The king’s speech describes more than 35 bills and draft bills to enable economic growth – including one that enforces tough new spending rules. The package focuses on house building, infrastructure and improving transport with a focus on jobs, and green energy. The government’s objectives feature significant transport infrastructure reforms:
- Reforming rail franchising
- Establishing Great British Railways
- Bringing train operators into public ownership
Just as significant to Railfuture and our railways is the bill to allow local leaders to take control of their bus services.
There are four specific new pieces of transport legislation listed:
- Get Britain Building
- Hand back power to communities (devolution)
- Provide better transport
- Make Britain a clean energy superpower.
Economic stability and growth – budget responsibility bill
Pride of place goes to the economic stability and growth – budget responsibility bill.
This is a UK-wide bill to prevent significant uncosted measures from being announced without sufficient scrutiny, to mitigate the impact on public finances. It affects national and devolved spending on major initiatives and projects. It features the UK Infrastructure Bank with a view to improving the offer to the private sector to delivering national missions and long term industrial strategy.
The bill is a caution for projects with no effective leadership, financial control or accountability such as we have seen with HS2, so we are unlikely to see many ‘grand projects’. It does however assist, through the UK Infrastructure Bank, with bringing the private sector into public-private partnerships to deliver. The UK Investment Bank provided a presentation to the annual UK Light Rail Conference in Leeds earlier this month, citing light rail schemes devolved to regional government as good candidates for such investment.
Planning and infrastructure bill
This bill is about reform to the planning system to speed up planning approvals, including streamlining the delivery process for critical infrastructure. Transport planning doesn’t jump off the page but the plan includes a nationally significant infrastructure project regime, of potential significance to Railfuture’s aspirations.
This is really one for us to watch.
Employment rights bill
This tackles subjects such as exploitative zero hours contracts, fire and rehire, sick pay etc., all good and of no material detriment to the cost of running our railways. Carefully slotted in is the statement “making flexible working the default from day-one for all workers”. If this means what it says, it is very relevant to the economics of train operation. Not addressing this uniformly across the rail sector is the key cause of the daily regime of train cancellations.
It does refer to the rail sector specifically albeit without naming it with specific mention of “trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy”. This removes the “minimum service legislation” passed by the previous government but not implemented following a reported threat of additional strike days.
The wording makes great play with the concept of “good faith negotiations”, possibly indicating a level of naivety.
English devolution bill (England and Wales)
This specifically says that the plan is to devolve local transport planning to our cities although the plan is to do this specifically for national rail refers to the West Midlands and Greater Manchester. However the plan stresses the move towards combined authorities such as we see with West Yorkshire Combined Authority actively planning a comprehensive rail network, albeit initially in terms of control focusing on two light rail lines (Leeds – Bradford, and Leeds – White Rose),
Passenger railway services (public ownership) bill – GB-wide
This fulfils the manifesto commitment to bring rail services back into public ownership to improve passenger journeys and deliver on a mission for growth. There is no cited evidence that these improvements will take place. Serious issues with rail service provision are mainly a function of non-existent (i.e., no effective client) leadership at government level and the lack of incentives within short term franchises to negotiate productive working practices. Removing the short term nature of franchises is potentially important for the latter, over time.
Given the cost of such a move, the bill will amend existing railways legislation so that appointing a public sector operator is the default position rather than a last resort. This will apply on franchise renewal or with operators who fail to meet their commitments. It is silent on the situation where a franchise may be deliberately sabotaged by industrial action such as Avanti West Coast.
Currently, four of 14 rail operators are under public sector control: LNER, Northern, Southeastern and Trans Pennine Express. LNER and Southeastern generally perform well, but the benefits of public sector control are yet to show on Northern and Trans Pennine.
Better buses bill – GB-wide
We have an interest here as deregulated buses currently have no interest in fostering integrated transport. London has always regulated its buses and Manchester is taking phased control in the form of Manchester’s Bee Network. The bill extends powers for bus franchising currently only available to Metro mayors to all authorities. It also removes the current ban on publicly owned bus companies.
