Railways Bill (Second sitting)

Olly Glover Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Olly Glover.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

Q Mr McDonald, it is an interesting that the extent of rail devolution in Wales and Scotland is at rather different levels; perhaps I can put it that way. The Welsh Government have long called for greater devolution of rail policy. Does the Bill, and all that comes with it, give you hope for progressing that ambition?

Peter McDonald: It certainly does not take us further away, if I can put it that way. In technical terms, I would say that the Bill is neutral for the devolution settlement. It does not adjust the fundamental constitutional arrangement in Wales, just as it does not change the fundamental constitutional arrangement of Scotland.

I think the Bill makes the current settlement more operable and better; I will not comment on the Scottish case—I will leave that for Bill. Certainly, the Welsh Government support track-train integration. I appreciate that I came at your question from a negative direction, but the Bill definitely advances us in terms of making the settlement more operable and efficient.

[Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Q Thank you both for coming in. This question is for both of you. Clause 80 of the Bill puts a duty on GBR to consult Scottish and Welsh Ministers if it appears that a decision that it makes would “significantly affect the interests” of the Scottish or Welsh economy, or persons living in, working in, or visiting Scotland or Wales. Is “significantly affect” the right test? Is it a strong enough term to ensure consultation, or is there a risk that it will allow GBR and different personnel to make such a determination based on their own judgment?

Peter McDonald: It is very reasonable for there to be a conditioning adjective in the clause, certainly for the purposes of primary legislation. In practice, hundreds of operational decisions will be happening every day that—certainly in the case of Wales and England—affect the border. I certainly would not want each of them to have to go through a duty to consult.

The Welsh Government view is that “significantly affect” is reasonable. It could be further codified and defined in a memorandum of understanding, which provides a more flexible, non-legislative route to get into when consultation matters and when this can be done at working level more informally, without legislative backing.

Bill Reeve: We would agree. I might have a professional interest in the signalling of the Newquay branch in Cornwall, but I am not sure I need to be consulted on it. We are a small team in proportion to the size of the network that we are responsible for: we would be overwhelmed if we had to be consulted about everything on a precautionary basis. As Peter said, the working of the MOU will be important and people’s behaviours will always matter. But the drafting is fine from our perspective.

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[Keir Mather]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Olly Glover]

Q You have made some really good points about the complexity of rail and the criticality of the relationship between renewals, electrification, signalling and rolling stock, and all the interfaces and dependencies between them. At risk of putting words in your mouth—hopefully I am reflecting back what you said—would you agree that some of those interfaces and the decisions around them have been, historically, a bit suboptimal? In that context, do you think there is enough in the Bill that recognises that and gets us to a better future? In particular, should the Bill explicitly state that there is a need for a rolling stock strategy? I know the Department for Transport says that it is making one, but it is not specifically in there. Do you have any thoughts about how the Bill deals with all those issues?

Darren Caplan: I think the question was about whether it is suboptimal at the moment. Yes, it is. We have a control period that lasts for five years and looks at operations, maintenance and renewal. That does not include enhancements. That was taken out in 2018, 2019, so enhancements have been reduced. It did not include major projects; we are very supportive of the announcements on East West Rail and Northern Powerhouse Rail, but that is not part of the overall plan. There is no rolling stock pipeline or strategy—we have called for that, but we are still waiting to hear back. There is nothing about decarbonising the network, or having an electrified network—when you have that, it is stop-start and boom-or-bust.

This is an opportunity to get it together. Back in 2024, we called for a long-term strategy for rail, and we are positive that it is in the GBR plans, so we support the long-term strategy and reviews. I totally agree with these guys that we need to bring more than just ORR work into that pipeline and have a 30-year purview. However, there is quite a lot of work to do on it, and the Bill does not quite capture that yet, but it is a start.

Rob Morris: From my perspective, I totally agree that it is currently sub-optimal. Decisions have been made in the past where things have been switched on and then switched off—electrification is a good example. With GBR, we now have a great opportunity to look at the whole system as a fully integrated system, so that we can manage the risks and the performance all together. That suggests that there will now be an opportunity for greater clarity of thinking, reduction in costs and much more efficient execution of the whole system.

