- 28/07/2024
- Posted by: Valerie Vaz MP
- Category: News
After decades of failed privatisation, Britain’s railways are broken. This Government has a comprehensive plan to fix them, and this Bill is the first step. The previous Government’s failed experiment with franchising has caused passengers misery while costing the taxpayer millions and they admitted that franchising does not work – and took four operators back into public ownership. But for ideological reasons, the last Government could not admit that their system had failed. So their half-baked plans for reform of the railways stalled for years. Review after review was undertaken, but things only got worse. The Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has pledged to “move fast and fix things”. So the very first Bill introduced under this Government will take our railways back into public ownership, so that they deliver for passengers, not shareholders.
This is about the practical need to deliver better services where they have failed, and deliver better value for taxpayer money. And it is only the beginning of our plans to make the railways work for passengers and freight customers. A wider Bill will be introduced later this session to deliver root-and-branch reform of the railways. The Government’s plan for fixing the railways and getting Britain moving demonstrates the sheer scale of our ambition to rebuild Britain, putting transport at the heart of our plans for change. It is crucial to delivering our missions for Government by boosting productivity and driving growth.
The Purpose of the Bill
The Bill would remove the presumption in favour of franchised passenger railway services being provided by the private sector, and instead allows train operations to be provided by a public sector company when existing franchise contracts end.
• It is needed to end the current requirement to franchise contracts back out to the private sector, so that they can be kept in public ownership.
• It is a short bill which would amend specific provisions in the Railways Act 1993 and the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023 to enable this to happen.
The Bill would remove the presumption in favour of franchised passenger railway services being provided by the private sector, and instead allows train operations to be provided by a public sector company when existing franchise contracts end.
• It is needed to end the current requirement to franchise contracts back out to the private sector, so that they can be kept in public ownership.
• It is a short bill which would amend specific provisions in the Railways Act 1993 and the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023 to enable this to happen.
I was delighted to vote for the Bill which passed its Second Reading: Ayes: 351 Noes: 84