Category: Cycling, roads and public transport

Our streets should belong to people first, vehicles second

Jenny has worked to make safe space for walking and cycling, to improve public transport and to reduce traffic levels

Read on for her latest posts on this topic

Railways Bill Committee Stage Day 4

Published on by jonesjb

Natalie stepped in to cover the first part of the debate clashed with the Public Accountability Bill debate…

Amendment 114A moved by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

114A: After Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—

“Passenger modal shift target(1) The Secretary of State must, after consulting the Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Ministers, set and publish a target, specifying a date by which it is to be achieved, to increase the overall distance travelled by passengers by railway.(2) In setting the target, the Secretary of State must have particular regard to—(a) increasing the distance travelled by passengers by railway relative to travel by private car and domestic air services, and(b) increasing the distance travelled by passengers by railway where railway travel forms part of a journey involving active travel, bus, tram, metro, coach, ferry or other public transport services.(3) The Secretary of State must, in respect of each year, prepare, lay before Parliament and publish a report setting out progress towards meeting the target, the steps taken to meet it and the steps proposed to be taken in the following year.(4) The Secretary of State must review the target at least once in every period of five years.

(5) The Secretary of State may revise or replace the target only if the revised or replacement target is no less ambitious than the target it revises or replaces.(6) Before revising or replacing the target, the Secretary of State must consult the Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Ministers.(7) Great British Railways must, when exercising its statutory functions, have regard to the target set by the Secretary of State under this section.”

Member’s explanatory statement: This amendment requires the Secretary of State to set a target to increase the distance travelled by passengers by railway.

Natalie’s speech: Lords, observant noble Lords will have noticed that I am not my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She apologises that she is currently occupied in the Chamber with the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, although I hope she will rejoin the Committee shortly. My qualifications for taking part in this Committee are that, over 14 years, I have travelled an enormous number of train miles across these islands and I am passionate about greatly improving the reliability, affordability and practicality of train travel. I just looked at my diary and, in the next 10 days, I have journeys to Kidderminster, Manningtree, Sheffield and Manchester. I have my fingers crossed.

In moving Amendment 114A, I will speak primarily to all the other amendments in this rather diverse group, described as “general duties”. I briefly express sympathy with Amendment 118 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. I have heard the noble Lord on the subject of heritage railways many times, and I look forward to hearing him again.

Amendments 114A and 118B are about the role we expect Great British Railways to play in getting people on to rail, given the climate and environmental crises. At the moment, the Bill downgrades the role of the environment, at a time when we absolutely cannot afford to do that. Transport is the UK’s highest polluting sector, and a modal shift duty is an absolute must.

There is a reference in Clause 18 to the effect that railway services have on the environment, but it is a relatively narrow formulation. It is essentially about minimising the harm caused by the railway. We should ask for something much more ambitious: how can the railway itself be a tool in reducing emissions and car dependency, which could have positive cost of living impacts for families and communities, as well as helping us respond to the climate and nature emergencies.

There are demonstrations of what is possible across these islands. Wales has put clear numbers on this. Its transport strategy aims for 45% of journeys to be made by walking, cycling or public transport by 2040. Its net zero Wales commitments include reducing car mileage per person by 10% by 2030, from a 2019 baseline, and increasing journeys by sustainable modes to 39% by 2030.

Scotland has also recognised the importance of reducing car use. It previously set a target to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030 from a 2019 baseline. The Scottish Government have since acknowledged that this target is off track and are revising it according to a longer-term target aligned with their climate objectives, but the policy commitment to reduce car use is still there.

There is another important difference. Under Section 44 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, Scottish public authorities already have a statutory duty, when exercising their functions, to act in a way best calculated to contribute to Scotland’s climate targets and programmes. But Great British Railways, the Office of Rail and Road, and the Secretary of State will not have an equivalent overarching statutory climate duty under this Bill unless changes such as those proposed here are made. If Scotland and Wales can do this, why not us?

