Olly Glover MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Feb 2026 · High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for clarity on what the this is and what it is not. It is welcome that it is about Northern Powerhouse Rail and its Manchester to Liverpool core—a scheme that the Liberal Democrats continue to support. We hope this time that the dreams for Northern Powerhouse Rail will become a reality, given the very slow journey they have been on since 2014, when first proposed. I understand what the Secretary of State said about this not being about Birmingham to Manchester, but I hope she agrees that we will eventually need to find an effective solution for transport between the west midlands and the north-west, given the very congested rail network and the M6 being something covered by Chris Rea in one of his songs. I appreciate that that is a debate for another time, but perhaps I can tempt the Secretary of State to reveal when the Government intend to bring forward proposals for Birmingham to Manchester improvements. I share the sentiments of the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and thank him for his work. I wonder whether the Secretary of State has a concern that the Bill advocates a similar legislative approach as the rest of HS2 to consent, planning the route, mitigations and so on. I wonder what lessons have been or will be learnt to ensure that the existential despair that is HS2 will not be repeated when attempting to use this procedure to advance Northern Powerhouse Rail.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship once again, Mrs Hobhouse. Liberal Democrat amendment 252 is intended to strengthen the freight target in the Bill, which—as I have previously said—is something that we welcome. Amendment 149 on freight electrification and the need for a freight strategy highlights the fact that freight is neglected on our network. The percentage of freight that moves by rail is much lower than in comparable western and central European countries, therefore there needs to be additional thought as to how that is going to be changed. The strategy should be a step towards how the Government intend to achieve their eventual freight target. We support Conservative amendments 219 and 220 as they are similar in spirit. We are not quite so persuaded by the Conservatives’ new clause 47. One of the recurring debates we are having on this Committee is the balance between accountability in the form of annual reports and making sure that GBR is not drowned by the demand for them. That is our reservation about new clause 47.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I shall not then, Mrs Hobhouse. Thank you for your guidance. Question put , That the amendment be made.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  As the shadow Minister said, amendment 210 is our attempt to strengthen the ORR’s role in access decisions, so we agree with some of the Conservative amendments, but not all of them. Let me explain the context. In an ideal world, I would not want to see competition between passenger services decided by the ORR, for two reasons. First, the current way that open access is run on our railways can be complicated, suboptimal and inefficient, although in certain places it is producing good results, such as on the east coast main line, as the shadow Minister said. The second reason is that the ORR does not always cover itself in glory in its current form, as per its notorious decision, quickly reversed, about the 0700 express from Manchester to London. I have tabled new clause 56, which we will come to later, which suggests a different way of promoting competition on the railway: it would institute a centrally decided timetable, and some of the paths on routes that have more than one train an hour would be auctioned off. For example, three trains an hour run on the London to Manchester route, and GBR would intentionally introduce competition by auctioning off one train path an hour, which hopefully would encourage both sides to pull their socks up. We have increasingly seen that happening on the Italian high-speed network and in France. Absent that, we feel—with those caveats having been issued—that it would be beneficial for the ORR to retain stronger powers in relation to access and competition. That is why we have put forward amendment 210.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  One moment, Mrs Hobhouse.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I apologise, Mr Western; I had forgotten I was due to speak, because we started to discuss this group the other day. I do not have too much to say. I can understand some of the Minister’s points, but I certainly disagree with others. There is, of course, a balance between being too prescriptive and something being so woolly that it ends up being—this is a very tenuous analogy, but it could end up being like a glass of Ribena for a two-year-old, or predominantly water. That is the debate that we have been having, but I shall not detain the Committee for too much longer. I wish to press these two amendments to a Division, as I stated on Tuesday. Also, I have a thought for our subsequent proceedings. We talk a lot about preserving things in aspic, but for the interest and attention of the Committee we may need a different analogy. Perhaps we should preserve things in stone, as the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) did in the 2015 general election. Perhaps we should turn to that analogy a bit more. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is quite right to rebuke me, albeit very politely and gently. I should have worded the amendment in a non-exclusive manner, to make sure that I did not forget any other form of transport. He is right to highlight, as I know he is about to, the critical importance of the integrated transport terminal in Portsmouth harbour for access to and from his wonderful island. There are many other examples of such terminals, including the one in Ardrossan harbour for getting to and from the Isle of Arran in Scotland. I am sure that, if I had had the Government’s resources at my fingertips rather than having bashed away at this over Christmas, I would not have made that error.