After decades of failed privatisation, Britain’s railways are broken. This Labour Government has a comprehensive plan to fix them, and the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is the first step.

Today, the Bill will have it’s second reading in Parliament, and I am pleased to be voting for it.

What the Bill does

The Bill would remove the presumption in favour of franchised passenger railway services being provided by the private sector, and instead allows train operations to be provided by a public sector company when existing franchise contracts end.

It is needed to end the current requirement to franchise contracts back out to the private sector, so that they can be kept in public ownership.

It is a short bill which would amend specific provisions in the Railways Act 1993 and the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023 to enable this to happen.

Our plans mean the taxpayer won’t pay a penny in compensation costs to private operators, and could eliminate fragmentation, duplication and waste worth up to £2.2bn a year to taxpayers.

Why the Bill is necessary

The Tories’ failed experiment with franchising has caused passengers misery, while costing the taxpayer millions.

In the North West, cancellations have increased by as much as 500% since 2017 for some operators.

In the third quarter of 2023/24, only 37% of Avanti West Coast trains were on time, and just 40% of TransPennine Express and CrossCountry trains were on time. Other franchises did not fare much better.

The last Government itself admitted that franchising doesn’t work – and took four operators back into public ownership. But for ideological reasons, the Tories couldn’t admit that their system had failed. Their half-baked plans for reform of the railways stalled for years.

Labour’s Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh MP, has pledged to “move fast and fix things”. So the very first Bill introduced under this Government will take our railways back into public ownership, so that they deliver for passengers, not shareholders.

This is about the practical need to deliver better services where they have failed, and deliver better value for taxpayer money.

Labour’s plans to fix public transport

This Bill is only the beginning of our plans to make the railways work for passengers and freight customers. A wider bill will be introduced later this session to deliver root-and-branch reform of the railways.

Labour’s plan for fixing the railways and getting Britain moving demonstrates the sheer scale of our ambition to rebuild Britain, putting transport at the heart of our plans for change.

Labour’s full plan, ‘Getting Britain Moving’, is available here.