Amendment 127 is on affordability. It is obvious that, if we want people to choose trains over cars and planes, trains have to be affordable. I can cite many examples of where this clearly is not the case. Which? found a return journey from Edinburgh to Bournemouth costing £127 by train—I think I have made that journey, and it is not a great pleasure—compared to £38 by plane. Glasgow to London was £101 by train, compared to £67 by plane. At times, I am sure we could find even worse examples. We cannot seriously expect people to choose rail if it costs two or three times as much as flying.

Affordability is not just about the cheapest ticket you can find online. People have to travel when they need to travel. People on low incomes, shift workers, young people, passengers with disabilities and people living in rural and coastal areas, where there are few alternatives, are often faced with simply impossible costs. We need a clear duty on the Secretary of State and Great British Railways to improve the affordability and fairness of fares, with particular regard to those groups. I therefore explicitly ask the Minister: what is the Government’s ambition for affordable fares under Great British Railways? Will they consider putting that ambition into the Bill?

I come, finally, to Amendments 330K and 334A on the regulation of licences. These are about the relationship between the general duties of the Bill and the licences that will govern the railway. Under the 1993 legislation, licence conditions must have regard to the general duties. These amendments would make sure that this same connection is carried throughout the Bill. As I understand it, with the way the Bill is currently drawn, that link is being removed. This seems important, because the Bill gives us a set of general duties for Great British Railways, but then the licensing framework is no longer required to have regard to them. What will guide the conditions that are put on the licence if the Government are indeed taking away this duty? That is another direct question to the Minister. More broadly, where do these general duties sit in the hierarchy? If they are not reflected in the licences, while competition law and other regulatory requirements continue to have strong legal force, the duties could become more of a statement of intent than something that shapes how the railway is regulated. I beg to move.

Clause 19: Safety duty of Ministers and ORR

Amendment 131 moved by Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

131: Clause 19, page 11, line 31, insert—

“(aa) the exercise by Great British Railways of its statutory functions, and”

Member’s explanatory statement: This amendment adds Great British Railways to the parties with safety duties under Clause 19.

My speech: what a pleasure it is to be back on the Railways Bill with a dozen transport nerds. It is such a wonderful way to spend my Monday evening. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that I have been talking about climate change for 38 years, and I am barely closer to what I was talking about at the very beginning.

I have Amendments 131, 132, 144 and 338 in this group. I want to explore the tension between safety and competition in the Bill. As the Railways Bill retains the competition law framework established during privatisation—in fact, it extends it further—we can call it the ultimate legal framework for the entire Bill. The concerns go beyond the duty to promote competition. Under Section 67(3) of the Railways Act 1993, the Office of Rail and Road has significant powers to enforce competition law alongside the Competition and Markets Authority. These are much stronger powers than simply encouraging competition.

The problem is that the Bill gives these competition functions priority over several other responsibilities, including the ORR’s general duties and, in some circumstances, its safety duties. It also limits the guidance that UK and Scottish Ministers can give the ORR on competition matters. In effect, competition regulation is being given priority over wider public interest decisions and democratic oversight, and we have to ask whether that is appropriate for a publicly-owned railway. Why should we carry forward and even extend a competition framework inherited from privatisation rather than putting the public interest at the centre of how our railways operate?

There is some reassurance in the fact that safety functions are protected in several of these provisions, but that does not resolve every potential conflict between safety and competition regulation. Wherever those responsibilities could pull in different directions the Government need to explain how that conflict will be resolved and why competition should ever take precedence over safety. That is my Amendment 131.

On Amendment 132, the new safety duty on Ministers and the ORR in Clause 19 is quite shocking: they

“must take into account the need to protect all persons from dangers arising from the operation of railways”.

This clearly has an exemption for competition regulation, which can only mean that, in a trade-off between competition and public safety, competition will win. That exemption should be struck, and we need a proper explanation of why it is present in the first place.

Clause 19’s safety duty does not currently apply to GBR, only to the ORR and Ministers. I would like to know the reason for that. Is it also in any way competition related? Amendment 131 would explicitly add Great British Railways to the safety duty in Clause 19 so that it applied not just to Ministers and the ORR. As we move to a new rail structure, it should be clear that Great British Railways has a responsibility to put safety first when carrying out its functions. It is difficult to see why decisions about competition should be exempt from a duty that exists to protect passengers and railway workers. Competition decisions can have wider consequences for how the railway operates, and safety has to be part of those considerations.

