has put her case, I do not agree with the noble Baroness that all GBR companies should be—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Who does?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Recalling Questions earlier, just because we do not agree with the noble Baroness, that does not mean she cannot sometimes be right.

The other amendment in my name is Amendment 4, which relates to shadow directors. Clause 2 tells us that Ministers are not to be construed as shadow directors under the Companies Act when they make decisions. I think it is the case that, when officials act on behalf of Ministers, exactly the same provisions would apply to them. We need to be absolutely sure that this is the case, and that it applies to the officials of Scottish and Welsh Ministers as well as to those of the Secretary of State. I am looking for a bit of reassurance on that.

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Given what I said on all these amendments, I hope that noble Lords will find their way to withdraw them.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before we conclude, and relevant to the point that my noble friend Lord Harper was making, I am sure that the Minister will want to look at the whole structure of Platform4 and its relationship to Great British Railways, but the Mayfield Partnership, which is involved in the regeneration around Manchester Piccadilly, has one-third Network Rail or Platform4 participation in that joint venture. So, at the moment, it is not just 50:50; it can be below 50%. It would be of interest, not least to noble Lords considering the future structure of GBR, to understand precisely how some of these large-scale and really important property development issues are to be managed by GBR. The directing mind for the railways is one thing, but the directing mind for development purposes is not necessarily the same thing.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. My experience of Network Rail’s property and Platform 4 is offset by increasing age and failure to remember the details. I will not only write to noble Lords about the 50:50 aspect, but about Mayfield, which I remember vaguely is of a different percentage, partially because much of the land is owned by somebody else rather than the railway. I will write on both those points, because I think they are germane. I appreciate the point that people need to understand how this will work in practice, particularly with those areas of activity of GBR that are not the provision of passenger railway services or the basic railway.

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These amendments were tabled in the Commons and debated in Committee there, but the issue was not addressed directly in the Minister’s reply. Members of the RMT’s parliamentary group wrote asking for a meeting on this and related matters, and that meeting has not taken place. The question I ask my noble friend Minister is a straightforward one: are the Government able to end the uncertainty facing rail workers and to confirm that it remains their intention, as set out in Labour’s plan for rail, that Great British Railways will be a new single employer? If that confirmation cannot be given today, will the Minister agree to meet to discuss the matter before Report?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will principally refer to my Amendment 19 in this group. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, that I am not really in a position to comment on the points he makes, but I think the discussion we had previously about the corporate and organisational structure of Great British Railways gives force to his points about how the employment of the railways will be structured in future, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.

I want to make a quick point on the amendment from my noble friend Lord Moylan about creating a purpose clause for the Bill. Generally speaking, I am in favour of purpose clauses where we are not principally legislating in order to change existing legislation where the purposes are already set out. This Bill will effectively get rid of the purpose set out at the front of the Railways Act 1993 and therefore I think it is a pity that there is no purpose clause at the front of this legislation to tell us what we are trying to achieve. In my view, that is distinct, as I think my noble friend was saying, from simply a description of what Great British Railways is going to do and what it should think about.

Paragraph 13 of the Explanatory Notes sets out the view that the purpose can be defined simply by what the functions of Great British Railways are and what it must have regard to under the general duties. But functions and duties are not in themselves sufficient to constitute purpose. For my money, I would have been in favour of drafting a purpose clause up front as Clause 1 that would have told us what we are trying to achieve. I think that makes for rather good drafting these days.

I will get down into the nitty-gritty now with Amendment 19 in my name. It relates to Clause 3 where, just as the functions have been set out for Great British Railways, there is an interesting moment where the functions are replaced by a little subsection that tells us what the “statutory functions” are to be. These are all the functions that we have just been told about and the ones that the Secretary of State might give Great British Railways at any time in the future, but not anything relating to service facilities or the supply of services under the 2016 regulations. That sent me off to look at the 2016 regulations to see what the service facilities and the supply of services are. I will minimise it for the purposes of this debate; essentially, on the one hand it is provision of access to freight and international traffic by an infrastructure manager under the access rights, and then supply of service facilities is essentially service providers giving, again, freight, other railway undertakings and international access to services—things from stations, depots and so on.