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I should have said earlier, Mr Western, that it is a pleasure to once again serve under your chairship as we debate another exciting group of amendments. I want to make some brief remarks on the Conservative amendments in this group. I eagerly await the Minister’s polite but withering put-down. Amendment 26 is a matter of wording. Alas, unlike the shadow Minister, my only experience of the law is occasionally watching “Kavanagh QC”, a reference that no doubt reveals my age. I shall await the Minister’s comments on that amendment and shall reach a view in the no doubt incredibly nail-bitingly tight Division on it. On amendment 218, I agree with the shadow Minister that we need to get mayoral consultation right, and to have plenty of it. New clause 33 seems sensible, given the Conservatives’ and Labour’s total obsession with rolling stock leasing rather than purchase, which I find utterly bizarre. Rolling stock leasing can make sense, particularly when gilt prices or the cost of capital is high, but it is quite expensive on a whole-life cost basis. Otherwise, why would rolling stock companies do it? There are some very nice people in them, but they are not charities. Rolling stock leasing happens elsewhere in Europe, but it is not as universal as it is here. However, that feels like either yesterday’s war or tomorrow’s—probably not today’s. On new clause 36, I note that the shadow Minister has tabled amendments about the private sector to similar effect in group 36. I politely suggest to him that, in the same way that members of the governing party can sometimes be too ideologically committed to the idea that public sector is automatically better, the evidence does not necessarily support the view that private sector is automatically better in the rail context. It is context-dependent. ORR benchmarking from 2012 showed that our train driver and rolling stock maintenance costs, both of which have been in the private sector for some time, were generally significantly higher at that time than those of our European counterparts. I do not believe that those trends have changed significantly. I would be interested to hear from the shadow Minister and from the Government the evidence that private sector is automatically better than public sector, or vice versa. I think it depends on the context. Perhaps more important is getting requirements and specifications for tenders right or deciding in each individual context the best way to get value on a whole-life cost basis. We definitely have a problem on the railway, and perhaps as a nation as a whole, with being obsessed with getting up-front capital costs down, but there is not quite the same level of attention for a decent appraisal of whole-life costs and deciding how to move forward on that basis. On new clause 37, I understand the intention of an annual business plan, but my slight worry is that it could undermine the logic of the five-year funding review period. Perhaps the shadow Minister can address that when he sums up.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We seem to be losing track of the words that have been tabled. Either that or, like a group of management consultants, we are in danger of getting plans confused with strategies and tedious things such as that. Amendment 207 is neither intended nor drafted to encourage or enable the micromanagement of timetables. It is about the development of and the longer-term vision for what those timetables are supposed to achieve, and that is very much in line with what should be a 30-year strategy. I just want to assure the Minister on that point.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I understand the shadow Minister’s point, but I put it to him that the fact that our Parliaments tend to be four or five years long is precisely why the strategy needs to be very long term, so that we avoid subjecting our railway to the political cycle and the whims and whimsies of the Government of the day. But perhaps the key point is that the Government’s own guidance on the Bill, in the section entitled, “What is the Long-Term Rail Strategy?”, states: “It will set out strategic objectives for the railway over a 30-year period.” Would it not be coherent to put that on the face of the Bill?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  May I correct an earlier omission, Mr Western, by stating that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship? First, I want to make some general comments about this part of the Bill, which appears to be based largely on the existing five-year control period framework for rail industry planning and funding. Overall, that is a system that has been felt by the sector to work reasonably well. I had intended not to bore the Committee too much with war stories from my own time on the railway, but perhaps the only drawback of the system is that there tends to be an enormous consultant bonanza halfway through each control period, when the planning starts for the next one even while some of the plans and good intentions of the current control period gather dust on a shelf without necessarily being reviewed. That applies not so much to infrastructure enhancement, but more to process improvements for making the railway better. First, I will say a little about our amendment 147, and then I want to speak, at perhaps rather more length than usual, about amendments 216 and 215. If there is one hill that I would be willing to perish on when it comes to this Bill and its design, it is probably the decision to not include funding for passenger services as part of the five-year funding settlement. Our amendment 147 is basically intended to support what the Government are planning to do on five-year funding settlements, but to strengthen and protect them by simply creating a mechanism for the Secretary of State to reopen their funding should a major eventuality arise. The examples that the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham gave are pertinent; it is a bit of an extreme example, and hopefully we will not be there, but I think it would be reasonable to review the five-year funding of