Lords Grand Committee

8 septembre 2026

The Committee opens and peers use Clause 1 and the first amendment group to contest the Bill’s core design of Great British Railways, debating full nationalisation versus mixed-ownership models, safeguards on Crown control, protection for officials, and the transparency of GBR’s internal structure before the Minister defends the proposed company form and concludes scrutiny of Clauses 1 and 2.

Lords Grand Committee

00:07 - 00:25

Intervenant 2

I begin with the usual warning that if there is a division in the chamber while we are sitting, the committee will adjourn as soon as the division bells are rung and resume after ten minutes. Grand Committee on the Railways Bill. Clause one, amendment one, Lord Moylan.

00:25 - 02:48

Intervenant 1

My Lords, may I start by saying that in the course of preparing for this committee, I've had a number of meetings with the Minister and with his officials. And I'd like to thank both Minister and officials for making themselves available for those meetings. I'll say that now because I shall almost certainly forget to say it at more appropriate times later on, but if I do, it's not because I don't mean quite seriously how grateful I am for what, for the contribution and the effort they've made. My Lords, we're here on the first day of the committee to create a Soviet-style railway in the United Kingdom. And to go back, and we now know explicitly it's the government's intention, it's the intention of the Prime Minister, to go back to the warm and fuzzy 1970s.

The 1970s is now the paradigm of where our nation should be. Those of us who remember the 1970s, and there may be a number of them in the room, don't have such fond memories of the standard of public services in the 1970s compared to what we have today. We don't today have bodies unburied, we don't have refuse piled high in the streets as a result of government folly. And we do have railways that run broadly on time compared to the, I see the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw isn't here to be annoyed by this, but the relative catastrophe of British Rail in its worst days as it trundled towards, as it trundled towards its final station. But now it is to be resuscitated.

And we are to get Great British Rail, Great British Railways I should say, in place of British Rail. And we are going to have it on a totally nationalised basis. Now, there are two separate things going on here. The first is that the government makes a case, the Minister makes a case, that the railways would operate more efficiently if, as he puts it, track and train were united. That is an argument which can be debated.

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