The important thing is that we have a review of the long-term strategy in regular periods to make it transparent—perhaps every five years, so that the supply chain can set itself up for the next five years. What has happened in the past is that, when there has been a change of approach, it has not been communicated and it has created a vacuum. When there is a vacuum, there is uncertainty and we will not invest in those sorts of things. Then, when we restart things such as an electrification programme, it costs significantly more than if you had a steady-state approach to it.

Malcolm Brown: I agree that it has been sub-optimal. I think the clue is in the title; it is a rail system, and therefore a system has a number of components that we require to work as one. For example, I will invest £1 billion in new trains that we have made in Derby, and then those trains are getting maintained. These are state-of-the-art trains—they are absolutely brand new—but they are being maintained in sheds that were built in the Victorian era. That is not how I would like to look after my assets. I would like a holistic, full-system approach that takes these things into account. It cannot be perfect, but there is a lot more that we can do. The one word of caution I would give is this: be careful we don’t try to boil the ocean. We cannot have answers to everything, and nor should we expect the long-term rail strategy to have them.

Lastly, it is a long-term rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, and if it comes through, that is a major step forward. There is no point in devising electric trains with pantographs and batteries if we do not have the infrastructure to support that, either in maintenance or passenger service. Those two combined are utterly critical, and it is certainly in the title.

Rob Morris: May I add one comment to what Malcolm said? That old-system thinking with GBR opens up opportunities for the supply chain—ROSCOs and OEMs like ourselves. We can provide the optimum infrastructural rolling stock solution that also does the best in net zero outcomes for carbon, such as the battery bi-mode trains and discontinuous electrification of new technology that manufacturers like ourselves provide.

[Baggy Shanker]

Q I suppose the crux of this is: do you guys, with your organisations and trade bodies, believe that the creation of GBR will make things better going forward? I am thinking of things like giving stability to what UK rail looks like; being able to invest in infrastructure and rolling stock; collaboration between industry and organisations such as GBRX for innovation and bringing in best practice; and having an investment pipeline to give certainty to what you guys are trying to do to drive your businesses forward—all while making sure UK Rail plc, call it what you like, is in a better position than it is now.

Malcolm Brown: To cut to the chase, yes. Our hope has to be that with GBR—we have talked in this room about the missing building blocks, but our hope is that they all align—we will end up in a better place than we have been, certainly for the past six or seven years.

You referenced GBRX. It is a limb of GBR that does all the very high-tech and signalling aspects. That seems to be working very well. We work closely with it, and we are investing in new technology—for example, on the east coast main line. We have been installing that on trains. It is very much future forward—we are looking into the future. We know that that will not be an immediate change, but we can see in the future that this is—to go back to this point—the direction of travel. It is not a no-regrets bid, but it is something that we have a degree of confidence in.

Rob Morris: To add to that, yes, again the funding ambition and the need that it generates is the fuel for innovation. The one thing I would say, though, is that I am a little concerned about the Bill’s requirement for GBR to do R&D. R&D is a good thing, and we would expect it, but the thing that GBR should not do, perhaps, is to crowd out the R&D that suppliers like ourselves and many others do, both locally here in the UK and globally, because we will potentially end up reinventing the wheel. While we as global suppliers, and our competitors, have wheels to put out all around the world—the wheels are an analogy, of course—they all have functional spokes, and what we do not want to do is to reinvent the shape of that wheel for the UK. That would be abortive, it would cost, it would take time and it would be the taxpayer who pays for it. The provision in the Bill should be about harmonising with the supply chain on what is done within R&D for the benefit of the passenger, the taxpayer and the freight user.

