Laurence Turner MP: speeches

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Speeches

27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source
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The 1992 White Paper that preceded the Railways Act 1993 said that, at the time, British Rail had the second highest workforce productivity of any railway in Europe. What does the hon. Member think went wrong in all the years under privatisation that followed?
27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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I will not test the wisdom of speculating about future legal circumstances, but is it not the case that when Railtrack was in a state of advanced collapse, that particular case did end up in court?
27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that progress has been made on the cultural issues and the micro-management that he describes? I note in passing that he dates that culture from 2012 onwards, which was, of course, entirely under the Government of which he was part. In the Transport Committee, we heard that until the election, Network Rail had to seek Treasury permission to do as much as put up a passenger footbridge. Is it not welcome that that has now come to an end?
27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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I absolutely agree, and we could point to other examples where franchises being taken in-house under previous Governments led to a service improvement. The Opposition’s problem has always been that public ownership works in practice but not in their theory. I am heartened by what the Minister had to say on my amendment. This is not an issue of dispute; this is sensible scrutiny. I welcome the commitment the Minister made to take the issue away. I recognise that this Committee is probably not the place to resolve this detailed and technical consideration. I am encouraged by his comments and on the basis that we may return to this matter at a later stage, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 Crown status etc
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. At the outset, I wish to declare that I am a member of Unite. It is a privilege to speak at the start of these proceedings. I do so as a believer in public ownership of the railways not as an end, but as the best means of realising greater economies for taxpayers and improvements for all those who rely on the railways for livelihood and leisure. I am conscious that the Committee has much work ahead of it, so I will keep my explanation of the amendment brief. Public ownership is the ballast of the Bill, but its clauses make only limited reference to ownership, although the drafting logic for that may be good—the Bill must, after all, be read alongside the previous enabling legislation passed by Parliament, the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 and the now much amended Railways Act 1993. In 2024, Parliament’s decision and intent were clear: passenger services are to come under public ownership as franchises expire. I must admit, however, that I start our proceedings under the shadow of a doubt. On my reading, there is a risk that the requirements of public ownership that sit outside this Bill may be time-bound, designed for the specific circumstances of transition, and dependent on definitions in statutory instruments that are themselves at risk of amendment or repeal without full parliamentary scrutiny. I freely acknowledge that some members of the Committee may take a different view of the merits of the ownership question, and I am sure that we will have good and respectful debate on the Bill’s provisions in the weeks ahead, but surely we can all agree on one point: such an important decision as public or private ownership should be taken only through primary legislation. To put it another way, were a future Government to seek to return to a privatised model, they should be obliged to seek majority consent in the full House. That is what the amendment seeks to achieve. The amendment would require Great British Railways to be a wholly and nationally owned public sector entity. Indeed, it would cease to be GBR if it were sold in whole or in part. The amendment would also, I think, prevent a future Secretary of State from taking the extremely perverse step of removing GBR’s designation as a public sector body and transferring it to a private or semi-private entity. If the wording of the amendment seems familiar to hon. Members, it will be because they have been paying close attention to other legislation. Clause 1 of the Bill is effectively identical to section 1(1) of the Great British Energy Act 2025. The amendment is a near carbon copy—I am sorry to all members of the Committee, but we are only at the start of our descent; I cannot promise that the puns will improve as we go on—of the subsections that follow in section 1 of that Act. I note that in the equivalent Committee debate for that Act, the sponsoring Minister, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), said: “The clause protects the principle of public ownership by making explicit that the company would terminate if it ceased to be wholly owned by the Crown.” –– [ Official Report, Great British Energy Public Bill Committee, 10 October 2024; c. 91.] I accept that we are seeking to build on a complex body of legislation; the railways are the accumulation of two centuries of history, and so are the laws that govern them. If—I emphasise that word—a drafting issue has been identified, we also need to identify the right solution for this specific legislation. I am grateful to the Minister in the Commons and to the Minister of State, the noble Lord Hendy, for their thoughtful conversations on this matter. I am also grateful to the officials who have worked hard to prepare this commendable Bill. My motivation in tabling the amendment is to establish beyond doubt that the Bill will achieve its aim: that Great British Railways will be run by and for the nation. If we can assure ourselves of that, I believe that this legislation will set out a permanent way for reform. I will listen carefully when the Minister responds.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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I beg to move amendment 257, in clause 1, page 1, line 8, at end insert— “(2) A body corporate may be designated under this section only if— (a) it is limited by shares, and (b) it is wholly owned by the Crown. (3) Regulations under subsection (1)— (a) must specify the time from which the designation has effect, and (b) must be published by the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable. (4) The designation of a body corporate terminates— (a) if the body corporate ceases to be wholly owned by the Crown, or (b) if the Secretary of State revokes the designation. (5) Any notice of revocation under subsection (4)(b)— (a) must specify the time from which the revocation has effect, and (b) must be published by the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable after the notice is given. (6) For the purposes of this section a body corporate is wholly owned by the Crown if each share in the body corporate is held by— (a) a Minister of the Crown, (b) a company which is wholly owned by the Crown, or (c) a nominee of a person falling within paragraph (a) or (b). (7) Great British Railways is exempt from the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 relating to the use of ‘limited’ as part of its name. (8) In this section— ‘company’ means a company registered under the Companies Act 2006; ‘Minister of the Crown’ has the same meaning as in the Ministers of the Crown Act 1975 (see section 8(1) of that Act).”
