I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for sharing an advance copy. I agree that rail performance is a key concern to passengers throughout the country, and it is a fair criticism to say that several operators have consistently underperformed. That is why, when we were in government, we took action to improve performance on our railways, investing more than £100 billion to operate and enhance our railways since 2010, and electrifying more than 1,200 miles of track—compared to just 63 miles under the last Labour Government.
I am glad that the Government are taking forward the framework offered in the previous Conservative Government’s Williams-Shapps review. Having a more joined-up rail network should indeed deliver key improvements. However, it is disappointing that the Government have progressed with their plans for the effective nationalisation of the rail operators by ending private rail operator franchising, despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that that will be contrary to the aim of improving rail performance.
We know that while in some cases it has been necessary in the short term to bring rail operators into public control, it has not made the difference in performance that the Government would have us believe. It takes only a cursory glance at passenger rail performance statistics to see that some of the rail operators operating under public control have done little or nothing to improve cancellations or delays in relation to other operators. For example, the Secretary of State mentioned TransPennine Express and a decrease in cancellations since the operator was taken into public ownership, but she made no reference to delays. Data from the Office for Rail and Road show that in the four years prior to
the train operator coming under public control, passengers faced an average of 8,130 delay minutes per month. From period 2 of 2023-24, when the operator was brought into public ownership, up to period 4 of 2024-25, average monthly delays have increased by 1,677 minutes, to 9,807 a month. In addition, for the year ’23-24, data shows that train operators run by private companies in England had an average on time rate of 64.36%. For train operators in public control, by contrast, the average was 57.7%—a difference of just under seven percentage points.
Public ownership is not the panacea that the right hon. Lady claims, so it is disingenuous for the Government to argue that wholesale public control of rail operation will do everything to improve performance, particularly for operators that are already performing well. Under the Government’s plans to end private rail operator franchising, the first contracts set to expire and be picked up by the Government are some of the highest performing franchises. The Government risk making the mistake of taking credit for comparatively strong performance, which will occur not as a result of their measures but as a result of the successes of the previous private franchising. That would mean the Government drawing the wrong conclusions from their actions, and it would have implications for future decision making.
It should be appreciated that the role of open access operators has been one of the greatest success stories within our rail network. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to provide greater clarity to the sector on how their plans for the rail network will impact on open access operators. It is also essential that the Secretary of State finally clarifies the long-term plan for rolling stock under the Government’s measures.
I appreciate that in Labour’s brave new world, all decisions are reflected through the ideological prism of “public good, private bad”, but there is a fundamental risk that the Government are taking ideological action to the long-term detriment of rail performance. Among our counterparts in Europe, it is widely acknowledged that rail privatisation has been successful in increasing passenger numbers, encouraging investment and controlling costs. In Italy, for example, prices have reduced by 31%, and Austria has witnessed a 41% increase in service frequency. There is a serious risk that the Government’s plans will take us backwards on those key areas without offering any promise of improvement on performance, or improved journeys or fares for passengers.
We all fully acknowledge the difficulties facing our railways, and nobody should accept poor performance —we have, unfortunately, seen that in some areas of our network—but merely enacting demonstrative but counterintuitive measures designed to communicate action is no substitute for making measured and pragmatic choices. For example, the Government and the Secretary of State have chosen to offer inflation-busting pay rises with no working practice reform in exchange. Without substantial working practice reform, it is deeply unlikely that the cost of the pay deals will be offset by improved performance, and the failure to introduce working practice reform will mean continued performance difficulties on our railways.
Can the Secretary of State offer a guarantee today that ending private rail franchising without implementing working practice reform will lead to demonstrably improved performance? If she cannot offer that guarantee,
the Government should shelve the ideology and take a step back to pause and examine whether their package of measures will truly improve rail performance. It surely makes more sense to learn from the performance statistics; to understand from the experience of the continent and our past the improvements that the private sector can bring; and to prioritise the practical over the ideological.