Darren Caplan: We are very concerned. We think that GBR is heading in the right direction, but Members might not be aware of how difficult it is in the supply chain supply sector at the moment. Through Savanta, we conducted a poll at the end of last year, between October and December, of rail business leaders: 64% of them said that the market is going to contract this year, which is up from 48% last year, and last year had been our record low; 62% are freezing or reducing headcount at the moment, with 34% actively laying off staff; and 85% expect a hiatus this year, which is partly because of the time it has taken for GBR to be set up, which is often cited as a reason why there is lack of confidence in the market at the moment. That is in contrast to the international situation: UNIFE, the European trade association, does a global market study, which shows that around the world, rail has grown between 3% and 6% every year.

I know lots of products are out there and things feel positive, but actually our members in the supply sector are feeling that they are in a very difficult place at the moment. We need certainty, and any measures that can help with that. We have already mentioned schedule 2, which does not help at all—it has to be changed, because it makes things less certain—but clause 72 also has potential to deter private investment. That is the regulation to make changes to non-GBR infrastructure facilities and services. It gives the Government the powers to make future changes to legislation by regulation outside a parliamentary vote—so-called Henry VIII powers. That weakens the power of MPs. It will mean that the Government can rewrite the rules about non-GBR networks and how those integrate with the GBR network, including setting conditions of access and charges.

That is for any network, station or track not operated by GBR, which could be High Speed 1, freight terminals, depots—we heard from freight earlier—ports and airports, telecoms and energy assets. They all integrate with the GBR network, and there is a lack of certainty about how they will integrate in the future, which will deter private and third-party investment. One global logistics company would strongly like to see such sites excluded because of the effect that it will have on investing in those assets. If you get rid of schedule 2 and amend clause 72, you can help to create a better situation when it comes to investment.

I have a prop here, which is a chart showing the current investment for renewals in the UK over the past 30 years—you can see that it goes up and down. The situation that we are talking about with GBR makes it less certain. I have another chart here that shows electrification—

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[Keir Mather]

Thank you. That is a really important point, which I am sure we will come back to, but I am conscious that other Members have questions, so I will sneak in at the end if I can.

[Olly Glover]

Q Mayors, you have made some really good points about the need for clearer accountability and for more responsiveness and understanding of what is going on in your areas. Mayor Burnham, I think your point about Everton is important, in that where there are strong mayoral areas quite close to each other, it is also important to have a regional cross-border overview. Does GBR do enough to strike the balance between strategic mayoral authorities’ having control in their areas and making sure that that is regionally joined up, maybe through subnational transport bodies? Do you think it does enough to provide that regional overview?

Jason Prince: I think the Bill needs strengthening in the relationship between MSAs; I will put that on record. We are working very positively with officials to see how we can strengthen the Bill to ensure that it reflects that. We are on a journey of devolution where local government reform is making sure that mayors will be the conduit, broadly, across the UK. The Bill does set a framework for how that engagement will take place.

From a technical point of view, I think what would be beneficial, which is not necessarily something you will cover in line-by-line scrutiny but which needs to be looked at in the guidance issued, is to look at how will this work in practice—your specific question—when you look at how railway under a national structure will work between different areas. When you look at areas like the West Midlands, for example, and the West Midlands Rail Executive, their geography is bigger than an MSA. At the minute the Bill does not acknowledge things like that, so I think there is something that needs to be looked at. Guidance accompanying what is in the legislation would probably give some clarity, and there is an opportunity to bring that through that process.

[Olly Glover]

Q Do others have any thoughts?

Andy Burnham: This is a really important point. Giving city regions the ability, either individually or together, to manage events better with the railways, and a role over that, is really important. The Everton stadium example is probably most relevant with rugby league, where England played Australia. There was just an utter meltdown of the TransPennine timetable, and chaos at stations. That affects the country’s reputation when it is a major event.

We have the Euros coming in 2028. Manchester and Liverpool will be hosting games. You just want to have a grip on the system. At the moment, we do not feel that we have that with rail, but we do with trams and buses. We have a control room for Transport for Greater Manchester. We manage these things really closely. Oasis played in the summer—you may have noticed that—and we handled major numbers coming through the city on five consecutive nights really well. Obviously, there were some issues, but really well.