More broadly, I am concerned that the Bill gives too much weight to competition rather than putting public interest at the core of our railways. The purpose of our rail network should be to provide safe, reliable and well-integrated services for passengers, not to create more opportunities for commercial operators.

On Amendment 144, ultimately the ORR’s safety function should be above all other duties. This is a railway, one of the most potentially dangerous industries there is. It is not satisfactory even if safety is formally equivalent to competition. Rather, safety must take precedence over competition regulation. That is why Amendment 144 proposes a priority of safety functions clause, ensuring that there cannot be a trade-off between competition and the safety of the public and rail workers under any circumstances and that this parity is made clear and distinct in law. Taken together, these amendments would strengthen the safety duties on Great British Railways and the ORR and make clear that safety must come first.

Public ownership has to be about more than just changing who runs our railways. It should mean putting passengers, railway workers and public interest ahead of competition. That is why I have called for Clause 20 to be removed from the Bill. We do not believe that a statutory duty to promote competition belongs in this Bill. It puts competition at the centre of the regulator’s responsibilities rather than focusing on what passengers need from their railway. Plus, there is already too little in this Bill about tackling the climate crisis and making rail travel affordable. We should be looking at how to get more people on to public transport, reduce reliance on cars and make sure that taking the train is a realistic option for people on ordinary incomes. Those should be central priorities for our railway.

On to Amendment 338, there is the question of the status of the ORR’s safety duties under the Deregulation Act 2015, inserted by the Economic Growth (Regulatory Functions) Order 2017. This is not mentioned in the Bill as it stands, but this probing amendment suggests that the ORR be removed from that order. The reason is not, in this case, anti-growth. It is because, as few people seem to be aware, it relates to the ORR’s safety function specifically requiring it to consider the importance of exercising the regulatory function in a way which ensures that

“regulatory function is taken only when it is needed, and … any action taken is proportionate”.

Although this, in itself, does not override safety duties, it is clearly intended to influence decisions about what to investigate, when to intervene and whether to use formal enforcement. It is fair to say that it fundamentally has the effect of putting safety enforcement below competition regulation in a hierarchical sense. I beg to move.

Railways Bill Committee Stage Day 3

Published on by jonesjb

Amendment 78A moved by Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

78A: Schedule 2, page 79, line 2, at end insert—

“(b) protect or improve the environment or mitigating or adapting to climate change, or(c) secure, maintain or improve the accessibility of railway passenger services, station services, railway infrastructure or rolling stock for disabled persons.”

Member’s explanatory statement: This amendment broadens the exclusion from subsidy control rules to include financial assistance with the primary purpose of environmental protection or accessibility.

My speech: I am not going to speak briefly. I am probably going to compete with Lord Moylan and Lord Harper, in the length of my comments and the thoroughness with which I cover the amendments. I have put my name on all amendments in this group, and I care very much that they are properly debated and understood.

The aim of Amendment 78A is to broaden the exclusions from the subsidy control rules. The Subsidy Control Act 2022 has created a fundamental split in the Bill which translates directly into how policy will be made and what can be done with public money. As I understand it, only funding for the primary purpose of infrastructure under Clause 3(1)(a) is excluded from the subsidy control rules. The implication is that everything else will be subject to them. I think that helps to explain the split between the different budgets, with infrastructure funded through the funding period review while operations and other areas, including capital projects and enhancements, come through the spending review, with a close eye being kept on cross-subsidy. That seems to run against the long-standing aim of GBR, going back to 2021, of bringing infrastructure and operations together. The Rail Industry Association warned last year that if track and train integration is to be achieved both need to be covered by the same funding process.

However, my specific concern with this amendment is public interest policy-making, particularly accessibility and climate. For accessibility, will these rules make it harder to reform and integrate funding programmes and plan investment in a rational way so that we can make progress as quickly as possible? On climate, the issue is even more complicated. Many of the things we have been talking about, and will talk about later today, are vital to increasing passenger numbers and shifting people from cars to rail. These could potentially be subject to subsidy control rules, which include things such as electrification and other capital investment. Environmental measures are also subject to additional requirements under the Subsidy Control Act—so this is a complicated and underdiscussed area, and I would like the Minister to explain the practical impact of these rules on accessibility, climate funding and policymaking.