Interestingly, as far as I can see, those bits relating to access to the infrastructure and the provision of services in the 2016 regulations are intended to be substantially replaced by the access policies set out in Clause 59. But Regulations 5 and 6 and Schedule 2, I think, of the 2016 regulations are not to be repealed. The interesting thing is that Great British Railways will be expressly taken out of the definition of an infrastructure manager, so it will not have the requirements to provide access to infrastructure or to provide services implied by Regulations 5 and 6, even though they remain in place.

In a sense, this is a probing issue. Who will take the responsibility for the provision of infrastructure to freight and international if it is not Great British Railways? With supply of services, for things such as stations and depots, if it is not Great British Railways which has a responsibility for providing those services and the minimum access package specified in Regulation 6 of the 2016 regulations, whose responsibility is it? It is not set out in this Bill. All we know from this Bill, as a result of Clause 70, is that it is not Great British Railways. Then who is it? Who will do those things?

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome these probing amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response to some very important general issues. It is right that the staff in all the operating companies that will be affected by this should have an early idea from the Government about what is planned for their future employment.

I am one of those who welcome the idea that we want a well-paid profession serving on the railways, but for the sake of taxpayers, who are putting in substantial grant in aid and capital money, and of fare-paying passengers, who often have to pay very high fares, we need a system for negotiation between staff and Great British Railways which is more likely to achieve the increase in productivity that could justify the higher pay for staff without imposing an ever-higher charge on the taxpayer and fare-paying passengers. This is more than a detail that can be left open; we need to know who the employer will be, what the status of the current contracts is and how they will be put into transition to new contracts for the staff when their employment changes.

Is there anything the Government can tell us about how they might—they hope—have better relations with the unions in future so that we can look forward to a better experience in getting that balance of better pay for better delivery, smarter working, adopting work practices and being willing to operate new capital investment in a way that delivers higher productivity and higher quality of service?

I also welcome my noble friend Lord Moylan’s draft of what the purposes should and could be, which may not entirely match all the Government’s aims. It would be interesting to hear from the Government which of his suggestions are intended or implied in the current legislation, so that we can have some early indication of what the mission statement of the new railway might be.

I think taxpayers and railway users are expecting more services, not fewer. That has not been the early experience of the last two years. They are expecting better punctuality and timeliness, which would also be welcome. What the new railway will definitely require is more feel for where more passenger movements are required or possible. As in the early days of privatisation, surely the early days of full nationalisation might want to achieve a trend of rising passenger numbers, which privatisation achieved very well, and the ability of companies to develop timetables and services more suited to modern travel needs and therefore fuel the continuing progress of providing more growth in passengers and revenue.

If a new railway management—the controlling mind of GBR—knows how to do that, it will make everything a lot easier if the background of the completion of these arrangements is rising passenger use, rising revenues, greater flexibility over timetables and thinking about growth rather than cost cutting and the elimination of less profitable routes. That can easily get you into a spiral of downturn, as with the nationalised railway experience for most of its time post war, until privatisation reversed those difficult trends.

I hope that the Minister will not rule out one of the modest successes of recent years, which is the ability to have a competitive challenge to the monopolist. There are times when people outside will see ways of harnessing people, talent and capital to provide additional and better service using the existing track, and for that they will clearly need fair terms for access, and that will provide an innovative stimulus to the nationalised monopoly. However, I fear that the Government will not want to do that, and so I think they will find it that much more difficult to innovate and improve the timetables without that stimulus or spur from others generating such ideas and providing such a challenge and opportunity for the growth of the railway.

