UK Parliament / Open data

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

My Lords, we come now to one of the most important debates in our consideration of this Bill in Committee: a group of amendments on devolution and the powers of local authorities, devolved authorities and combined mayoral authorities in relation to the vision of passenger railway services. At this stage in the debate, I intend to speak only to the amendments in my name—Amendments 12, 13 and 50—although I will offer general support to the others in this group, many of which I have added my name to. I may have more particular comments about them later in the debate when their movers have had a chance to speak to them.

I shall dispose briefly of Amendments 12 and 13, which were intended to be helpful. Indeed, Amendment 12 is still intended to be helpful. It would require the

relevant franchising authority to consult the newly established Council of the Nations and Regions, which the Prime Minister has set up, before awarding contracts to a public sector company. We on this side of the House thought that it might be useful for the new council to have something practical to do; I would have thought that considering the provision of railway services is something that would take up a considerable amount of its time and generate a great deal of interesting debate. I shall say no more about this amendment because I imagine that it will be happily accepted by the Minister.

4.45 pm

Amendment 13, coupled with Amendment 12, seeks that the relevant franchising authority must also consult the Prime Minister’s envoy for the nations and regions. Of course, when the amendment was drafted, that post not only existed but was, as far as we understood, filled. The less I say about it at the moment, the better, since I believe that the post has not been filled; perhaps the Minister could bring us up to date on that exciting and fast-moving story. Indeed, I am not entirely sure whether the post still exists, having been created with such fanfare in a moment of crisis. I shall leave Amendments 12 and 13 to one side for the moment and see what the Minister has to say later.

I turn to my Amendment 50, which is at the end of the Marshalled List. It proposes that the Bill should not commence until

“regional partnership boards have been established between Shadow Great British Railways”,

or, as I have added for the sake of safety,

“the Secretary of State acting temporarily in its place”.

At this stage, I am not sure of the legal status of shadow Great British Railways. Does it exist as a legal entity? Does it have the powers to establish boards and participate in them? That in itself as a technical matter would be an interesting thing for the Minister to comment on when he comes to speak. I think we would all like to know exactly what its status is.

These partnership boards are to be set up between shadow Great British Railways and

“local and regional authorities in England to give local leaders a greater say in how the railways are run in their area”.

That wording has some root. It was not simply invented by me; it was taken from the Williams review of the railways, where, on page 41, the Minister and other noble Lords will find the declaration that:

“New partnerships between Great British Railways and local and regional government will be established to give local leaders a greater say in how the railways are run in their area”.

That is exactly the wording found in the amendment that I have tabled.

When I tabled that amendment, I had been working on the assumption that the Williams report, having been the product of an independent review—the conclusions of which had largely gathered support from all parties—was one that the Government saw as a basis for their plan for the future of the railways. However, in the course of Committee on Monday afternoon, I learned that the text of the Williams review could be altered by a phone call between the Minister and the author of the review, and that the results of such discussion

could be delivered to the House without any preparation and would be binding on how we are to interpret the text.

In fact, the Minister went a little further. He said that he thought I should discard the text of the Williams review altogether because it had been replaced by a document called Getting Britain Moving, produced by the Labour Party shortly before the election. I have used the intervening period to go out and acquire a copy of Getting Britain Moving, published by the Labour Party—available in all good bookshops and downloadable from the internet, though as with all manifesto-related documents one wonders how long that will persist.

What do I find in it? It says that

“there must also be a statutory role for devolved leaders in governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network, to bring decision making as close as possible to local communities. For the first time, therefore, devolved leaders in Scotland, Wales, and in Mayoral Combined Authorities”—

which are what I will focus on today—

“will have a statutory role in the rail network”.

