I was referring to the people who drive and operate the trains. There are more of them on Waterloo station than there are employees of Network Rail.
To finish what I was saying, most people on the railway refer to their employer and their work as “the railway”, which tells you something about the way in which the franchise system has dealt with loyalty to employment.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for Amendment 14 and the discussion we had in the last few days. He is right that Regulation 17 requires the publication of a specified list of information within one year, following the direct award of a contract, where that information has not already been published. However, we expect the majority of the information included in Regulation 17 to have already been published well before one year has expired. That is because Regulation 23, which covers post-award publication, requires a competent authority to publish a similar set of information within two months of contract award. The information which must be published is set out in Schedule 2. Regulation 23 also allows interested parties to request the reasons for a direct award within one month of the post-award publication. I agree that a year would be a very long time to wait before the information is published. However, I do not believe that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed because similar and, in many respects, more detailed publication requirements are already provided for in Regulation 23. I urge him to withdraw the amendment, and I note that he does not intend to press it.
I note that Amendment 16, from my noble friend Lord Berkeley, is somewhat novel constitutionally, as it would constrain parliamentary sovereignty by imposing limitations on when primary legislation relating to the railways could be introduced. I am very happy to confirm to my noble friend, to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and to others who mentioned it that the Government intend to set out their key proposal for the railways Bill in a consultation document that
I very much hope will be published before the end of this calendar year. This will give all interested parties, including Members of your Lordships’ House, the chance to review and scrutinise it and to feed in their views before the Bill is introduced later in this parliamentary Session. The Government do not intend to publish a draft of the Bill before it is introduced, as I would expect that to delay progress in implementing the Government’s planned reforms.
It is now more than six years since the previous Government declared that the structure of the railways is
“no longer fit to meet today’s challenges”
and appointed Keith Williams to lead his review. Passengers, freight and everyone on and who uses the railway have waited too far long already to see meaningful change. I have to say that my own experience is that the previous Government went through pre-legislative scrutiny in a desultory manner, and frankly, we all concluded that they did not intend to bring a Bill before either House any time soon.
While the Government are keen to hear the widest possible range of views on their proposals, including the noble Lord’s, I do not on this occasion support the idea of publishing a draft Bill. It also does not seem necessary, given that noble Lords can submit their views during the consultation I have committed to and will be able to debate the Bill once it is before the House. I am of course happy to meet with my noble friend Lord Berkeley and other noble Lords at the time of the consultation launch to seek their views, as we have done during the course of the Bill before us, if that would help persuade him to withdraw his amendment.