the railway in case of the outbreak of war. Our amendment would not stop the Secretary of State doing that; all it would do is require them to consult the ORR and make sure that the ORR gives written consent. It is a simple step to provide that little bit of extra governance and peer review. I agree with the hon. Member’s comments on the shortcomings of his own amendment 129 in this area. I admire his honesty and the reflective nature of those comments—that is commendable, and something to which we can all aspire. Compared with his amendment, which would prevent variations entirely, perhaps ours is a compromise. I agree with his amendment 119, which shows good intention to make sure that the planning and funding happens in advance of the next five-year period. Before I talk about our amendments 216 and 215, which I really do feel are critical, I want to read a couple of extracts from the policy paper on how the Government plan to fund GBR, which was published on 5 November 2025 as part of the series of factsheets on the Bill, because it will set the context for what I am about to say. The first thing that the factsheet explains is how passenger services—now known as train services—are currently funded. It states that passenger services “run by government contracted train operating companies, such as Thameslink, are funded differently to” Network Rail. It continues: “The overall money available for passenger services is set at the Spending Review and then allocated via an annual business planning and funding process. Train operating companies also receive money from other sources, such as ticket fares. The train operating companies set out what they intend to deliver in annual business plans, then they seek approval from government. When approved, the contents of these plans are reflected in service agreements with the government.” That is what the factsheet says about how things work today. It goes on to explain how things will work in future and in relation to the five-year funding review periods for other things. It states: “Given the greater uncertainty of passenger services spend and income, due to changes in passenger demand which are difficult to predict, Passenger services will not be included within this commitment at this point. Passenger services and other activities outside of infrastructure operations, maintenance and renewal will be funded using existing powers, which will be updated to account for GBR. As these powers already work well in allowing the government to provide transparent and flexible funding to the railway industry, we have decided to keep them and continue to use the Spending Review for these aspects of GBR funding.” Why does this matter? My real issue with the exclusion of funding for passenger services from the five-year funding review periods, and the failure to align it with infrastructure funding, is what the Rail Minister in the other place, the noble Lord Hendy, says about the objectives of the Bill. He has said it on the record on many occasions, including in front of the Transport Committee and when speaking at the Rail Industry Association reception a couple of weeks ago. He says that one of the key aims of the Bill is to properly enable the alignment of track and train—of infrastructure and train operations. He is absolutely right about that; I agree with him very much. Having worked on both sides of the fence, for Network Rail and for train operating companies, I have seen the endless misaligned objectives, budgets and ways of working and can say that he is absolutely right in his diagnosis and his prescription. However, the omission of passenger services from the five-year funding period runs the risk of undermining that. Let me explain why. The key issue is that critical elements of the running of the railway are included in passenger services funding. Those include staffing on stations, in rolling stock maintenance depots and, critically, of train crew—drivers, guards, conductors and so on—as well as train crew training, which for many train operators has been a complete mess since the pandemic. Often, the temptation is to paint those train operators as evil private sector ogres and figures of terror from whatever fantasy franchise one wishes to quote, but in reality, since the pandemic, they have been subject to very tightly prescribed contracts by the Department for Transport, and that has led to some very poor short-term decisions about train crew training that have, at times, led to serious service cuts. We are thankfully recovering from some of that, but not wholly: for example, CrossCountry is still running at a significantly lower level than before the pandemic. There is also the key question of the impact on Network Rail delays. A figure is often cited by those who like to bash Network Rail—having worked there, I know that there are plenty of reasons for doing so, but this one is a bit spurious—that 60% of delays are caused by Network Rail and only 40% by the train operators. Therefore, they say, aren’t the train operators wonderful and isn’t Network Rail terrible? The problem is that, partly because of the way that train crew operations and train operators are funded, a lot of the delays counted in that 60% are fundamentally train operator delays—delays that they have the most ability to influence. Very sadly, from time to time, people commit suicide on our rail network. That is of course terrible. It initially causes very significant delay and passengers are generally sympathetic to that. Generally speaking, the benchmark for clearing and reopening the line in a way that is safe for everyone, having done the scene of crime investigation and so on, is 60 to 90 minutes. Passengers are understanding of that. They are not understanding when 12 hours later the service is still in complete meltdown because the trains are in one place, the drivers are in another and the guards are in yet another. A few months ago I was travelling from Didcot to Cambridge via London, because we still do not have East West Rail—maybe one day we will, but that is one for another time—and many hours after a fatality between Reading and London, Reading was a trainpark. Every platform was strewn