This amendment would create exclusions for both, when the primary purpose of the financial assistance is to protect or improve the environment, mitigate or adapt to climate change, or secure and improve accessibility for disabled people. I hope that the Minister can give us some reassurance about how these subsidy control rules will work in practice and whether the Government would be prepared to look at exclusions of this kind.

My Amendment 130A builds on Amendment 129 from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, which I support, but I want to ask whether we could be a bit more ambitious. We are legislating for a new Great BritishRailways at a time when we face both a climate emergency and a biodiversity crisis. We should be asking what this new body can actively do to address those challenges, rather than simply ensuring that it does not make them worse. The railway estate gives us an extraordinary opportunity. Network Rail is one of the largest landowners in Britain, with around 52,000 hectares of land. Its own description of the railway estate is as a “green corridor”, recognising that railway land can connect fragmented habitats across the country. I suggest that we find a way to put that opportunity into the Bill. Imagine a continuous green corridor running from Penzance to John O’ Groats, following the railway where possible—not necessarily a continuous strip of woodland or one uniform habitat, but a connected network of grasslands, wetlands, scrub, woodlands, ponds and other habitats joined together by the railway estate.

The railway already provides the basis for that network. Network Rail itself recognises this and acknowledges that the railway estate “provides a habitat” for a wide range of species, so that is a vital starting point, but the targets that Network Rail has set itself are rather vague. Its 2035 targets talk about managing biodiversity

“in a way that protects and enhances”

it and says that it will

“lead the way in land management”.

Now, those are good ambitions, but they do not tell us what success looks like. That is why this amendment asks for

“measurable targets for biodiversity recovery, habitat creation and restoration … connectivity and renewable electricity generation”.

I would like us to imagine what it would mean if, every time a railway line passes through a fragmented landscape, we ask whether the railway estate could help to reconnect it. If we did that across the whole network, we could begin to create something really significant: a national nature recovery network, running alongside our national railway network. It seems to me exactly the sort of long-term thinking that we should be building into GBR from the beginning.

The amendment would require GBR to manage its land as part of a connected national network for nature recovery. That means working with local nature recovery strategies, restoring habitats, improving ecological connectivity and creating wildlife corridors “wherever reasonably practical”. We are not asking railway engineers to become conservationists or putting nature ahead of railway safety. The amendment is deliberately framed around what is practical, but we have a chance to recognise that the railway estate is not just an operational asset—it is also land running through some of the most fragmented and depleted landscapes in the country, and GBR will have the responsibility for managing it.

We are asking GBR to maximise renewable electricity generation from its own infrastructure, from station rooms to depots, car parks and other suitable sites, and, where it can, to use that electricity to power railway operations. Where the railway has suitable land or infrastructure for generating clean electricity, it should make the most of it. The amendment also asks for “measurable targets” and a published plan, with progress reported annually. That is important, because we have seen environmental commitments before. Network Railalready has biodiversity commitments and has recognised the role that its estate can play in nature recovery. The question is whether we want to give those ambitions a statutory footing in the creation of Great British Railways, and the Bill gives us a rare opportunity to do that. The railway is a national network; its land should be part of a national network for nature recovery.

Amendment 130B, on nature’s rights, takes the same principle a little further. I support the idea that GBR should actively contribute to nature recovery, but could we go beyond saying that nature is something GBR should take into account and instead recognise that healthy ecosystems are fundamental to our own well-being and to the economy on which we all depend? The amendment would require GBR to recognise the intrinsic value of nature and to protect, restore and enhance nature when exercising its functions. It would also require GBR to consider cumulative and indirect harm, the needs of future generations and the possibility of restoration and regeneration.

That is an important shift in how we think about infrastructure. We tend to ask whether a railway project is technically possible and financially viable. Those questions obviously matter, but we should also be asking what the project means for the living systems around it and whether there is a way of achieving the same objective while causing less harm. There is of course a wider debate about this already taking place in the House. The Nature’s Rights Bill, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is currently making its way through our House, and takes a much bigger step of recognising nature as a legal subject and establishing an integrated framework for protecting its rights.

