Lords Grand Committee
12 October 2026
Speaker dots
- Speakers in the chapter
- Colour: political group
- Grey: no group
Tap or click a chapter's dots to see names and groups.
Contents updated on 12 Oct 2026
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Official source
Offset
Transcript offset
0s
Text size
Export
Replay
Versions of this video
Transcripts may differ slightly from one version to another.
Chamber House of Lords
00:02 - 00:19
Speaker 1
My Lords, if there is a division in the chamber while we're sitting, this committee will adjourn as soon as the division bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes. Grand Committee on the Railways Bill, in clause 15, amendment 91, Lord Moylan.
00:19 - 02:26
Speaker 3
My Lords, it's immensely good that we're back here discussing this very slow Railways Bill and the attempt it puts before us to recreate the railway system of the Soviet Union in Great Britain. Freight is an important part of our rail infrastructure, our rail business, of course. It's very important, everyone agrees on that, there's no dispute in this committee as to the importance of freight, but the bill is woefully inadequate when it comes to addressing the question of freight. Now the government has a target, which is to increase rail freight by 75% by 2050. That is a target inherited from the Conservative government, and the main author of that target, I think I may say, who is in his place, is my noble friend Lord Harper when he was Secretary of State for Transport.
So there is a commonality of view in support of that target. However, there is tremendous absence of detail and a great deal of vagueness about how that target is going to be achieved. And in recent weeks, the government has announced that there is to be an interim target. That's a helpful step, but the interim target is to have a 40% increase by 2040. 2040 is so long away that a great deal of the rail, I believe the rail freight rolling stock might well have been renewed by 2040.
It's such a very long time away. It's no, it's not an effective target at all. Now this notion that rail is to have, freight is to have its own target is both positive and negative. It's positive in the sense that it shows the government is behind freight, wants to support its growth. Remember these are private businesses, private businesses that have invested their own capital in freight, so they will be pleased to know that the government is generally supportive.
The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers
Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.