Railways Bill
“My Ministers will bring forward legislation to improve the
railways by … establishing Great British Railways”
- This Government's bold vision for the railways will see the
delivery of legislation to create a unified and simplified rail
system that relentlessly focuses on improving services for
passengers, delivering better value for money for taxpayers and,
ending years of fragmentation and waste.
- Our railways are essential in ensuring reliable, affordable
and accessible transport, which works for passengers and supports
our economy. The rail sector and its supply chains support more
than 240,000 jobs and generate wide economic benefits by
connecting people and places.
- Unlocking the full potential of the railways is essential to
growing the economy and lowering emissions from transport. The
Government's plan will deliver those benefits, with the railways
playing a central role in our growth mission and the country's
national renewal.
What does the Bill do?
- The Government will put our rail system back on track to
deliver for passengers and support our growth mission, with clear
strategic direction and proper integration and coordination. We
will ensure our railways deliver against six key objectives:
reliable, affordable, efficient, quality, accessible and safe
travel. This legislation will deliver the changes we need in the
following ways:
-
public ownership: The initial Passenger
Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill will put passengers
back at the heart of rail services by enabling us to bring
contracts into public ownership as they come to an end or if
operators fail to meet their commitments. This Bill will make
further legislative changes to comprehensively reform our
rail sector – bringing track and train back together and
planning services on a whole-system basis, to better deliver
for passengers and freight customers, and to unlock growth.
-
greater leadership: Bringing together the
management of the network and the delivery of passenger
services into a single public body, Great British Railways
(GBR). This new body will act as a “directing
mind”, with a relentless focus on delivering for
passengers and freight customers.
-
delivery for passengers: We will put
passengers back at the heart of the railways and introduce
new measures to protect their interests. This will include
paving the way for a powerful new passenger watchdog, the
Passenger Standards Authority, to independently monitor
standards and champion improvement in service performance
against a range of measures.
-
simpler tickets: GBR will reform the
ticketing system, to make it simpler for passengers, drive
innovation across the network, replace the current ticket
types and maximise passenger growth GBR will also ensure that
ticketing innovations like automatic compensation, digital
pay-as-you-go and digital season ticketing are rolled out
across the whole network.
-
support for freight operators: There will be
a statutory duty on GBR to promote the use of rail freight,
alongside an overall growth target set by the Secretary of
State. The Government will include safeguards to ensure that
freight operators continue to receive fair access to the
network.
-
role of open access: Open access has a
proven track record in driving competition and better
passenger outcomes, and wherever there is a case that open
access operators can add value and capacity to the network,
as assessed by the Office for Road and Rail, they will be
able to.
- While primary legislation is required to initiate the change
to public ownership and establish GBR, this Government will begin
delivering improvements for passengers and freight users straight
away. This includes setting up a “shadow GBR” to unite key
industry bodies in collaboration ahead of the formal
establishment of GBR and establishing a new approach to
industrial relations.
Territorial extent and application
- The Bill will extend and apply GB-wide.
Key facts
- In 2023/24 in Great Britain, around 30 per cent of trains
were late – 67.6 per cent of recorded station stops in Great
Britain were arrived at within a minute of the scheduled arrival
time. In the same year, around 4 per cent of trains were
cancelled – the cancellations score for the latest year (1 April
2023 to 31 March 2024) was 3.8 per cent, an increase of 0.3
percentage points from March 2020 (pre-covid).
- The current system is characterised by competing and often
conflicting incentives: operators are incentivised to focus on
their own revenue and costs, while Network Rail focuses on
infrastructure upgrades and maintenance, with little incentive to
ensure that these upgrades reflect passenger demand and areas for
growth. This leads to huge inefficiency for both passengers and
freight. A 2020 report found that Network Rail and Train
Operating Companies employ almost 400 full time staff to
establish who is responsible for delays.
- Passenger numbers have not recovered to pre-Covid levels,
leading to the railway facing a significant revenue shortfall.
The latest official statistics published by the Office of Rail
and Road (covering January – March 2024) show that rail revenues
were around 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels once inflation is
taken into account. There is a pressing need to bring more
passengers back to the railway and increase passenger revenues to
grow the economy and deliver best value for money for the
taxpayer.