I am not suggesting that we try to put the whole of that Bill into the Railways Bill, but it is an opportunity to take some of its thinking and apply it to GBR. We are creating a new organisation with enormous responsibility for land, infrastructure and investment decisions across the country. We should build into that organisation from the beginning the principle that nature is not simply an externality to be considered after the economic and engineering decisions have already been made; it should be part of the overriding decision itself. I saw the Minister smiling there; I hope that means he is in total agreement with what I am saying.

I support Amendments 93, 111 and 129. Amendment 93, on climate resilience, needs to be central to the railway strategy. We know that extreme heat, flooding, drought and soil moisture changes are already disrupting the railway. I know there are some hot weather procedures in place, but we need to ask whether we are testing and designing the railway for the climate we actually face rather than the climate we used to have. The Minister said some quite supportive things about this yesterday, and I hope he feels free to repeat them today.

The regulator has previously found that climate adaptation planning was not keeping pace with the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather. We have seen the consequences during heatwaves, with speed restrictions and failures affecting services. Some overhead line equipment, for example, was designed around operating temperatures of up to 38 degrees, yet we are increasingly seeing temperatures approaching that level. I recognise that Network Rail is already doing a lot of work on climate adaptation, and there are good examples, but that work is not necessarily consistent. Responsibilities have historically been divided between different organisations and different owners of track, stations and land, and the creation of GBR obviously gives us the opportunity to change that. We cannot keep treating these events as exceptional and simply responding when they happen—we actually have to design, test and maintain our railway on the basis that extreme weather is now a serious and growing threat to the network.

I strongly support Amendment 313, tabled by Lord Russell. It is an important amendment, because we are in a climate emergency, yet England has had virtually no new electrification for quite a number of years. There are two sides to this. We need to make the railway resilient to the climate change that is already happening, but we also need to reduce the railway’s own emissions. We cannot just adapt to a changing climate while continuing to build and operate infrastructure in ways that add to the problem.

I welcome the proposal for a framework looking at both climate resilience and decarbonisation, but I have tabled Amendment 330J because we need to go further. A framework is a good starting point, but I want to see a plan with binding targets, timescales, funding and a clear programme of delivery. Scotland gives us a useful example of what that can look like. Scotland has a rail services decarbonisation action plan, and it is continuing with the rolling programme of electrification. Three-quarters of passenger journeys are already made on electric trains, and the Scottish Government say they remain committed to further electrification. Of course, you have to remember that Britain lags behind much of Europe: 60% of passenger services run on electric trains here, compared to 74% in Germany and 85% in France.

Electrification is not just about emissions. Those trains can be faster, quieter and more efficient. They can increase capacity and reduce reliance on diesel. A railway powered by electricity can increasingly benefit from the move towards renewable energy. We should not talk about rail decarbonisation as though it is some additional environmental project that we might get round to if there is enough money left; it has to happen as soon as possible.

Every year, we delay decisions on infrastructure that can last for decades, which makes it harder and more expensive to decarbonise the railways. The same applies to resilience: we know that some parts of the network are vulnerable to flooding, extreme heat, landslides, drought or coastal erosion, so we should identify those risks now and have a funded programme for dealing with them. New infrastructure should be designed for the climate we expect over its lifetime, not simply the climate we have experienced in the past.

We need binding targets for reducing emissions, a comprehensive assessment of climate risks, a prioritised programme of infrastructure improvements, funding arrangements, whole-life carbon assessment and annual reporting. GBR would also be required to operateconsistently within the plan. I support Amendment 313 because it moves us in the right direction. We need to move from identifying what needs to be done to committing ourselves to doing it. This is the opportunity—let us all go green and build climate resilience and decarbonisation into the railway from the beginning, rather than leaving it for somebody else to do.

I intervened again later: I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and the Minister and his team for their response. I will just make a comment or two. I am in such awe of the Minister’s extensiveknowledge of railways that I always find his replies in these meetings very comforting. It is only when I walk away and start rereading them that I think, “Hold on”. I will be coming back to these issues on Report. That is a warning, not a threat.