The significance of this proposal is key to the effective provision of integrated transport for our cities and towns, and key to the economics of rail services in our cities.
Railways bill
The statement says that “The government will put our rail system back on track to deliver for passengers” (they forgot freight!) “with a clear strategic vision and proper integration and coordination”.
This is the vision expressed by the last government with the Great British Railways (GBR) initiative. The previous government lost interest in the initiative but it has now been adopted by the new government. This is good in that the proposals have been carefully thought through over the years, although some of the proposals were watered down by the private rail lobby and some Department for Transport officers keen on the status quo. The plan largely reinstates the GBR plan especially by taking franchises in house.
The quoted benefits lifted from previous GBR plans include:
- Public ownership of franchises (new)
- Greater leadership through GBR
- Passengers at the heart (apple pie) but there is to be a new Passenger Standards Authority
- Simpler tickets (an existing “initiative”). The key is technology with pay as you go of course. There is no attempt to integrate fares with other modes in major cities.
- Support for freight operators (hurrah!) in the form of a statutory duty on GBR to promote the use of rail freight alongside a growth target set by the Secretary of State (not the current target hopefully!)
- Continued support for open access (Office of Rail and Road assessment continues).
High speed (Crewe to Manchester) bill
The government in reversing the decision to cancel the second phase of HS2. They state that in doing this they will not be reversing the decision to cancel the second phase of HS2! It must look different.
The bill is for a new high speed railway from Crewe to Manchester. The government do not mention the gap between Handsacre and Crewe which we understand to will be filled soon with an announcement which should also include reinstating an HS2 station at Euston (timing unknown as yet). The route is to be Crewe – Manchester Airport – Manchester Piccadilly. It should open up the possibility of a Manchester to Liverpool high speed route via Manchester Airport, but the missing ingredient still under discussion is crossing Manchester.
No more levelling up or Northern Powerhouse nonsense hopefully, but HS2 phase 2 is now clearly re-branded as the key ingredient of a rail upgrade for Northern England, not a London thing. Railfuture’s input into this has not finished yet!
It is clear that these developments will dominate our agenda going forward and that there are many opportunities for Railfuture. We are discussing how we are going to respond to this with a view to a structure approach involving the whole of the Railfuture organisation. The mention of rail freight as an afterthought is a worry shared by the rail freight business.
Tram-trains and light rail
The government announcement on legislation does not mention light rail or tram-trains, but there are two developments within it that could be highly significant.
Firstly devolution, the Infrastructure Investment Bank, and simplified planning powers are the three key ingredients necessary for Britain to develop beyond the current 10 light rail and light metro systems. The first test will be West Yorkshire’s plans for two light rail lines set in the context of an integrated transport system planned for the region. We support this initiative.
Chancellor’s statement
Rachel Reeves announced the cancellation of projects in the “Restoring our Railways” programme which have not yet commenced. There will also be a review of committed but unfunded projects. This is disappointing news, although her statement also included the line “So we will use the Spending Review to prioritise specific areas of capital investment that leverage in billions more in private investment”. This indicates a likely criterion for the review. We need to focus on projects which enable substantial property or industrial development, ideally with land value capture to help fund the rail development.
Deputy prime minister’s statement
Angela Rayner announced that updated mandatory housing targets will be set for local authorities. Her statement included the line “The update will make clear the requirement for councils to consider the proximity of new homes to existing transport infrastructure”. There is clearly a preference for new housing to be around existing stations, but the policy statement on new towns (of at least 10,000 homes), which states that they must be well-connected, opens the door for land value capture to help fund new rail links.
Summary
There is a lot to address here and if we are to succeed, we need to deploy the whole of our organisation, particularly our branches, given the devolved nature of so much of these changes in addition to the bill procedure itself.
Our members through our branches have shown they can make a difference. It is time to actively join in campaigning to ensure this emphasis on rail based transport is realised throughout Britain, and delivers a bigger, better, viable rail network that actually responds to people’s needs.
This is going to be a tough task given so many vested interests. Let’s go for it!
Editor’s Note: The text of this article was originally published on 5 August 2024 in Railwatch. It has been republished with permission.