with Great Western inter-city trains or commuter trains, because its train crew and rolling stock diagrams are so complicated that it is not able to recover during disruption. That has happened partly because there is not a whole-system focus on the alignment between infrastructure funding and train crew and train operations funding. There has been a lot of pressure, through the franchising process, to cut back on train crew costs, and therefore to diagram—forgive the jargon; I am trying to avoid using it. Diagrams are the daily allocations of instructions as to which trains drivers, guards and others work on. The way to reduce train crew costs, particularly given that there have been above-inflation pay increases, is to tighten those diagrams and squeeze every bit of productivity out of them. When the train service is working normally, it is fine if the train does one thing, the guard does another and the driver yet another.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I want to make a few remarks about the Conservative new clauses, on which we have mixed opinions. New clause 34 perhaps has some merit in terms of its intention to strengthen protections for the five-year funding review period process. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset will speak to our new clause 26 shortly. We feel that some of the other Conservative new clauses have not necessarily been fully thought through or recognise the reality of how railways work. For example, new clause 40 seeks to end GBR’s reliance on taxpayer funding. Of course, in an ideal world we would love all public services to end their reliance on taxpayer funding—that would be paradise because we would not need taxation—but the reality is that extremely few railways in the world are entirely independent of taxpayer funding. We invest public money in railways because they are significant enablers of all sorts of economic and social benefit, so we have some concerns about new clause 40. Some of the other Conservative new clauses have good intentions. For example, new clause 41 seeks to require the publication of data on financial performance. But it also seems to be over-fixated on GBR needing to reach a self-financing state, which seems somewhat unlikely. I have said enough. I look forward to hearing the comments of the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham on his new clauses and of my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset comment on ours.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  We have reached a rather long group of amendments at this point in the afternoon. I would generally have liked to have used that as an opportunity to be concise. However— [ Laughter. ] No, no, the substance is too severe for that to be the case. Let me start off on a positive note: this rail strategy is perhaps the strongest element of the Bill. It is absolutely what our railways need to hopefully get us out of the endless cycle of decision, indecision, dither and delay: “Yes, we’re doing it,” then, “No, we’re not,” or committing to things that are undeliverable before they have been properly planned, thought through, funded and so on. In this part of the Bill, we even have the potential to put ourselves on as glorious a footing as Switzerland and its approach to its rail network. Somehow, I have managed to avoid talking about Switzerland so far in this Bill Committee—

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman gives another good illustration of the problem, and of the foolishness of our current obsession with ordering five-coach inter-city trains, which no other serious western European country does. So often, they are either short-formed as five coaches or the other half is unavailable—or even, when it is available, no one knows, because they cannot walk all the way through and access the other half of the train. We should not be doing that anyway, but he makes a very good point. There are many other examples of what I am talking about, but I hope that underlines why I really do think that amendments 216 and 215 are critical, and why the objectives in schedule 2 should include passenger rail services, which should be subject to the five-year funding period so that they are not subject to the short-term whims of the Treasury—dare I say that it has any influence on this—and so that the fulfilment of the Bill’s key objective of properly integrating track and train is fully enabled. We will press amendments 215, 216 and 147 to Divisions. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 134, in clause 15, page 8, line 18, at end insert “for the next 30 years for”. This amendment would ensure that the rail strategy set out in Clause 15 must cover a 30-year period.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Oh right—okay. I seemingly stand corrected. Well, there we go; this probably will not be the last mention either. It is good that an element of the Bill enables us to have some hope of reaching the glory of the marvellous rail network in Switzerland, which genuinely merits admiration. We so often assume, lazily, that railways in Europe are better than those here. Some of them are in some respects; others are not. However, Switzerland’s railway is pretty much better than ours all over. I turn to our amendments. Generally speaking, the intention behind them is either to strengthen or enhance what is already in clause 15 regarding the rail strategy. New clause 2 proposes to expand the number of factors that should be considered in developing the strategy, to ensure that critical elements that have not necessarily been well-planned or managed on our network hitherto are better stewarded in the future. I turn first to amendment 134. It would very simply put what is currently in an accompanying piece of commentary on the Bill into the Bill itself, including the clarification that by “long-term” we mean “30 years”. The problem is that at the moment “long-term” can mean many things to many people, depending on their own particular agenda. We could include in clause 15 the words “for the next 30 years”. That would make it very clear what the rail strategy was focused on, but would not preclude its being changed in