Lord Russell, used a word that I had not used but will incorporate into my thinking: “vulnerability”. I think that that is what we are talking about with all these things. He is so environmentally aware that it is fantastic. It was good to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said about corridors in other countries. It comes back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, that none of this is new. We can do this. We have examples that we can take from other countries and even other railways.

Prince Philip once said to me—quite unkindly, I thought—that the problem with us Greens was that we never gave anyone else any credit for what they did. I took that to heart, because we do not. We think that other people never go far enough. It is never enough. We always want more. Lady Willis, was absolutely right to say that Network Rail has been doing stuff—I really should accept that. The fire risks and the flooding are things that we really need to keep down.

To the point made by Lord Hampton, of course this all should have started 10 years ago—or 20, or 30, or 40. We have known about the climate crisis and its approach for well over 50 years. We should have been thinking ahead then, but we were not. This goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, was saying. Yes, the Tories were better in some ways, but they are regressing now. Had they listened to the Green Party, HS2 would not have started where it started and we would not have had the bat tunnel fiasco. Please remember that the Greens were right back then and we are right now.

I intervened again: I will speak to my stand part notice opposing Clause 20. A duty is being placed on the Office of Rail and Road that I do not understand, which is about promoting competition. I am trying to probe exactly what the Government mean by the ORR’s duty to “promote competition”. I am concerned that there is a lack of clarity here between promoting competition and regulating competition. The ORR already has a role in regulating competition under the Railways Act 1993, but Clause 20 appears to give it a separate duty to promote competition. I would like to understand what exactly that means in practice and why it is necessary.

This is not an issue that I will bring back on Report, because I cannot quite put enough passion into it, but we see that there is potential tension here because the ORR has a number of other responsibilities, including safety, access and economic regulation. The areas in which it is required to promote competition include important parts of the railway’s network services. I would like the Minister to explain how this new duty will interact with those other responsibilities. In particular, if there is a conflict between promoting competition and another statutory duty or the Government’s rail strategy, which takes precedence? I am not convinced that we need a general duty on the regulator to promote competition in the Bill.

I intervened again: Passengers’ journeys are very rarely just a train journey—there might be a bus to a station, a train and then another bus, or tram, or whatever—and if those parts of the journey do not connect properly, the whole journey becomes more difficult. I know this from personal experience. A missed connection, a long wait, separate tickets or poor passenger information can all make public transport less attractive. The National Transport Survey found that for England in 2023, 50% of public transport trips were across more than one type of public transport. That is why integration is one of the strongest levers we have for getting more people to choose public transport.

The Railways Act 1993 included a duty on the Secretary of State and the regulator to contribute to the development of an integrated transport system, and that duty has now been dropped. Amendment 128 would put some of that principle back into the Bill, by requiring the Secretary of State and GBR

“to promote the integration of railway passenger services with—(a) bus and coach services, (b) tram and light rail, and (c) micromobility.”

I also support Amendment 105 from the noble Lord, Lord Beith, which approaches the same issue from within the railway strategy. It specifically talks about improving connections and co-ordinating timetables, ticketing and passenger information, and includes ferry services. The two amendments complement each other rather well. One establishes integration as a duty, while the other sets out some of the practical things integration should mean for passengers. This is not just about making journeys more convenient; if we want people to make more journeys by public transport, the whole journey needs to work.

I ask the Minister why this duty to integrate transport has been removed from the Bill, and what will replace it. Will GBR have a clear responsibility to work with local and regional transport authorities to improve connections between different modes? Will the Government consider putting some of the practical elements in Amendment 10 —timetables, ticketing and passenger information—into the statutory framework? We have an opportunity here to create a railway that works as part of a wider public transport network, rather than as a system operating on its own. That should be one of the purposes of GBR from the very start.

Hansard record here: Railways Bill – Hansard – UK Parliament

Railways Bill Committee Stage Day 1

Published on by jonesjb

I said in my speech at Second Reading that I welcome the Bill; the Green Party has long argued that our railway should be run as a public service, not for private profit, and that is exactly where my five amendments here are going: they all make basically the same point. It was very kind of Lord Moylan, to point out that he did not agree with me; in fact, it sort of made me feel slightly better because, worryingly, there are times when I do agree with him.