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Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would amend the definition of GBR’s functions in relation to service facilities. The Bill exempts the provision of service facilities for use by other train operators from GBR’s new access regime. These facilities will be things such as maintenance depots, freight terminals and sidings. They are provided in a wider market in which other suppliers may also participate. For that reason, access to these service facilities will continue to be governed by the existing ORR access regime rather than GBR’s new one so that GBR and other providers operate on a level playing field and third parties can gain fair access to these facilities. Consistent with that principle, Clause 3 makes it clear that the provision of these service facilities is not a statutory function of GBR. The Bill therefore already provides the parity of treatment that I believe this amendment is trying to achieve. However, I would be happy to meet the noble Lord if that would be helpful on this subject.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

That just begs the question of why in Clause 70—perhaps we can discuss it before we arrive at that point—Great British Railways has been taken out of the definition of being an infrastructure manager for the purposes of access rights under the 2000 regulations.

While I have the Committee’s attention for a moment, my noble friend was asking what functions Great British Railways can undertake. The clause makes it clear that the statutory functions are distinct from those things that Great British Railways can do as a company. Some of the things that we are discussing, such as property development, are things that it is doing as a company. However, we have to bear in mind, and the Minister will tell me if I am wrong about this, that we go on to hear about the Secretary of State giving directions and guidance to Great British Railways. That is in relation to its statutory functions, so, by definition, it will not extend to the actions that GBR undertakes as a company. We need to be aware that there is that territory called being a company, which is outside the scope of the Secretary of State’s directions and guidance.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

It is not very well drafted at all, is it?

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[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I did not add my name, but there is a limit to the number of names you can add. Many of us feel very supportive of the recommendations from my noble friend Lady Leaman in those two amendments.

I simply want to give some context to the reasons for the amendments such as those from the noble Lord, Lord Young, to be considered for the Bill, or something based on them being considered, to secure a genuinely fair and free market in the retail sales of train tickets. It is worth remembering how much difference the private operators made to the price you had to pay for many kinds of journey. We have been discussing it in theoretical terms, but there was a time when, if you wanted to travel from Edinburgh to Penzance on the cross-country train which made that journey, the cost was enormous. What changed it? It was split ticket operators demonstrating that they could get four or five different tickets—including, when I did it on one occasion, a West Yorkshire rover ticket that carried me one small piece of the journey—and that this accumulation of a handful of tickets would give you a price less than half the cost that you would have been quoted originally for that journey.

Not only did that cheapen tickets for a lot of people making difficult journeys, but it also changed the attitude of many of the operating companies. Certainly when I go to the station to buy a ticket, I am now always asked whether I want a cheaper ticket by getting the next train or the one before it. There is an alertness to the customer’s need to know what the options are for a reasonably priced ticket, which has been brought into the system by the private operators. I do not advocate these amendments because competition is a good Liberal value, but because experience has proved that to be the case.

All this has to exist in a world in which very rapid change will take place. At the moment, operators issue their own tickets. The result is that there is an invisible interaction between the person selling the ticket, the retailer, and the revenue protection officer on the train whose decision it is whether that ticket will be valid on that train. If you have missed one and are getting the next one, it may well not be; if you have chosen to change your journey pattern, it may well not be. The Minister may fondly believe—we have talked about this in a very helpful discussion—that all this will fall away, because when GBR is the only one providing the trains, there will not be these difficulties. I am not convinced of that; I think that old habits will die hard. If we are not very careful, we will still have a situation where the retailer gives you the impression that he is retailing a piece of paper or an email that will enable you to travel on one of several trains, when you are actually buying something limited by the policies and practice of the operator. It may be one operator in principle, but there will still be different regions under different regional management, so we need to have methods of ensuring that. I hope to return to that second point later in Committee, but we should understand the context and value of what we are discussing.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have my name on these amendments, but I thoroughly agree with pretty much everything that has been said. I especially support what my noble friend Lady Harding said in introducing this group and am entirely in agreement with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. I do not want to get into the question of appeals, because we will come on to how the appeal process should be structured later.

