Railways Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly add my voice to Amendment 313, to which I have added my name. This is the first time I have spoken, so I thank the Minister and his staff for the very good meetings we have had so far.

This is incredibly important. My last two rail journeys of any note have both been disrupted badly, one due to trains having to go slowly because the rails were buckled at 24 degrees centigrade, and the other because a tree fell on a line and pretty much put the route out of action. I hear that the strategy for tree management will have to change enormously because of the drier weather. This framework is not something that we should be bringing in now—we should have brought it in 10 years ago. As with any of these frameworks, we need reporting. We know exactly what happens if you do not report on something—it gets pushed to the back.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support some of the amendments in this group. I am sure that we have all experienced the nightmare of leaves on the track, but by putting in place a number of the different targets, we also have to have a focus on maintenance.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, referred to buckling, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, but that is largely because we have moved to a continuously welded rail to have a smoother journey. That was particularly welcome. I should declare an interest here, as I live 100 yards or so from a railway line which has had CWR thanks to Sizewell C, because otherwise the trains would be exceptionally noisy overnight when they are bringing in all the different material.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 79, I will also speak to Amendment 293 tabled in my name. As many noble Lords are aware, consumer protections, such as ensuring transparency of fees, safeguard customer interests and drive economic growth by promoting trust and confidence. To bolster consumer protection, the Competition and Markets Authority was awarded direct consumer enforcement powers in 2024. This meant that the CMA could determine breaches of consumer law directly and take action to rectify them, rather than having to apply to the courts if it saw a problem.

The new Government’s general approach will be to award these same direct enforcement powers to sector regulators as well, which will be able to undertake the same enforcement activity as the CMA, but with additional sectoral expertise. The Government are beginning this process by awarding the Civil Aviation Authority these powers via the civil aviation Bill, and today I propose that this Bill does the same for the Office of Rail and Road.

A live example of consumer protection activity is currently under way. The CMA has launched an investigation into drip pricing, a practice where the total fee is not revealed until late into the purchase process, luring consumers into falsely believing a product to be cheaper than it is. With these amendments, in future the ORR could undertake this kind of investigation in relation to the rail industry, utilising sector expertise to seek swift redress for customers should a breach of consumer law be found.

This Bill seeks to put passengers at the heart of decision-making. Having the sector regulator able to take swift and decisive corrective action on breaches of consumer law is an important and sensible amendment that will boost customer confidence in railway travel. I therefore urge noble Lords to support these amendments. If the Committee is content, I will put them to a decision at the end of this group. If not, I can discuss them before Report and table them again then. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank Peers for the Planet, which alerted me to the fact that I had an amendment today, because I got missed off the distribution list from the Government Whips’ Office. I am afraid that I have not had the opportunity to explore other people’s amendments in this group and I hope that they will not think me rude in covering some of these points.

I am slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has left, because I thought that he might like part of my speech. My amendment may make it seem like we are going back to the 1980s or the 1990s, and in some ways it does. There is a twofold approach to what I have tried to do. I was told that it was not in scope to remove functions from the ORR but that I could create a new one instead, so I have created the one that was originally created back in the 1990s. That is basically to go back to having a simpler body that looks after rail. Ideally, roads would be dealt with elsewhere, if at all.

Let us follow a bit of the logic here. Great British Railways will basically be taxpayer owned—government owned—and there is now no need whatever to have a non-ministerial department as a regulator. This will be run by the Government. I am more than happy to sit down with the Minister another time to go through how he could get some brownie points or gold stars with the First Secretary of State in helping to rewire the state, given the discussion that has been going on within the Government about how to get back more control. The control is not just about owning the railways; it is about how people are accountable. A non-ministerial department is accountable not to Ministers but to Parliament. That does not mean that there are no discussions and the like but, if the Government are going to own the railways, I think people would rather them to be in charge, to be accountable and to look into how they operate.

I appreciate that there is an element here about safety, and there are currently two functions of that. The Railway Accident Investigation Branch is not part of the ORR; it is a body that reports directly to the Secretary of State. The ORR has other functions to do with safety, which it took on in 2006 instead of the Health and Safety Executive. It is perfectly acceptable for there be a much closer relationship, in thinking about how safety is applied on government-owned railways, than through some other third-party body.

There is another example. The Health and Safety Executive is a NDPB, but the Defence Safety Authority is in the Ministry of Defence. It has a different way of having accountability: to avoid it going straight to the Secretary of State, it goes through a Permanent Secretary.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is back, and I hope that he might enjoy part of my speech on helping to rewire the state and have fewer of these non-ministerial departments. The reason why I am focusing on this is that, if the whole point is to have much more control of railways by Ministers, there is a sense of starting to strip away other unnecessary aspects of the state to make sure that that can get done efficiently and effectively.