the future. That is important, because any strategy should be regularly reviewed and refreshed in the light of changing circumstances. However, the amendment would enshrine the idea that the strategy is intended to get GBR to engage in long-term thinking in its future planning of our network. Amendment 137 would add a couple of elements to clause 15. First, it would ensure that the long-term rail strategy considered the support that rural communities need to access rail travel and the need for “co-operation with relevant local and regional transport authorities” and GBR. That is so we can have a real focus on “greater integration between trains, buses, trams, cycling, walking and other active travel options.” I hope that is welcomed by the Government, given their own commitment to introduce an integrated transport strategy at some point in the future. Amendment 207 intends to ensure that the rail strategy considers the rail network as a whole and the relationship between the integrated timetables that we need to move to and the infrastructure enhancements necessary to enable those timetables. Let me explain that a little further. The historic focus of development on our rail network has been, with some exceptions, an obsession with reducing journey times to and from London on major inter-city routes. In and of itself, that is not a flawed goal. However, tens of millions of pounds will often be spent on cutting a couple of minutes from journey times. A particular example of that was removing an avoiding line at Stoke-on-Trent as part of the modernisation of the west coast route. It was for the 7 am Manchester to London inter-city train, which has been the subject of so much controversy recently in relation to ORR decisions. That passing loop was taken out just to save 30 seconds from the journey time for one train a day, which does not even stop at Stoke-on-Trent. That shows the extent of the obsession with reducing journey times to London, which I have just alluded to. What there has not been is an accompanying focus on trying to improve connection times between trains at Birmingham New Street, for example, or at Manchester Piccadilly or in Leeds. That is important, because there is very little point in cutting some time off inter-city routes if that time saving is negated by having a longer connection and waiting time at a regional hub. What puts a lot of people off using trains is the lack of decent connections and having to wait for their next train at stations that might not have particularly amenable environments. By contrast, that is what has been done so well in Switzerland. It began in 1987, when a national referendum approved what was a 20-plus-year plan, to upgrade the country’s rail network around connections. That led to a nationwide investment in infrastructure improvements designed to enable a nationwide inter-city timetable, so that at all the key hubs—such as Zurich, Berne or Basel—trains would arrive within a 10 or 15-minute window and passengers could easily change from inter-city train to inter-city train, or from a local train to an inter-city train. Such integration is not just limited to the rail network; it is applies to other public transport. Anybody who has travelled extensively in Switzerland by public transport knows that the same level of timetable integration exists for buses, cable cars, mountain railways and so on. Amendment 207 would create the framework for that kind of thinking: we would have to think hard, in the long-term strategy, about what sort of timetabling we want to see on our network in the future and what infrastructure enhancements are needed to get end-to-end journey times down. Our amendment 135 would ensure that the rail strategy considers international rail. For the purposes of the Bill, that is not the Dublin to Belfast Enterprise service, which is of course the subject of entirely different legislation—a very good train it is, too, and not just because it is named after that series of wonderful flagships from “Star Trek”—but international rail through the channel tunnel. The amendment would simply require that the rail strategy includes an international rail strategy to support the development of international routes and consider some of the key challenges in increasing capacity, particularly rail depot capacity, to the channel tunnel and beyond, as well as options for upgrading the existing rail network so that we can get far more rail freight directly through the channel tunnel, which is currently not possible because of limited gauge clearance on the existing network. Our amendment 136 would require the rail strategy to include a network electrification strategy, which another amendment alluded to. Something that has so far been absent from this Government’s thinking, as it was from that of most previous ones, is clear criteria for electrification, of whatever type—including the current fetish for discontinuous electrification with batteries. The amendment would create a framework for us to be very clear about the criteria that will be used for each electrification type, including maximum operating speeds, which lend themselves far more to full electrification than to batteries, the intensity of traffic, whether there is freight, and so on. It is a very strategic amendment that would help to focus the output of the long-term strategy on things that need to be addressed. I have a bit more to say; I am attempting to be concise, Mr Western, and I thank you for your forbearance, as I thank the rest of the Committee for theirs. Amendment 213 would require the Secretary of State to update Parliament annually on progress on the rail strategy. This is not intended to hamper the strategy or bog it down in bureaucracy; it would merely involve updating Parliament, from time to time, on the development and delivery of the rail strategy. The key purpose is to ensure that the Transport Committee can carry on the great review and scrutiny that it does of so many things—that is not a comment on my contribution, but on that of all Transport Committee members, past and present. New clause 27 would require the strategy to incorporate a national rolling stock strategy. I understand