The railway does not quite live in that world with us, and that is an issue. It is reputational for the country. The railway has been living in its own world a bit too much. That has got to change. I realise some of that is culture change rather than the structures that we lay out in the Bill, but the railway does have to come through this re-emerging as a public service again—people putting a bit more into the railway than they are required to, because they care, and we all care about the reputation of our places and our country.

It feels to me like that has been lost, as I look at where the railway has got to in recent times. We need to use this Bill to get it back. It is not a trivial point to say that the bee on the side of trains creates a sense of civic pride again. This is about us and the places where we live. It is a softer point perhaps, but it should not be missed.

Tracy Brabin: On events, we have seen a 10% uplift in passenger numbers on rail. There is still a feeling post covid that rail passengers are in decline, because of the change in the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday and so on. Actually, we are seeing an uplift in passenger numbers. Particularly Sundays are rammed.

I can give one example of the lack of connectivity. I was a participant in the Abbey Dash in Leeds. There were thousands of people coming into Leeds, then there was a signal failure and the whole of Leeds station closed down. On Trainline on your phone, the app was suggesting the trains were all running. I enquired and they said, “Well, that is a private company. They are not connected to us, so they don’t know.” People were coming to the station assuming that the trains were still running. We have to have that local accountability and the connected nature of the ebbs and flows of the network.

If you build it, they will come. If we have more carriages—more than two on CrossCountry—you will get more passengers because people will enjoy the journey and feel it is value for money, rather than being rammed in like cattle. Standing at London Bridge station, you see Southern trains with 13 carriages. I dream about 13 carriages. We have trains that are two and three carriages that are absolutely rammed because we have such an uplift in footfall.

[Olly Glover]

You may enjoy a ten-minute rule Bill speech that I am making tomorrow.

Tracy Brabin: I shall set my timer to make sure I watch it.

[The Chair]

I have a lot of colleagues indicating that they want to speak and I do not believe we will get everyone in. If we could have shorter questions, and perhaps shorter answers, to try and get as many people as possible in, that would be really helpful.

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[Keir Mather]

Thank you so much. I have no further questions.

[Olly Glover]

Q Mr Bowker, you lived through an interesting time—I hope you do not mind me describing it like that—when you ran the Strategic Rail Authority. The industry was recovering from the chaos and meltdown of the Hatfield disaster and everything that followed. According to some, there were tensions at the time between the SRA and the ORR and other bodies. Given that there appear to be superficial similarities, to some extent at least, between the structure proposed by the Bill and what existed then, what lessons and insights from that time will help us to get this right?

Richard Bowker: There were tensions, some of which were actually quite healthy in a way, because if somebody is basically in charge of everything and has no checks and balances, I am not sure that is a good thing. What is described here, and the way the Bill works, is a far better set of circumstances than I had to deal with 20 years ago. Why? Because, as I said in answer to another question, the SRA was responsible for strategy and for franchising, while the rail regulator was responsible for the network, regulating Network Rail and who could go on the network, ultimately. Those two things did not interface well at times. They did in many ways, and we got a lot done, but it was not perfect.

I think the Bill helps significantly in terms of providing clarity and a directing mind. What is key to all this, though, is not necessarily what is written here; it is about how it is then implemented in practice. You have some good building blocks, but the real test will be when real people try to make this work.

[The Chair]

I am afraid this will probably have to be the last question for this witness.

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[Jerome Mayhew]

Q They do not agree, do they? We have heard stark evidence today that the lack of a level playing field and the lack of advanced sight of where this legislation is going are making investment in the railways less likely, not more likely. That is the evidence of the sector that you have heard today. You can put your fingers in your ears and say something different, but that is the evidence that we have heard.

Whether it is the access in use concerns, the failure of the appeals process to be anything worthy of the name, or the fact that the proposed powers for the Secretary of State to change without notice access in use, taken in combination, the evidence from multiple witnesses today was that the Bill does not make it easier. Are you going to listen to them, or are the Government going to pursue their dogged insistence that everyone else is wrong and they are right?

