I do not say this often, but I welcome the Bill. The Green Party has long argued that our railways should be run as a public service and not for private profit. After decades of failed fragmentation, spiralling costs and confusing accountability, bringing the railway back under public leadership is important and overdue. The Bill is, therefore, a step in the right direction.

If we are creating Great British Railways, we must create a railway that is genuinely great: one that is affordable, accessible, integrated and capable of helping us meet the defining challenge of our age, which is the climate and nature crisis. At present, the Bill does notachieve that. It lacks ambition. For example, Great British Railways will have numerous duties, so why does the Bill not contain a clear duty to increase passenger numbers?

I welcome the target for shifting freight from lorries on to trains, but why is there no equivalent ambition to encourage more people out of their cars and on to trains? To do that, we must make train travel cheap and easy. For millions of people, the biggest barrier to travelling by rail is not whether a train exists but whether they can afford the ticket. Affordable fares are perhaps the single most effective tool available to increase passenger numbers, tackle inequality and reduce car dependence. Yet the Bill contains no explicit duty to promote affordable fares, and changes to the licensing arrangements of Great British Railways could see fares rising as there is less focus on public duties.

There seems to be even less ambition to create one system that covers the whole journey someone might take. As the Minister knows well, this works in Greater London, where TfL runs the London Overground under the mayor’s control. Manchester is moving that way, but what about democratic control over integrated transport for the rest of the cities and regions? People do not think in terms of operators or transport modes; they simply want one journey. Whether someone is connecting from a local bus, a tram, a cycle route or a ferry, the system should feel seamless. Integration should be one of the central purposes of Great British Railways, creating a public transport network where different modes work together rather than competing with one another. I hope that the Government will clarify how the railway will become genuinely integrated with other forms of public transport.

Rail is already one of the lowest-carbon forms of transport. We should be supporting every passenger to choose rail over driving or domestic flying. If we are to meet our legally binding climate targets, modal shift cannot simply be left in policy papers; it should be a statutory objective of the organisation that is responsible for running the railway. Staggeringly, environmental responsibilities appear only fleetingly in the Bill. There is little recognition that our railway must become climate resilient as extreme weather becomes more frequent or that it should contribute to restoring nature alongside the lines it manages. Some 10% of all train services were cancelled or severely delayed in the most recent heatwave in Britain. Last week, I spent six hours getting home instead of three, and I felt lucky to get home at all.

Great British Railways should have a clear public mission that recognises its contribution not only to transport but to our economy, our environment and our wider society. Passengers deserve the reassurance that a publicly owned railway will be judged not simply on financial performance but on whether it provides affordable access to work, education, leisure and family life. Profitable routes should be able to support socially essential services in rural and underserved communities, where success is measured not only in ticket revenue but in reducing isolation, supporting local economies and giving people a genuine alternative to cars. High ticket prices mean empty seats.

Equally important is protecting the workforce that keeps our railways running. I welcome the reassurances that the Government have given regarding the future of the Railways Pension Scheme, providing valuable certainty for thousands of rail workers. The future of Great British Railways will depend as much on the people who run it as it will on the infrastructure they manage.

Of course, the Bill misses one of the biggest opportunities of all: setting Britain on the path towards a fully electrified railway. Britain has spent decades pursuing a stop-start approach to electrifying its rail network. Only 39% or thereabouts of our railway is electrified, which is is well behind many comparable countries. We know what needs to happen. The Climate Change Committee has made it clear that substantially more of the network will need to be electrified if we are to decarbonise rail and meet our climate obligations. Yet the Bill is silent on this.

Finally, I hope that the Government will look carefully at how passengers themselves are represented. A publicly owned railway that fails to listen to the public will have missed the point entirely. Public ownership should not simply change who owns the railway; it should change for whom the railway works. Passengers, disabled people, local communities, rail workers, devolved Governments and regional authorities should all have meaningful opportunities to shape services, investment priorities and future strategies. Improving accessibility will be a huge benefit for our ageing population.

We also need more clarity on how mayoral, local and combined authorities will be able to control investment plans and services. The Green Party has long argued that rail should be viewed not simply as a transport system but as essential national infrastructure for delivering economic opportunity, social justice and climate action. Public ownership is not the destination; it is the foundation. The Bill moves us away from the disastrous experiment of fragmented privatisation—for that, it deserves support —but we should not settle for a railway that merely functions better than before. We should build one that actively reduces carbon emissions, restores nature, connects communities, integrates public transport, makes travel affordable and expands opportunity across every part of the country. Those ambitions really must be written into the Bill itself.

I welcome the Bill’s Second Reading and hope that, during its passage through this House, we can strengthen it so that Great British Railways truly lives up to its name as a railway that is run in the public interest, serving people, communities and the planet for generations to come.

Hansard record here: Railways Bill – Hansard – UK Parliament