Britain’s Railways

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord raises an interesting point about stations. Stations are a great asset, particularly in local communities, because sometimes they are not just railway stations. Certainly, I would like to see many more of them being developed into integrated transport hubs where we could have buses and active travel interventions as well, so that they connect much more into transport for the local community. Obviously, how station ownership and operation will pan out in the future will be subject to a fair amount of work. For example, some of them may end up being run by local government or local transport authorities, and we will be able to say more on that in the levelling-up White Paper.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Can my noble friend confirm that the key objectives of privatisation—which could have been called the “Young-Major plan for rail”, had modesty not intervened—will be retained? These objectives are: no monopoly in the train operating industry but new entrants encouraged; the capital costs of the passenger rolling stock and freight rolling stock borne by the private sector, not the public purse; and passenger service contracts being constructed to reward efficiency, quality and passenger growth. None of those characteristics is available under full nationalisation.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Bring back the Young-Major plan for rail greatness is what I say. I can absolutely confirm all those things to my noble friend. We are retaining the original objectives of privatisation to make sure that passenger services are awarded following a fair competition. We had to strip out some of the complexity of those competitions to allow train operators to bid on a simpler basis, and we think we have achieved that. We will open up new opportunities for private sector involvement where we can.

As I have said, the capital cost of passenger and freight rolling stock will be borne by the private sector. There will be a certain element of a guiding mind when it comes to a strategic intervention on the rolling stock, but this will not preclude train operating companies purchasing their own rolling stock. Obviously, we are replacing the franchises with this more commercially sustainable model of a passenger service contract, which will ensure that we get the right amount of innovation into the system and passengers benefit.