Railways Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Rebecca Smith and Edward Morello

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Olly Glover]

I look forward to hearing all the figures. The point is that it is not always about coming up with the exact cost for absolutely every measure. There are plenty of things that are the right thing to do, and that can earn a return on investment. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training is a significant barrier to economic growth. This measure, by making it easier for young people to use the train to access jobs, is likely to earn a significant return by getting more people into employment and paying taxes.

Before I accepted the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I was saying that we want a tap-in, tap-out method of ticketing across England, Wales and Scotland. If that sounds absurd, the Netherlands has it at this exact moment—and there is much that we can learn from that example. We want a guarantee to be issued that whatever ticket passengers purchase, via any means, is the best value fare. There should be no inequality in fare for the same ticket purchased via different means, which can be the case now because of the proliferation of ticketing platforms.

We want a national railcard to be introduced across the country. Many other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, offer national discount cards, but it is a bit of a postcode lottery here, with the network railcard in the London and south-east England area and a number of other regional or local railcards. We want open-source access to Great British Railways’ ticketing systems and rate databases for third-party retailers. That would build on the useful example demonstrated by Network Rail about 15 years ago, when it made the data feeds for its performance and train running systems available for the public to use. That created a wonderful ecosystem of useful train running and disruption apps that were much better than the official ones provided by train operators.

We also want to see greater collaboration with local and regional transport authorities, so that we see much more multimodal ticketing between railway passenger services and local bus, light rail and other public transport networks. That would help us to get the integrated transport system we need to deal with the first and last-mile issues that are often a barrier to people deciding to take public transport over the car. Where a single journey involves travel on multiple rail services, or at least one rail service and another form of public transport, we want steps to be taken to simplify fares and remove barriers to travel.

We believe that our new clause makes a number of proposals that would put our fares and ticketing system on a much better footing. It would deliver value to the taxpayer as well as reduce cost, because it would stimulate many more people to use our railway and therefore increase revenue. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I am always slightly concerned about speaking after my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage, who has a justifiable reputation as a train expert—I will not say “train nerd”—so I am slightly circumspect.

Rail users, both regular and irregular, have many gripes about the rail system, but the most frequent I hear from constituents undoubtedly concerns the cost of tickets. New clause 9 is about requiring fare increases to be capped in line with inflation. At time of a sustained cost of living pressure for working families, that would provide a long-term guarantee that rail fares will not continue to spiral up unpredictably, which would drive down usage.

The new clause would also mean that children aged 16 and 17 who are still in education would not be charged adult fares simply because of an arbitrary age threshold. In rural West Dorset, this is another issue that comes into my mailbox all the time. Children who are still in education hit the 16-year-old threshold and have to get across the constituency to colleges in Weymouth, at astronomical cost. Extending the 50% discount for under-18s who are in full-time education is sensible and fair, and will be especially good for people in rural communities.

The new clause would also address long-standing inconsistencies in ticketing. As mentioned, a national railcard system would end the postcode lottery whereby some areas benefit from low fares while people in other constituencies, especially rural ones, are left paying more.

[Rebecca Smith]

I appreciate the heart behind the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, but can he explain a bit more about why we need a national railcard? There are already all sorts of other railcards, as he rightly points out. There is one for the south-east, and I know there is one in Devon and Cornwall, but they are for specific sets of people doing specific types of journey. If there was a national railcard, would it not incentivise everybody to possess one, so that nobody ever paid a full rail fare?

[Edward Morello]

At one point, going through all the amendments that had been tabled to the Bill, I concluded that accepting them all would mean that the only people who would pay for a full-price ticket would probably be working-age men aged 35 to 45—they would have to single-handedly fund the entire rail network. I am not sure that that is a desirable long-term system, but a simplified system is ideal. I accept the premise of the hon. Lady’s intervention: the regionalised or localised railcards have their own benefit. But invariably we are just creating more and more carve-outs, and a simplified national system may be fairer and easier to sustain over the long term.

A move towards a national tap-in, tap-out system would modernise the network and make it far more user-friendly. In West Dorset, passengers too often step off a train only to have to wait 45 minutes for a bus, because timetables are poorly aligned. Enabling multimodal ticketing would allow rail, bus and other services to work together, making journeys smoother for residents and visitors.

New clause 9 would require Great British Railways to report on and plan for fair fares, modern ticketing, innovation through an open-source system and integration across all transport nodes. Like new clause 8, it would allow us to advocate for passengers, which should be the central theme of the Bill.

Adoption and Kinship Placements

Debate between Rebecca Smith and Edward Morello

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Smith]

The hon. Gentleman takes the words right out of my mouth, and if he stays for the whole debate he will hear me say exactly that. He raises an important point: we are asking people to care for the most vulnerable children, and if we do not give them the tools to do that, they will not apply in the first place.

I am pleased to have secured this debate to shine a further light on the issue, highlight how the Government’s recent position is a false economy, and put further pressure on them to do the right thing and reverse the recent changes. Without access to the previous level of support offered through the fund, there is a real concern that the number of adopters will fall, and more children—including those with some of the most difficult and challenging stories—will face the long term in care, seeing their future massively impacted as a result.

Before I progress, I wish to pay tribute to the thousands of parents, guardians and carers across the country who have been fighting for children and young people in their care—those who are unable to live with their birth parents—and especially to those families in my constituency of South West Devon, some of whom I have met, and some who have written to me to share their experiences. They are all, rightly, incredibly worried about the impact of the cuts on the support that they previously received, and it is a privilege to be here to speak on their behalf.

I also place on record my thanks to the charities that have been campaigning against the recent changes to support for children in adoptive and kinship placements: Adoption UK, Coram, Kinship, Family Rights Group, and the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies to mention a few, as well as local adoption agencies such as Adopt South West, which serves families in my constituency and others in Devon and Cornwall. Their work has been especially powerful over the past couple of months as they have shared information with us and we have fought together.

The adoption and special guardianship support fund was set up under the Conservative Government in 2015 as a result of the Children and Families Act 2014, and it was designed to help families to access the specialist therapy services that they may need. Since the Adoption and Children Act 2002, adoptive families have had a right to an assessment of their adoption support needs by their local authority. However, the 2014 Act introduced a number of further measures to support adoptive families, including the fund. In 2023, the fund was expanded to include kinship care, enabling some children with special guardianship or child arrangements orders to qualify for support too. That was a solid legacy to work from.

Since July 2024, however, there has been a cloud of uncertainty over the future of the adoption and special guardianship support fund. Although it is a lifeline for thousands of vulnerable children, it was left hanging in the balance. Families were left wondering whether the therapeutic support that their children desperately need would vanish overnight.

In April, the Department for Education announced significant cuts to the fund. The annual therapy funding per child has been slashed from £5,000 to £3,000. The separate £2,500 allowance for specialist assessments has gone, match funding to support the most complex cases has gone, and the ability to carry support across financial years has also gone. That is a shocking 40% reduction in funding for the support that we all know is highly specialised and that, as a result, comes at a cost.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate, and I agree 100% with the point that she is making. Two constituents in West Dorset support two children with multiple needs—overlapping autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and significant trauma of the kind she mentioned. The funding for a one-off assessment remains, but the ongoing funding to support those children no longer exists, and that is a fundamental problem.