Lords Grand Committee
16 September 2026
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Chamber Actual start House of Lords
15:52 - 18:32
Speaker 1
I'm very grateful to the noble Lord for the meeting he gave me yesterday, on which we discussed the question of the general functions of Great British Railways, a subject that came up on the first day in committee when the noble Lord offered that meeting, which as I say took place yesterday. I discovered in that meeting the question of GBR's functions is a great deal more complicated in the noble Lord's mind even than we discovered when we debated it here, and that there are functions of GBR which are not functions, and there are activities of GBR which are subject to the Secretary of State's direction and other activities which are not subject to the Secretary of State's direction.
And I wondered, I can't force the noble lord, I wouldn't want to, but I wondered if the noble lord would wish to take at some point, not necessarily today, at some point we should take an opportunity to find a way of introducing into our debates in committee a sort of a reprise to some extent of what was debated rather messily on the first day, so that we have his whole view of the question set to music so that we can all understand it. I just leave that as a thought for the noble lord to take up if he wishes. My Lord, I'm going to start in as far as the group is concerned with amendments 63A, 91A and 116A, and all of these are related to the question of innovation. It was only a few years ago that people were debating, people in the industry were debating what it meant to talk, what it would look like to have a digital railway, what did that expression mean?
Everything was very forward-looking. And I look in this bill, which is about the future of the railways, and I find nothing at all about innovation. I find no obligations on the part of Great British Railways to innovate. I find no policies directed towards innovation, no mandate on the Secretary of State to include innovation in the long-term rail strategy, and so forth. And I think that's missing.
In fact, I think, not to be too difficult about this, but I think it's part of a general pattern of this bill, which is very back to the 1970s. The theme of this government, of course, is under Mr. Burnham, is back to the 1970s. He's made that very clear. And we could go back to the 1970s technologically as well, but I don't think that's the government's intention.
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