from remarks made by the Minister and by the noble Lord Hendy in the other place that that is very much the intention anyway. Perhaps we will have another of those debates where they say that that is the intention anyway but for some reason we cannot possibly put it in the Bill. Nevertheless, I will press the new clause, because it is so important. New clause 28 would require GBR to set out a cyber-security and technology strategy. Technology is changing all the time, and the railway has not always been the fastest at embracing it. There is a particular issue with cyber-security. A couple of months ago, I attended a forum in Parliament, which was well attended by representatives from the rail industry. There are real issues about how software on rolling stock is kept up to date, and the funding for that. The new clause is intended to ensure that proper thought is put into a framework for cyber-security. New clause 29 would require GBR to publish a report on demand for railway services on Sundays and the current arrangements for staffing of the railway on Sundays, which in my opinion and that of many of my constituents simply does not align with the 21st century nature of the Sunday economy. Finally, new clause 54 would require GBR, within 12 months of the passing of the Act and every subsequent 12 months, to publish a national signalling strategy. The reason this is so important is that we have been slow to embrace digital signalling and the European train control system in this country. That is starting to improve, with ETCS currently being introduced to the southernmost 100 miles of the east coast main line, but those in the industry are clear that the current fragmented structure makes it hard to introduce ETCS and digital signalling, because open access operators, particularly freight operators, are not necessarily incentivised to align their driver training and locomotive upgrades with the plans to introduce digital signalling.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I understand what the Minister is saying, but I am sure that in his line of work he has already encountered many instances where, despite noble intentions for something to perhaps happen at some point in the future, it ends up being years, if not decades, before it does. That is why it would be rather more sensible to enshrine the requirement in legislation.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Support for Businesses · Hansard source

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  10. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of changes to business rates on the hospitality sector.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Support for Businesses · Hansard source

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  In my Oxfordshire constituency, pubs including the Fox Inn in Denchworth, the White Hart in Harwell and the Fox and Hounds in Uffington are vital to their village communities, yet they face significant business rate increases from April. Given that the chief executive of the Valuation Office Agency told the Treasury Committee that, ahead of the Budget, the VOA warned that over 5,000 pubs would see their business rates double, will the Minister tell the House why the Government decided to press on and create such uncertainty for our hospitality sector in the Budget?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I certainly see what the hon. Member is trying to do with these amendments, and the Liberal Democrats share some of his concerns about the balance between holding GBR to account and GBR’s autonomy. However, does he not feel that amendment 11 may go a little too far? Laudable though the KPIs that he has set out are, I am not sure that any railway in this country has ever achieved them all at once, and if the amendment were made we may very well go through a revolving door of chief executives before the Secretary of State can give any direction.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 143, in clause 9, page 6, line 30, after “statutory functions” insert “, but only in respect of strategic or financial matters where such guidance is necessary and does not interfere with the operational exercise of those functions.” This amendment limits the guidance that the Secretary of State can give to Great British Railways.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. This amendment relates to some of the clauses in the Bill that will enable the Secretary of State to give guidance, as opposed to direction, to GBR. Amendment 143 is, in my humble opinion, a very modest and reasonable attempt to simply clarify some of the clear intentions that the Minister has expressed for the Bill. Our amendment would mean that the Secretary of State could only provide guidance to GBR on its statutory functions in respect of strategic or financial matters, where such guidance is necessary and does not interfere with the operational exercise of those functions. The reason for tabling this amendment alludes to things I have said previously in this Committee room, and in other locations—there have been many examples in the past of the Secretary of State as proxy for the Department for Transport, getting involved in far too much of the fine detail of the running of our railways, whether that is the intricacies of timetable specification, whether certain types of rolling stock are upgraded or not, and whether they are equipped with wi-fi and tables, or not. There are many other examples that I could give and I have given before. The amendment is intended to strengthen the Government’s clear intent that the direction and guidance given by the Secretary of State should be strategic and high level. The guidance should be about providing a clear overview of what the Government of the day wishes the railway to achieve and deliver, and about empowering GBR—with appropriate regulation to hold it to account, as we have been debating—to get on with it. I hope the Minister will view the amendment rather more favourably than he has others, although my powers of clairvoyance feel particularly strong this morning, and I suspect that will not be the case, in which case we will wish to press it to a vote.

