A lot will depend on how many and what type of changes the House of Lords make. There will be a third reading in the House of Lords following the committee stage and then it will go back to the House of Commons. It could go back and forth between the Houses if there are any disagreements over changes, but as you say it sounds unlikely that it will be passed until either the very end of this year or early next year,
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The Railways Bill - discussion about the legislation that will create Great British Railways
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Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
The Liberal Democrats were quite involved in the Commons so im sure they will continue to push the same themes but ultimately the Government has the numbers to just force it through. The other potential risk here is whether the bill delivers enough for Burnhams devolution goal or whether Labour themselves may want further amendments to strengthen the bill.
Snow1964
Established Member
The Railways Bill has its first of 7 scheduled committee days in House of Lords this week. This is where they go through the clauses one by one and decide what amendments (if any) should be taken forward
Days scheduled are 8th, 10th, 16th Sept, 12th, 19th, 21st, 26th October
Including link where details will be added (there are no papers uploaded yet) but papers should be added ahead of each days sitting
Days scheduled are 8th, 10th, 16th Sept, 12th, 19th, 21st, 26th October
Including link where details will be added (there are no papers uploaded yet) but papers should be added ahead of each days sitting
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
A mere 357 amendments have been tabled of which 227 come from the Conservatives. Lord Moylon (Shadow Transport minister for the Lords) has either submitted amendments directly or sponsored them. Having sampled a few of the more substantial proposals they look to be trying to get more" meat on the bone" for GBR which many seasoned railway observers is needed.
With Moylon being a former TfL Deputy Chairman along with Hendy you would have thought they would want to emulate the freedoms that TfL had to run that business but we will have to see how the clauses are received. Cant see who they've selected for the committee but it will be loaded in Labours favour so in principle the bill ill get pushed through.
Farnborough
Member
Agree with this.
The Bill is full of "The Secretary of State may make Regulations..." type provisions - in other words, additional Statutory Instruments (that do not get scrutiny) will be used to fill in the gaps.
...as it should be, given that they hold around three and a half times more seats than the official opposition
Snow1964
Established Member
That applies to Labour in the Commons.
Lords is split :
247 Conservative, 232 Labour, 157 Independent (cross bench), 80 Liberal Democrat, 43 non-affiliated, 25 Spiritual (Bishops), 6 Democratic unionists, and handful of others
Roughly 30% Conservative, 30% Labour, 40% others
Should as in politically appropriate
I have moved some posts that were discussing the status of Louise Haigh to this thread.
Discussion here should be confined to the GBR Legislation
Discussion here should be confined to the GBR Legislation
officewalla
Member
Currently costing the taxpayer c£2billion per year is a good deal to run a passenger service. I would bet my mortgage if it were possible that this will end up with a worse service that costs more. Once a state monopoly gets involved this is always the outcome.
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It’s £12bn.
officewalla
Member
No it is not. Most of the money is used by NR. The ToCs cost around £2billion. Publicly available information. Just Google it!
zwk500
Veteran Member
In what way is the operation of the network not related to running a passenger service?
Government support to the network as a whole is just under £12bn, from a quick google on the ORR site:
Increasing fares revenue contributes to reduction in government subsidy for the railways | Office of Rail and Road
Train fare revenue for Great Britain’s rail network rose 8% to £11.5 billion between April 2024 and March 2025 when compared to the previous year, the latest statistics from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) show. However, despite the number of passenger journeys approaching pre-pandemic levels...
That money to NR is used overwhelmingly to provide the network for passenger services.
officewalla
Member
It is not government support to provide a railway. the railway is a national strategic asset and there is a cost associated with the asset. The NR budget is not a subsidy it is a cost. The ToC money is a subsidy because without additional taxpayer money, the services that we all see daily would not be viable for a private company. The distinction is important.In what way is the operation of the network not related to running a passenger service?
Government support to the network as a whole is just under £12bn, from a quick google on the ORR site:
Increasing fares revenue contributes to reduction in government subsidy for the railways | Office of Rail and Road
Train fare revenue for Great Britain’s rail network rose 8% to £11.5 billion between April 2024 and March 2025 when compared to the previous year, the latest statistics from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) show. However, despite the number of passenger journeys approaching pre-pandemic levels...www.orr.gov.uk
That money to NR is used overwhelmingly to provide the network for passenger services.
