Railways Bill

Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness May of Maidenhead (Con)]

My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a member of the GWR stakeholder advisory board, ably and knowledgeably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I add my voice to the Minister’s remarks on the 21st anniversary of those terrible attacks on our transport system. I also reference the fact that this is the debate in which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, will be making his valedictory speech. He and I have not overlapped for long in this Chamber and did not overlap in government, but I know that he brought to this House his experience as a distinguished public servant, and he will be missed.

When I became a Member of Parliament, I did not expect to spend so much time dealing with trains. I did so not just as shadow Secretary of State for Transport for a period, but also because a lot of my constituents were commuters and the train service mattered to them. But I had the advantage of dealing with those issues in an era of privatisation. I remember British Rail. I always used to say that British Rail was run for the interests of those who enjoyed playing trains, rather than the interests of passengers. Privatisation changed that because, for the companies, the service to passengers mattered. As a local Member of Parliament, I was able to work with the train operating companies—first, Thames Trains then GWR—to ensure that services were improved, timetables were changed and new trains were put on in the interests of local people. That ability is going to be wiped away by this Bill and by the creation of Great British Railways.

It is an issue I argued with Keith Williams when he was producing his report, and I recognise that on this side of the House, our hands are not entirely clean in relation to the concept of Great British Railways, albeit with differences from the Bill that this Government are introducing. But what is being created here is not something that puts the customer first; it is a centralised bureaucracy that will determine all the issues that matter to passengers—fares, train times, and the timetable. I say to the Minister that it is not putting the customer first; I fear that it is, in fact, putting the passenger last.

That relates to my second concern with the Bill, which is about accountability and interference. First, I worry that the Bill is removing yet further the powers of the Office of Rail and Road to hold the railways and Great British Railways to account. I remember when Tom Winsor was the Rail Regulator, and a rather determined Rail Regulator he was too, but after him, things got a little mushy. The teeth were drawn from the Office of Rail and Road, as it became, and I fear that the teeth are going to be further drawn in this Bill. That matters, particularly because of an aspect to which attention has been drawn by the Transport Select Committee in the other place, which fears micromanagement of the railways by the Secretary of State. The Bill gives considerable opportunities for the Secretary of State to interfere with Great British Railways and to make determinations which otherwise should be being made in the interests of passengers.

My third concern is this. Last week, the new Member of Parliament for Makerfield, who it is widely assumed will soon be our Prime Minister, made a speech in which he applauded and spoke up for the interests of place, of locality, of that sense of belonging to an area, of local identity. This Bill sweeps away the idea of local identity in our railways, because it centralises those decisions. It sweeps away the traditional historical names, regional concepts and structures from our railways. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me say this, because I have said it to him on a number of occasions and obviously, I am concerned about this issue.

The symbolism of this is perhaps best seen in the fact that suddenly, all the trains are going to be repainted in the colours of the Union Jack, and the traditional liveries will go. Not only will that cost the taxpayer money, completely unnecessarily; it is as if somebody in the Department for Transport—maybe the Minister, maybe a civil servant, or perhaps a special adviser—has suggested, “Actually if we’re going to make a change, people need to see there’s a change, so let’s repaint all the trains”. People will know there is a change when their services are no longer as good as they should be. They will know there is a change when they can no longer raise their local voice, and their MP and others can no longer take that up and work with the companies to bring about a change and an improvement in their services.

So, what does this Bill do? Far from prioritising passengers, it prioritises government. Far from increasing accountability, it reduces it. Far from creating independence, it creates dependence. Far from localising, it centralises; and far from respecting local identity, it destroys it. In this Bill, the passenger interest is given less priority, the regulator’s ability to challenge is reduced, and the Government’s ability to interfere is increased. That bodes ill for the future of our railways.