• 22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I stand to speak in favour of amendment 131 and new clause 9, and we will push new clause 9 to a vote if you are willing, Mrs Hobhouse. The amendments are intended to encourage GBR to think deeply and creatively about fares and ticketing, reflecting the fact that until recently—more on which anon—rail fares have been subject to above-inflation increases for much of the past 20 to 30 years. Many passengers feel that they are not getting good value for money and that the current fares and ticketing system requires a PhD in British railways ticketing systems, even for a nerd like me. I recently got caught out because GWR’s peak hour restrictions are utterly baffling and incomprehensible. I do not wish to speak too highly of myself—it is not my style—but if I, someone with the generally not particularly character-enhancing reputation in this place of being a railway nerd, got caught out, it does suggest that the system is too hard to process and needs to change. Given that the car is the default mode of transport for so many people, an overly complicated ticketing system creates a further barrier for people using it. That is why we have tabled amendment 131 and new clause 9. Our amendments would require Great British Railways to prepare and publish a report on how it will exercise its ticketing functions under section 3 of the Act. Our measures set out various proposals that we would like GBR to consider and which we feel would significantly improve the value for money of the fares system and its accessibility and comprehensibility to everyone using the railway, and help it to draw on best practice from elsewhere—both domestically and in other countries—to improve the current situation. The report that we are asking for would need to include the following information. To give credit to the Government, they recently embraced a long-standing Lib Dem campaign for a rail fares freeze, for which we are grateful and praise them, but it should not just be a one-off that Department for Transport Ministers somehow managed to achieve the miracle of persuading the Treasury to do it. It is something that we need to think about for the future. On this side of the House we are not so fiscally irresponsible—

• 22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I look forward to hearing all the figures. The point is that it is not always about coming up with the exact cost for absolutely every measure. There are plenty of things that are the right thing to do, and that can earn a return on investment. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training is a significant barrier to economic growth. This measure, by making it easier for young people to use the train to access jobs, is likely to earn a significant return by getting more people into employment and paying taxes. Before I accepted the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I was saying that we want a tap-in, tap-out method of ticketing across England, Wales and Scotland. If that sounds absurd, the Netherlands has it at this exact moment—and there is much that we can learn from that example. We want a guarantee to be issued that whatever ticket passengers purchase, via any means, is the best value fare. There should be no inequality in fare for the same ticket purchased via different means, which can be the case now because of the proliferation of ticketing platforms. We want a national railcard to be introduced across the country. Many other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, offer national discount cards, but it is a bit of a postcode lottery here, with the network railcard in the London and south-east England area and a number of other regional or local railcards. We want open-source access to Great British Railways’ ticketing systems and rate databases for third-party retailers. That would build on the useful example demonstrated by Network Rail about 15 years ago, when it made the data feeds for its performance and train running systems available for the public to use. That created a wonderful ecosystem of useful train running and disruption apps that were much better than the official ones provided by train operators. We also want to see greater collaboration with local and regional transport authorities, so that we see much more multimodal ticketing between railway passenger services and local bus, light rail and other public transport networks. That would help us to get the integrated transport system we need to deal with the first and last-mile issues that are often a barrier to people deciding to take public transport over the car. Where a single journey involves travel on multiple rail services, or at least one rail service and another form of public transport, we want steps to be taken to simplify fares and remove barriers to travel. We believe that our new clause makes a number of proposals that would put our fares and ticketing system on a much better footing. It would deliver value to the taxpayer as well as reduce cost, because it would stimulate many more people to use our railway and therefore increase revenue. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

• 22 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mrs Hobhouse. I seek clarification for my own understanding. The lead amendment in the group is Opposition amendment 2; is it correct that we are also speaking to amendment 117 and new clause 3?