What I am trying to do with these five amendments is to make sure that public ownership of our railways really means public ownership. The Bill, as it currently stands, could allow companies within Great British Railways to have private shareholders. The Bill is, or should be, about bringing our railways back into public ownership, and we therefore should not be creating a back door that allows private ownership to creep in.

This is the worry that the Association of British Commuters, We Own It and Bring Back British Rail have brought to us. They and the others are asking a very simple question: what exactly do we mean when we say that Great British Railways will be publicly owned?

At the moment, the answer is not clear in the Bill. The Government made a welcome commitment that all the shares in the parent company of Great British Railways would be publicly owned, but does that extend to the companies sitting beneath it?

The Bill defines a GBR company as a subsidiary within the meaning of the Companies Act 2006. A subsidiary does not have to be wholly publicly owned; it can be partly owned by private investors, provided that the parent company retains control. We could have a railway where the parent company is entirely publicly owned but where companies carrying out important railway functions have private shareholders. Does that not fundamentally change what public ownership means? The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 used a much clearer definition: a public sector company had to be wholly publicly owned. The Companies Act itself provides the Government with the wording they could have used if they intended to require wholly owned subsidiaries. I think we have to ask this: why was that stronger definition not used here?

This is not helped by the Government not being clear about exactly which functions GBR companies will carry out, as the Bill gives these companies the ability to carry out potentially any GBR function. That could include train operations and infrastructure management, which leaves the door open to a very different railway in the future. In a worst-case scenario, the new definition of GBR companies as subsidiaries could even lead to the part-privatisation of rail infrastructure management—a direction of travel thought impossible in the UK since the days of Railtrack.

Railway privatisation has been a disaster: it fragmented the railways, drove up costs and put private profit ahead of passengers. We should not be creating a structure today that would enable a future Government to say, “Well, the legislation already allows private investment and we’re simply making use of the powers that Parliament has already given us”. These amendments would stop that happening. I should also say that I have not yet had the delight of meeting with the Minister, but I am sure that that is in progress.

Sporting Events Bill Committee Stage day 2

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Schedule 5: Transport provisions

Amendment 59 moved by Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

59: Schedule 5, page 42, line 3, at end insert—

“(2A) A plan prepared under this Schedule must—(a) have regard to sustainable modes of transport, including public transport, walking and cycling,(b) aim to minimise greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel to and from sporting events, and(c) include arrangements for admission tickets to a sporting event to confer entitlement to travel on specified public transport services serving the event.”

Member’s explanatory statement: This amendment seeks to ensure that transport plans for sporting events promote public transport and other sustainable modes of travel and seek to minimise transport-related emissions, and include integrated ticketing arrangements allowing spectators to travel on public transport using their event tickets.

My speech to the House: I am so sorry I was not at Second Reading. This is very much the sort of thing that I feel very strongly about. My three amendments in this group are on three different topics. One is transport, one is sustainability reporting and the third is on climate duty, all of which I feel very strongly about. I am going to find it hard not to bring these back if there is not progress.

My speech to the House: I am so sorry I was not at Second Reading. This is very much the sort of thing that I feel very strongly about. My three amendments in this group are on three different topics. One is transport, one is sustainability reporting and the third is on climate duty, all of which I feel very strongly about. I am going to find it hard not to bring these back if there is not progress.

It is extraordinary that this week, the hottest June day ever for the UK has been measured in Surrey. We are hotter here than California’s Death Valley, and that is saying something. We really are not weatherproofed and we are not heat-proofed. We are very lucky in this Chamber. I sat in Portcullis House at 9 am this morning: it was baking. We stewed in there. Of course, a lot of people do not have the advantage of air conditioning like this in their offices and in their public places.

I find it extraordinary that, in a week where parts of Britain have once again seen record temperatures, when red warnings have been issued because of extreme heat, and when climate change is impossible to ignore, we are debating a Bill that contains detailed provisions on transport planning for major sporting events but does not mention climate impact once.