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago that Trainline and other online retailers are not seeking to make ill use of their market position, but the Advertising Standards Authority has ordered Trainline to amend its adverts, and the ORR ordered it to amend its practice of not showing booking fees at the start of the booking process. In oral evidence to the Transport Committee, Trainline accepted that its market share was significantly above the 25% test that the Competition and Markets Authority applies for a potential monopoly position. Does that concern the hon. Gentleman at all?
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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It was 1948.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source
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I must start by slightly disagreeing with the Minister on his approach to railway puns. The shadow Minister referred to the discussion on amendment 257 as a dispute; I reassure him that this is not a case of pistons at dawn— [ Laughter. ] It is going to get so much worse. Before I come to the Minister’s substantive response, I will briefly respond to a few other comments that have been made in the debate. The shadow Minister spoke about changes in passenger numbers over the years, which is a good illustration of why it is important to look across a whole time series, and to bear in mind the old maxim that correlation is not causation. After all, passenger numbers were already falling by the time that we got to vesting day in 1948. The railways were exhausted after years of war—indeed, passenger numbers halved between 1920 and 1947. In fact, the actual nadir in passenger numbers was not in the early 1990s but in 1983. I thought that Opposition Members might have wanted to take pride in the successful sectorisation experiment under the Thatcher Government, perhaps aided by some benign neglect from that Administration, which was sadly not repeated by the subsequent Major Administration. We have some good explanations for why exactly passenger numbers rose so dramatically in the 1990s and 2000s. For a long time, I think we could have all substituted our political explanations for why that happened. However, in 2018, a very good study, led by eminent modellers and academics, was published by the Independent Transport Commission on precisely that question. It found that passenger growth was overwhelmingly driven by changes in the job market—the types of roles being created and the areas of the country in which they were being created. It was also aided by changes to tax incentives for company cars in the early 2000s, which led to an additional increase in rail traffic.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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The hon. Member particularly mentioned workforce productivity.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I thank the shadow Minister for the constructive spirit of his intervention. Indeed, in the days of cross-party consensus on High Speed 2, I worked with members of his party exactly to address some of the capacity challenges on the network. I just say to him that the two are linked. As he was alluding to, the length of the trains is related to the signalling blocks and the safe distance between trains, so that they can be run together. If he is right, we should be looking to put on more carriages. When waiting for a CrossCountry train, I can certainly remember the collective groan on the platform when another short formation appeared. There is a hard limit, however, to what can be applied without providing more caps on the network. That is where the passenger versus freight dilemma comes in, because sometimes hard choices just have to be made. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that this is not always either/or, but sometimes it is. Sometimes one has to be prioritised over the other, and freight has historically been the loser.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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I think we just heard an Opposition Member ask, “What were they doing?” in respect of the 1997 to 2010 Government. The answer, of course, is that capital investment had to be directed to safety in the aftermath of Hatfield and other disasters. When we look at where exactly that money was spent, it was on the safety improvements necessitated by some of the disasters caused by privatisation. I am a strong supporter of electrification, as I know the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage is, but I thought it was important to place that on record.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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Okay, perhaps we will come back to that. However, the hon. Member also mentioned the restoring the your railway fund, which he talked about as a success. When the last Conservative Rail Minister, Huw Merriman, appeared before the Transport Committee he said, of that programme, that “The challenge was that a lot of people had their expectations dashed. A lot of business cases were, “Let’s move it to this stage so we can keep the dream alive.” That just wastes money and expertise because you know that scheme is not going to get a return. I have mixed feelings on it as a result.” Does the hon. Gentleman share some sympathy with that perspective?