Only a few parts of it are, as per the Network Rail strikes the important parts remained open the rest closed and no one really noticed. For example they ran trains into to Drax Power Station as that is a national strategic asset.
zwk500
Veteran Member
So if we ran zero passenger services the government would still pay to maintain the current network?
officewalla
Member
Yes of course as it is not just a passenger railway network.
Freight only runs over a small proportion of the network's route mileage. For example there is barely any freight over rural branch lines or most commuter lines in the southeast. Are you seriously suggesting that all of those lines would still be maintained at a great expense if there were no services running over them?
Moreover, if they were no passenger services, would the government want to subsidise the freight operators to the tune of £10bn a year?
officewalla
Member
Not at all. the exact opposite. The DfT (HMG) would shut them down in a heartbeat and claim to have saved the taxpayer £billions. It is not a subsidy any more than paying for the NHS of the MoD is a subsidy. It is a national government spending commitment allocated in the annual budget ie Transport gets £xbillions to do the government transport things. Don't understand how anybody can see the difference between planned spending by HMG and subsidy. the £2 bus fare gimmick is a subsidy because otherwise fares would be significantly higher and services would be significantly reduced. Planned spending on railway infrastructure is just that capital and maintenance spending out of general taxation on a national strategic asset.
zwk500
Veteran Member
So to summarise your last few posts:
A subsidy (payment to private company, if I've understood your definition in post #374 correctly) is a cost to the taxpayer but a cost the government pays directly out of general taxation (#379) is not a cost to the taxpayer (#370-4).
And that if passenger services ceased, the government would continue to maintain the entire rail network we currently have with no changes to the standards it's maintained to (#377), but simultaneously it would shut down freight operators in a heartbeat (#379).
So once passenger and freight have been shut down what would be running on this strategic national asset (#374) that would require £10bn annually to maintain?
A subsidy (payment to private company, if I've understood your definition in post #374 correctly) is a cost to the taxpayer but a cost the government pays directly out of general taxation (#379) is not a cost to the taxpayer (#370-4).
And that if passenger services ceased, the government would continue to maintain the entire rail network we currently have with no changes to the standards it's maintained to (#377), but simultaneously it would shut down freight operators in a heartbeat (#379).
So once passenger and freight have been shut down what would be running on this strategic national asset (#374) that would require £10bn annually to maintain?
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The term subsidy is used because the nationalised railway competes with other modes of transport and private open access TOCs. Those other modes of transport either also receive subsidy (e.g. the £2 bus fare cap as you say) or stand on their own feet in direct financial terms (e.g. aviation and private cars, which of course raise a substantial amount of tax revenue).
The picture is naturally more complicated when you look at indirect societal subsidies in terms of pollution and congestion but if you look at it through a pure day-to-day financial lens, passenger services absolutely are subsidised to the tune of £12bn a year.
The MoD is the only provider of military defence in the country so its budget is not deemed a subsidy - it's not competing with anyone (well, other than foreign militaries perhaps!).
I don’t need to Google it, as I know where to look. The ORR provides the definitive assessment of GB rail industry finances, and the front page of their last one is below. Look at the “Government Funding” part. “Thanks for the advoice” (said in the style of John McClane)
officewalla
Member
o
Of course it is not £12billion to the passenger operating part of the industry.
You need to drill down further than a headline. But why let the truth get in the way of a soundbite headline. This headline says the railway industry costs about £26billion per year of which HMG provides £12billion across the whole industry. GBR is not now and never will improve services. Central control and another layer of bureaucracy adds costs and is the socialists way of making you believe things will be better whilst quietly cutting services. It has already started in the Anglia region and GBR is not even a legal entity yet.
So the additional services coming to GBR Anglia in December are imaginary ?
Clarence Yard
Established Member
- Joined
- 18 Dec 2014
- Messages
- 3,268
Yes, because GBR Anglia does not exist yet. It is still only DfTO TOCs and NR working together.
Ok, the following December.
KNN
Member
What happened to this thread being about the Railways Bill? Can we start another one about that if this one is going to be a debate about the cost of the railways.
But you don't know that's definitely going to happen.
I don’t know I’m defintiely going to wake up tomorrow, but I rather hope I do. In my assessment, the chances are similar.
I don't dispute that you're right at all about the likelihood, I'm just making the general point that lots of unknown unknowns can crop up before offers come around to being made.