On that basis, it will be very difficult. Neither document promises partnership boards as such. It is said that there will be partnerships, but a partnership board would be a natural way to articulate that partnership and for it to be put into effect. So I would have thought that in principle this amendment would be welcome to the Government and that they would say, “Yes, we have this policy; it is stated in Getting Britain Moving”. Is it possible that this document could be rewritten by some ethereal intervention in the course of debate, as the last one was? I hope not. I hope that it has some stability, at least until the end of our debate on this group of amendments. Will the Government sign up for this? Would this not be a sensible way of putting their own policy into effect?

I turn to a letter very kindly sent by the Minister to all noble Lords who participated at Second Reading. What do I find in that letter? It says:

“The Government has no current plan to devolve responsibility for operating further national railway services to local authorities”.

That seems to be going back in large measure on the wide and generous commitment to devolution that was made in both the Williams review and Getting Britain Moving. Can the Minister explain where we are on this? He is likely to say that this is all for the future and not to do with this Bill. He will fall back on the argument that this is a tiny and technical Bill with no significance whatever and that we should just vote it through without question because all these matters will be dealt with in the great rail reform Bill, due to arrive on a platform near us in 12 or 18 months—but as I and other noble Lords said earlier in Committee, the transitional arrangements set up by this Bill are likely to be in effect, even if the Government’s timetable goes well, for four or five years as that legislation is devised, brought forward, amended, debated, passed and then of course implemented, which is likely to take several years.

These large changes do not happen overnight. During all that time, the commitment to devolution, made in such glowing words in Getting Britain Moving, will be not in suspension but totally absent. Insisting at this stage that the Government do not commence this Bill

until these partnership boards have been established is intended to meet a significant deficiency, while remaining wholly in line with government policy.

I hope I do not need to say how important devolution is and how many noble Lords on all sides of this House are committed to devolution, at least among the regions in England, to which I am confining myself. The reasons I shall not explain, but Scotland and Wales make it all a bit more complicated than is necessary to deal with in this debate. The principles are what are important. I think that noble Lords on all sides are committed to devolution. It is worth saying what exists at the moment. On Merseyside we have devolved management of the railways. The Minister has pointed out to me, in conversations that we had with officials before the Bill, that the Merseyside network is sufficiently distinct from the national network, and that leaving it to manage itself can make a great deal of sense. I accept that.

Then we come to London—the most congested and complicated part of the network—where the services on the Network Rail tracks are, of course, run partly by Network Rail and partly by the Mayor of London. The effect of what the Minister says in his statement is that the steady progress of transferring responsibility for local lines from Network Rail to the Mayor of London that has taken place over the last 10 or 15 years —irrespective of the party colour of the mayoralty—is now to be stopped. It is to be set in aspic. The current arrangement is to be left as it is, whether there is a rational basis for it or not.

I do not need to remind the Minister—because he had executive responsibility for it at the time—how much has been achieved by that devolution in London, and how much the lines that were largely abandoned, if not by the railways then certainly by passengers, have been brought back into busy and active service. They have been branded under the London Overground logo, and even modest interventions—painting the stations, lighting them properly and making them feel safe—have encouraged passengers to use them, especially women who previously would never have dared go into the station. The passenger numbers have flourished and burgeoned as a result.

I do not say that every commuter line in London should be transferred to the Mayor of London. I do not have the evidence to make that case—it should be looked at line by line—but what we now have here from the Government is the complete and irrational estoppel. It brings us to the contradiction at the heart of the Government’s legislation and their thinking, which is that they are committed to what I have referred to as the single controlling brain—the words I should be using are “single controlling mind”, because those are the words used by the Labour Party, but it comes to the same thing—running the entire system. That is simply inconsistent with any serious form of devolution at all.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, who would like to have similar services running at his disposal as the Mayor of London does, is now to be turned away, irrespective of argument. The Government will not countenance his views. Similarly, the Mayor of the West Midlands and others who are in such a position

are to be closed down. What, then, is the future of services in London? What is the coherence in the Government’s position? How can they have a single controlling brain and devolution—devolved operation of services—at the same time? Is not the whole principle of the Bill fundamentally a mess?

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
840 cc654-8 
Session
2024-25
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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