Amendment 47 in the name of my noble friend about the approved document is particularly important. I assume that the code of practice that we are promised, which the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, was talking about, is the equivalent of the approved document or some part of it. At the moment, we have this ticketing and settlement agreement. We have to know how this is going to work in future. If we do not, we should expect—indeed, we should call for—the Competition and Markets Authority to step in. As things stand, the relevant aspects of the ticketing and settlement agreement constitute part of a block exemption against a Chapter 1 prohibition under the Competition Act. It is, on the face of it, potentially an anti-competitive agreement, but the block exemption exists. The question is whether the agreement satisfies the requirements of the block exemption. We have to look at the agreement to know whether that is the case, which is why Amendment 47 is right. We have to ask the Competition and Markets Authority whether the code of practice or the approved document under the Bill satisfies the requirements of the block exemption.

The fact is that GBR will be in a dominant position. Under the Competition Act, in addition to the prohibition on anti-competitive agreements there is a prohibition on abuse of a dominant position. Much of this debate is saying that, given that we know that GBR will be in a dominant position, we should be actively looking for the Office of Rail and Road, by way of market investigations in this area if necessary, or the Competition and Markets Authority to step in, as the current jurisdiction enables it to do, to counter any abuse. We know from Clause 2(1) that Great British Railways has no Crown immunity. Under Section 73 of the Competition Act, there is a Crown immunity from the constraints, remedies and directions of the Competition and Markets Authority, so GBR does not want to be in a position where the Competition and Markets Authority comes after it to prevent its abuse of a dominant position. For all those reasons, the Government would be well advised to put into the legislation measures that will prevent GBR being tempted to abuse its dominant position and to ensure that the approved document will satisfy the CMA’s requirements for a block exemption.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe for her excellent opening of this group, the comprehensive way in which she did it and—I think this is a powerful point—her real experience of a similar process and what actually happens in practice. One of the values of this House is having not just theoretical debates but Members who have experience of how these things work in practice. It is no good just legislating for what we think might happen; it is about what will happen. That was particularly valuable.

In this area, unlike some of the areas in the Bill, there is broad consistency among everybody who has spoken so far. At Second Reading, in other fora and in writing, the Minister set out that the Government want a competitive retail landscape and recognise the benefits of that. So what we are debating here is not the principle but how best to achieve that shared goal in practice. I will try to add to this debate.

Practically, the suggestion in my noble friend Lord Holmes’s Amendment 182 of a functional separation —which the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, also raised—is the cleanest and most sensible solution. That means that GBR is not in a position where it is tempted to abuse a dominant market position. It has a separate retailing arm, the rules can operate in a transparent way, you avoid a lot of trouble and you do not have to set up a complicated mechanism to deal with that abuse. I understand that the Government have set their face against that, but I reinforce that that would be the best solution and would solve a lot of these problems.

If the Government do not want to do that, for whatever reason, we absolutely need to make sure, first, that there is transparency. If all this is hidden away, it is very difficult for whatever mechanisms are put in place, whether it is the CMA, the ORR or whatever legal processes the independent retailers have to do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, they are not huge companies with bottomless pits of money to be able to do this. If you do not have transparency, people do not know what is going on.

I will make a slightly different argument, bringing in our friends from the Treasury, than the one my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham made. This is one where the Treasury should be on our side. One of the important things that the Treasury wants to achieve is to reduce the subsidy paid to the rail network because, post Covid, the rail network does not send money to the Treasury; it sucks money away from the Treasury. The only way that will change on the operating side is if there is innovation and more passengers use the rail network. The ticketing retailers are one of the ways, in the innovative way they retail tickets. Importantly, if leisure travel is to be a growth area, the partnerships that they strike with providers of leisure opportunities can then be combined with travel to produce innovative packages. If you are going to do all that, you need that thriving, competitive retailing operation, so the Treasury should want that to be successful.

