Lords Grand Committee
26 October 2026
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Chamber House of Lords
00:00 - 00:04
Speaker 1
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
00:04 - 00:27
Speaker 5
Do you know if there is a division in the House, we must adjourn the moment the division bell sounds and resume after 10 minutes. Grand Committee on the Railways Bill. Amendment 266, resumed debate on that.
00:27 - 02:52
Speaker 6
My Lords, since we were interrupted on account of continuing and starting a new group quite unnecessarily given the pressure of business in the House as today, I thought it would be helpful if I gave some summary of what the debate was when we last met last Wednesday. So my noble friend Lord Lansley raised important questions of how the existing 2016 access regime will apply to infrastructure managers outside Great British Railways. And he left the Minister with a specific question. He said, with this amendment, all I'm looking for is the Minister to say there is no further intention than to apply the existing 2016 approach to infrastructure managers other than GBR. That is the question the Minister was left with, and I'm hoping very much that he's going to answer that when he gets to his reply.
My noble friend Lord Grayling, supported by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, focused on the breadth of the powers in clause 71 and the risk that existing access rights could be altered in ways which go beyond what is genuinely necessary for the transition to the new structure. The powers are drafted extremely broadly. I think I'm correct in recalling that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe also made a point about the chilling effect on private sector investment in the railways, on which we will continue to be dependent, as a result of the possible arbitrary exercise of these extremely broad powers. The noble Lord Lord Berkeley rightly emphasized the importance of independent assessment of capacity, while my noble friend Lord Harper drew attention to the significant long-term investment decisions made by open access operators. I'm sorry, it's quite difficult in this room to manipulate papers without hitting a microphone, but I will try to improve.
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