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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As in this morning’s sitting, I draw attention to the fact that I am a member of Unite. I did not intend to speak in this particular debate, but I wish to respond briefly to some of the things that have been said and to mount a perhaps limited defence of Network Rail and the importance of engineering in such organisations. The comparator, of course, was Railtrack, which outsourced its engineering functions, had only a single engineer on its board of directors and had only one non-executive director from an engineering background, with deadly consequences, which are well understood and do not need repeating. If there is sometimes caution in the organisation, I suggest that the long shadow cast by the events of the late 1990s and early 2000s is why. There is good and sound logic behind not running too many trains across congested track. The real reason why we do not run as many trains as is theoretically possible is that lack of capacity on the network. Birmingham New Street, for example, will be exhausted once the Camp Hill services start in the spring—any more services simply cannot be safely got in or out on the network. When path allocators have to make decisions on which services to prioritise, freight tends to be squeezed out. That is a long-standing problem.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman and I are members of the same Select Committee and we tend to agree on most things, and I think that I agree with him again. In the here and now, however, and in the circumstances in which the Bill will start to apply, I share the fear that if the freight growth target is accompanied by an equivalent passenger growth target, in effect the freight growth target is neutralised; it is no longer the essential correction to the tendencies that have sometimes seen freight services being squeezed off the network. I say to the shadow Minister that the previous Government put in place a freight growth target and not a passenger one at the same time, presumably for exactly the same reason: at times when the two are in tension, freight can suffer the detriment. I thought it was important to put that concern on the record.
22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source
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Two per cent.
21 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Q2. NHS waiting lists in Birmingham are down by almost a quarter under Labour, and they are still falling. That is more than 28,000 people no longer stuck waiting for essential treatments. Yes, there are challenges still, but they are being addressed and progress is being made. Does the Prime Minister agree that this progress must be sustained, including by reducing ambulance waiting times?
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way; she is indeed being generous with her time. I listened to her comments about the former Mayor of the West Midlands with half a smile on my face; in my constituency I find that I have to chase up on endless promises made to my constituents about things that would be delivered—promises that were as real as fairy dust. However, that is a topic for another day. Does the right hon. Lady accept, and I say this as a former trade union official, that there are only ever two parties to a dispute? In this case, they are the union and the council. Those are the two parties who need to sort out this dispute. To suggest otherwise gives an impression to our constituents that is not accurate.
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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Will the right hon. Lady give way?
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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I am sorry to have missed the start of the right hon. Lady’s speech. I am listening carefully to what she says. I am curious to know whether she raised concerns about the cancellation of services in Birmingham in the days when the authority was suffering the sharpest cuts in funding of any metropolitan council, amounting to 40p in the pound for every Brummie.
20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Returning to freight, I understand there is a problem at the moment with the ORR refusing longer-term applications, which presumably has a dampening effect on investment—at least, I would assume so. Do you think there is least the potential under GBR to take a longer-term view, and hopefully to reflect that in longer-term access agreements? Maggie Simpson: There are two parts to that question. Certainly, the provisions in the Bill allow for a core contract to be longer, because it removes the cap in law today. For that contract to be meaningful, though, it needs to have some committed capacity in it, because there is no point having a contract to run if you have no paths. That comes back to the access and use policy, the capacity commitments and how they will work out through those capacity plans. We simply do not have the detail on that yet to know whether we will be able to get meaningful, long-term capacity commitments. That is an open point.
20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Does that data flow come through Rail Settlement Plan at the moment? John Davies: It does not. It comes from the Rail Delivery Group, through its provision of RAAS, which is the rail availability and reservation service.
20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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So that is privileged information. John Davies: It is certainly information that I do not have access to.
20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q But for inter-city, something similar to franchising? Steve Montgomery: Yes, you can put it out.

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