The other thing the Treasury should want is that the operating cost of GBR’s own ticketing operation should be as low as possible. On the cost of running that operation, I challenge what my noble friend Lord Young said. We know what the third-party retailers get because we know what the percentage commission is. If GBR’s retailing operation is not able to run its services for less money than that, it should not be in business, frankly, because it is adding no value at all and should not be running it. My hunch is it that it will not be able to, which is why, when I was Secretary of State, I said it should not really get involved in this business at all because there were lots of competing providers that were much better at it and, frankly, it should just get those to do it.

However, for reasons I do not quite understand, Ministers want GBR to be involved in this process. So, it is critical that the accounting—I declare my interest here as a chartered accountant—should be absolutely transparent so that we can see what it costs. From the Treasury’s point of view, as I said, it wants to be sure that no subsidy is going into the ticketing operation from the rest of the thing, given that there are competitive operators that can deliver this, I suspect, more cost effectively. That is an argument for the Treasury supporting some of these amendments.

On the subsidy point, I believe there is a question that is not resolved, which the independent retailers are concerned about. I understand that, in written correspondence with the Independent Rail Retailers, the department has asserted that GBR’s online retailer will not be subject to the Subsidy Control Act 2022, arguing instead that it will be governed solely by the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023. That approach is inconsistent with the legal framework and assurances given by Ministers during the passage of the Bill so far that GBR will remain subject to public law, competition and subsidy control requirements.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 4 deals with relations with the devolved authorities in Scotland and Wales. I have a number of amendments here—five, in fact. They all appear in a sense to be relatively minor but they go to the heart of the devolution settlement. They raise the question of whether the Bill is in line with the new Prime Minister’s policy—I know he has not been elected to anything but he is the new Prime Minister—of making devolution a reality. I will run through the amendments fairly straightforwardly and leave it to others to debate them and the Minister to respond.

One of the things that can be done is that any combined authority or devolved authority has a right to request. I always find this slightly offensive, because we are a free country—everyone has a right to request something from the Minister—but apparently, this valued “right to request” is going to be given. You can go along and ask GBR if it will run a service local to you, which might even be branded your way, to which you might contribute some of the costs. That is the general idea. I can understand that in relation to English combined authorities but not the devolved Administrations.

For example, I do not understand at all why Scotland should be confined by statute to running that service using Great British Railways. If the path is available and the service can be run, why should Scotland not make its own choice about who the operator of that service should be? As I understand it, that would not be possible under the Bill; it would have to be a GBR service. I think that is a bit insulting to Scottish devolution. The same applies to Wales. My Amendment 21 would correct that and allow them to exercise railway functions through a body corporate other than Great British Railways.

Amendment 145 goes hand in hand with Amendment 146, because they relate to Scotland and Wales. They relate to the fact that, under the Bill, there will have to be a memorandum of understanding between Great British Railways and the Scottish and Welsh Governments. There is a great deal of reliance on memoranda of understanding in the Bill, but we never see them and have no entitlement to do so. I am not saying that they will not be published, but I am not sure that the Government are under an obligation to publish them. They are so much a part of this Bill, but their substance is being concealed from us in Parliament and wrapped up in documents that are ancillary to the main agreement. My Amendments 145 and 146 would require those memoranda to be laid before Parliament before they could come into effect.

Finally, I have the paired Amendments 294 and 295. Again, one relates to Scotland and one to Wales. Amendment 294 relates to Clause 82. There is something fantastically cheeky in Clause 82, which reads:

“Great British Railways must consult the Scottish Ministers before making a decision within subsection (2)”—


which would be a decision about cross-border services and additions to a part of the railway network operated by Great British Railways that is situated in Scotland—

“if it appears to Great British Railways that the decision will significantly affect the interests of Scotland’s economy or of persons living in, working in or visiting”

the area. I come back to a similar question I asked in the last group: what economic capacity would Great British Railways be employing to make disinterested decisions about whether something would have a significant effect on the interests of Scotland’s economy? Secondly, is it not more likely that the Scottish Government would be the appropriate body to make a decision about whether something will have a significant effect on the interests of the Scottish economy? My amendment would put that right by reversing it. Amendment 295 would do something similar for Wales.

