First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for his welcome; it is nice to see him again in different and more august circumstances—different, at least, from those that applied in the old City Hall. I thank him, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for their explanations of this group of amendments, most of which require some form of reporting or assessment of the impacts of public ownership or the performance of publicly owned operators.
Like my noble friend Lord Snape, I am fascinated by the plethora of reports proposed at this stage of railway reform. Given that LNER has been in the public sector for six years, and Northern for four, it is strange that the measures now proposed for public sector train operators were never contemplated or enacted by the previous Government, who clearly never thought that they needed them. In simple terms, this Government do not either.
I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for railway reform. His Amendment A1 does not call for any reports but requires the Secretary of State to have regard to a specific purpose —to improve the performance of passenger services—when exercising functions under the Bill. I entirely support that purpose, and it is at the heart of what we are doing, but there are also many other purposes: stripping out inefficiency and waste on behalf of the taxpayers who fund the railway, simplifying fares and increasing patronage, connecting communities, driving
economic growth and promoting opportunity for all. It is not right that the Bill should suggest that it has only that one purpose, important though it is.
Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would require the publication of two reports: the first outlining the anticipated impact of public ownership, and the second assessing its actual impact some years after the event. Regarding the first of these reports, the Government have already fulfilled the proposed obligation through the impact assessment published earlier in the year. Among other expected impacts, the taxpayer will no longer have to fund many tens of millions of pounds in fees currently payable to private sector operators each year, even when their performance is sub-standard. Furthermore, public sector operators will prioritise the interests of passengers and taxpayers, not the demands of their shareholders.
A similar report is envisaged in Amendment 48A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, but focused specifically on the impact on performance. I can assure the noble Lord that the Government certainly expect public ownership, and our broader reform proposals, to unlock the significant improvement in the performance and efficiency of the railway which he is looking for; we do not need to publish a report to say that.
Turning to the second proposed report envisaged in Amendment 2, there is no need to wait for three years before we start to consider whether train operators’ performance is improving. A wide variety of data is already routinely published about the performance of both public and private sector train operators. This includes reliability and punctuality, service quality, customer complaints, financial performance and efficiency, among other measures. This Bill does not change any of that, but as part of our wider reform plans, we will further improve access to data. This will be specific to individual routes and/or service groups, not just aggregated at the level of whole franchises, so that passengers can see at each station how services are performing on their local routes and, importantly, what is going to be done to improve them.
The Government can and will monitor performance closely on a continuing basis. We will hold operators’ feet to the fire when their performance is inadequate, irrespective of whether they are privately or publicly owned. The Secretary of State and I have already demonstrated that we will not accept the poor standards that have been tolerated in the past. We have demonstrated that from our first days in office by holding meetings with the managing directors of several train operators alongside their Network Rail counterparts to address poor performance and demand immediate action to raise standards.
In that respect, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, we are not discriminating between the public and private sectors and will not do so, as indeed he did not in his time. He rightly gave me a hard time in 2018 in respect of electrification in the north-west of England; even if it was not Network Rail’s responsibility, it related to the failings of GTR as an operator.
Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would require the publication of a further report—or perhaps 10 reports, one after each transfer—setting out the expected impact of the transfers on various aspects of train operators’ performance. Again, once transfers have taken place, it would be more instructive to consider the actual performance of train operators.
Amendments 21 and 22, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would require the reporting and independent assessment of the performance of publicly owned train operators. That is unnecessary because, as I have set out, the Government will themselves be monitoring their performance closely and will work to ensure that as much performance data as possible is published for the benefit of the travelling public, in a form that is useful to them and that allows for effective scrutiny.
My department is currently reviewing the standard terms of the service agreements that are entered into between the Secretary of State and public sector operators, in readiness for future transitions to public ownership. Public operators will be set targets in key areas such as punctuality and reliability and other aspects of the service. Work is under way to identify the right targets and measures for the period ahead in order to focus operators on delivering the best possible outcomes for passengers and taxpayers. As part of the service agreement review, we will consider the arrangements for publishing those targets and operators’ actual performance in comparison to them.
Amendment 22 refers to performance improvement plans. I reassure the noble Lord that improvement plans are already a feature of the Government’s service agreements with each public sector operator. I confirm for noble Lords that similar mechanisms will continue to exist in future, both through contractual terms and through the controls that DOHL exerts over its operators on behalf of the Secretary of State. As I have said, where performance is falling short, we will not hesitate to demand that things are put right, regardless of whether the operator is privately or publicly owned.
Amendment 45, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, requires the publication of an independent assessment of the performance and efficiency of the rail network five years after the enactment of this Bill. By that time, the Government will have established Great British Railways, which will have taken over responsibility for both track and train. New arrangements will need to be put in place to oversee and scrutinise the effectiveness and efficiency of GBR, so in due course we will set out our plans for holding it to account as part of our plans for the wider railways Bill. We should not pre-empt those future arrangements by seeking to legislate for them now.
I hope we will deal with all the noble Lord’s other points during the rest of Committee, as we shall with the detailed comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on staff morale and the British Transport Police. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I confirm that there are no changes to Section 4 of the 1993 Act.
In answer to my noble friend Lord Snape, in the present Bill there will be no change to the role of Office of Rail and Road; he needs to await the substantive railway Bill for that, at least with regard to the railway element of the ORR. There will be public consultation on the wider Bill before it comes, so there is no need to wait until the publication of the Bill itself.
I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that there is currently no meaningful private investment by train operating companies, so we are not losing anything in the Bill that is on the table today. Contrary to his assertion about the Williams report, its author, Keith Williams, envisaged public ownership as a necessary condition to rationalise a number of things on the railways, in particular fares, ticketing and information.
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The Government are fully committed to openness and transparency in train operators’ performance; that is true whether they are in the public or private sector. There is no need to legislate for all these additional reports and reviews. In fact, nearly everybody in the transport industry has written either a report or a review on some aspect of the railways. I have written several and my noble friend Lady Blake is the joint author of another, all while the franchising model has gradually disintegrated before our eyes. What we need now is action to move fast and fix things, as opposed to the interminable wait for reform since 2018 that I and everybody else in the industry have endured. That is what this Bill is all about. I urge noble Lords not to press these amendments.