Keir Mather: If you take something like the rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, the consultations are undertaken in close partnership with the private sector. If you are asking me whether it is going to be easier in the long term, with GBR created, for private sector operators to engage with a level playing field, I think that it will be. I think that it creates a very clear structure of accountability measures, clear metrics by which decisions are taken and robust accountability, if GBR does not meet its obligations under the access regime, to make sure that it does things correctly, especially on the matter of access.

I think it is important that we dig into this further, because it came out consistently with the freight operators. GBR has to decide how it meets its capacity duty once it has decided what best use of the railway constitutes. That is a really important safeguard that is built into the Bill. The Secretary of State gives GBR its funding envelope through the business plan, and needs to ensure that GBR will deliver the services that it has said it will. It is therefore very important to have that capacity duty in place, but that is after GBR has made a determination, while balancing its existing duties and its need to promote freight and service providers on the railway, on whether or not those services stack up.

I think that the accountability process and appeals process are very clear, and give private operators multiple points to raise concerns, and robust enforcement measures for the ORR to substitute decisions and ask GBR to think again. The point about thinking again is very important, because we want GBR to improve as an organisation, and to become more agile and more responsive to the needs of the private sector, and the appeals process facilitates that.

[Olly Glover]

Q You have both been very clear, and so has Lord Hendy, that a key intention of the Bill and the creation of GBR is to better integrate infrastructure and train operation. If that is the case, why has funding for passenger services been excluded from the periodic review process of GBR’s infrastructure costs? Does separating those funding streams undermine the goal of a truly integrated railway?

Keir Mather: That is a really important point. I hope that you feel that the human side of the equation, in terms of furthering the interests of passengers through the duties, is embedded in clause 18, but I take your point about the funding envelope, and the way that passenger services are funded via the spending review period set by the Secretary of State, as opposed to infrastructure more broadly. The reason for that in the immediate term is that the procurement and delivery of passenger services is a far more complex and changeable process to work through than the delivery of long-term infrastructure, or other functions that sit under GBR.

In the future, we can certainly get into a debate about whether passenger services should be funded in a similar way to other aspects of GBR’s operation, but for the moment, and after GBR is stood up, which let us remember is in quite short order after the passage of the Bill, in around 12 months’ time, the Secretary of State needs to be able to determine that passenger services offer value for money. It is therefore right that she retains more control over the funding envelope for those services at that stage. We can certainly take the debate on how that should change in the future forward as part of this Committee. I would be very keen to explore it further.

[Laurence Turner]

Q I must say, I think I must have been listening to a different set of evidence today than the shadow Minister, but there we are.

I want to raise devolution, and specifically clause 5. There is a lot of history to the clause, and a line of continuity with the old section 20 of Barbara Castle’s Transport Act 1968. A lot of great things were accomplished under that legislation, including the creation of a cross-city line in Birmingham, but then privatisation came along. There was an attempt to do something similar under section 13 of the Railways Act 2005, which frankly did not work; there was never a single agreement signed. What lessons have been learned about what went right in the past and what went wrong with the 2005 legislation, when it comes to clause 5 of the Bill?

Keir Mather: I suppose that, in the 2005 Act, section 13 was not only really narrow in scope, in that it covered only franchised services, but represented a significant watering down of relationships between the rail industry and passenger transport executives. The difference with clause 5 of the Bill is that it is significantly wider in scope, to ensure that partnerships under GBR cover the full rail offer, rather than focusing only on services.

There is an important point around corporate structure. It is right that the corporate structure is not laid out in the Bill—no piece of rail legislation in 113 years has done that—but what has come out quite consistently in the testimony of the mayors, and in the broader points made around devolution, is that, whether it be on the MCA basis or on the local authority basis more generally, people want GBR’s structure to be flat, and responsive to dynamic changes both in demographics around housing and your ability to get to Everton stadium when the rugby league is on, which is of personal interest to me.

I think the point is very well made, and it is certainly taken by me as the Minister, that democratic accountability means that the operational reality of GBR should be diffuse wherever possible. People do not want to see a replication of a centralised model of the past.