There is a certain arrogance in the Bill, certainly with regard to local government in England, but the arrogance towards the Scottish and Welsh Governments is beyond the pale, given what the Prime Minister has been saying and what those Governments would accept. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will say that the matters to which I have drawn attention are slips in the drafting that he will be happy to correct, either through my amendments or amendments that he will draft and submit to us on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to talk to my Amendment 22 in this group. Before I do that, I might just say so to my noble friend that I see the point he is driving at with Amendment 21, but I think it is a little more complicated. It seems to me that this is about the circumstances that apply where the Scottish or Welsh Ministers wish to use Great British Railways or a company jointly owned by themselves and Great British Railways. In effect, they are not subsidiaries of Great British Railways: we can already see in the Bill this distinction between GBR companies and a company that is jointly owned by Scottish and Welsh Ministers and GBR.

They can use that to provide services but, as far as I can see, they are not prevented from doing the following. If you look at subsequent clauses, we have seen the whole process of designation of passenger services, which those of us who did the public ownership Bill will remember. They have to designate passenger services with a public sector company, but the definition of a public sector company in a later clause is not the same. It could be a company wholly owned by Scottish Ministers or by Welsh Ministers; they are not required to use Great British Railways. They could even do the same thing that the Secretary of State can, which is exempt services from designation, and then do the same as the Secretary of State does with TfL but in Glasgow, Cardiff and so on. So I think it is a little more complicated.

In particular, I think putting “other body corporate” in here is not necessary. More to the point, if I may say so to my noble friend, is to re-enter the question of the scope of who might provide designated services, which I know he will do with further amendments at a later stage.

Amendment 22, on my part, is just to see whether there is really a problem. At the point at which Scottish and Welsh Ministers look to change arrangements that they have made with Great British Railways to provide some services, they are required to consult with the Secretary of State and Great British Railways. However, those arrangements will necessarily lead to issues that need to be governed by the regulatory functions of the Office of Rail and Road and relate to the licensing of those operators through the ORR. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to require that Scottish and Welsh Ministers, at the point of making or changing those arrangements, should also consult the Office of Rail and Road in order to ensure that there is not a difficulty associated with what they are asking GBR to do on their behalf. The purpose of Amendment 22 is to put in that consultation with the ORR.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, these are interesting amendments. I have had several representations from the rail sector in Wales and Scotland, and they are clearly quite concerned.

The first question I probably need answering is on who will be owning and operating the infrastructure in Wales and Scotland. At the moment, in Scotland, it is done by Transport Scotland, and in Wales, I cannot remember but think it is different. Of course, both those organisations may, and do, operate passenger train services. Given the scope of the Bill, which we have been discussing at length today, will Transport Scotland and the Welsh Assembly be able to let their own contracts with GBR or an independent operator to run trains? Who will be responsible for managing the infrastructure if it goes wrong or needs maintenance, and for the issue in the amendment, which is about co-ordinating with the rest of the UK? To me, it is not clear at the moment, and I would be grateful if my noble friend could clarify. I am probably being stupid, but there we are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Can I just check that the rail strategy that the Secretary of State will produce will be a strategy for Great Britain, and that the memorandum of understanding will be about how that interacts? If the Secretary of State’s rail strategy is for England only, that does not make sense. What the Minister just said implies that the Secretary of State will produce a rail strategy for Great Britain, in which case there would not be any friction from ensuring that those documents were published together.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before the Minister responds to that point, I add that I am slightly confused because Clause 15, “Rail strategy”, says that the Secretary of State “may not” include provision relating to the functions of the Scottish Ministers, so it may be a rail strategy for Great Britain, but it cannot deal with the functions of the Scottish Ministers.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I say in response to noble Lords that the long-term rail strategy is for the whole railway. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are being consulted, but Scotland will also have a strategy covering its own functions because that is the meaning of devolution. I hope that is clear.