Schedule 5 goes into considerable detail about transport plans. It tells organisers what they should consider, how they should co-ordinate and what arrangements should be put in place. Yet there is absolutely nothing about the environmental impact of those transport arrangements. For major sporting events, transport is often the biggest source of emissions. At the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, spectator travel accounted for more than half of the event’s carbon footprint. At Euro 2024, fan travel accounted for almost 80% of emissions. We need to be serious about reducing the environmental impact of major sporting events, and transport is the obvious place to start.

This amendment has two components. The first is that transport plans should have regard to sustainable travel options,

“including public transport, walking and cycling”,

and should seek to “minimise greenhouse gas emissions”. I am sure the Minister is well aware of all the work that happened in Ken Livingstone’s period at the London Assembly: we achieved a lot. The Government already tell us that rail is one of the greenest ways to travel. The Government’s own active travel investment strategy tells us that walking and cycling help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So we need to tell event organisers to take account of what the Government already recognise to be the lower-carbon options. Parliament has gone much further before, such as in the London Olympics, the majority of which was planned in the period of Ken Livingstone in London, and I am suggesting that we can do that in my later Amendment 88.

The second element concerns integrated ticketing. If we want people to leave their cars at home, we need to make the alternative the easy option for them. Again, we have a very recent and very successful example. Every match ticket for Euro 2024 came with a 36-hour public transport pass built into the ticket price. The result was a success, because more than 80% of fans travelled to venues by public transport and fewer than 5% travelled by car, and hundreds ofthousands of rail journeys were made between host cities. This was achieved by making the sustainable choice the convenient choice. Integrated ticketing also benefits spectators. It is easier, cuts costs, and helps avoid congestion around venues. It improves the experience of fans while reducing emissions.

That seems a rare example of a policy that is good for the climate, organisers and the public. If there were ever an example of why we need to be adding in these amendments and preparing for climate resilience travel, it is today, when trains are cancelled due to heat and people are being asked not to travel. The Climate Change Committee has warned that climate risk will increasingly affect the operation of major events. When tens of thousands of people are trying to reach a venue within a narrow timeframe, those risks become particularly acute. What would it look like if we had today’s weather on the day of the Euro 2028 final?

Asking those preparing transport plans to think about sustainability and resilience is absolutely vital. The Government’s own impact assessment argues that legislation is necessary because voluntary arrangements alone do not provide sufficient certainty and consistency. If legislation is needed to ensure transport plans work effectively, why should climate impacts and climate resilience be left entirely to chance? Given the climate challenges we face and the examples of best practice we have already seen across Europe, that seems the very least we can expect.

On Amendment 87, on sustainability reporting, we hear the same language every time a major sporting event is bid for, such as world-leading sustainability, greenest games ever and low-carbon legacy, and it all sounds incredibly impressive at the time. But I get a bit fed up with the gap between the promises made and what actually happens. The Paris Olympics, for example, set itself up as the lowest-carbon games yet. In some respects, it did better than previous Olympics: emissions were lower than London or Rio, largely because they reused venues, cut down on new construction and made some sensible choices about energy and materials. But when you look a bit closer, the picture gets more complicated. Transport still dominated emissions; international travel still drove a huge carbon footprint; and, in the end, we are talking about millions of tonnes of CO2. Yes, there was progress, but it also showed something else very clearly: without proper reporting, it becomes very hard to know what was genuinely achieved, what was just assumed and what was simply good marketing.

That is the point of this amendment. We should not be relying on glossy bid documents and press releases to tell us whether promises have been kept. If we are serious about sustainability being part of these events, then we need to be just as serious about checking afterwards whether it actually happened. Right now, too often, the pattern is this: big promises at the bidding stage; celebration at the event; and very little scrutiny afterwards. This amendment says that, if you make environmental commitments before the event, you report on them afterwards—accurately, obviously—so that we can see what was delivered and was not.

Of course, there are already sustainability requirements for major sporting events, but they are patchy and inconsistent. Some bids are strong, while others arevague; some report properly, while others barely report at all. That makes it very hard to know what is actually being delivered. We need something more uniform: clear expectations that commitments are measured properly and reported before and after the event. Without that consistency, we are not tracking progress; we are just collecting promises—and, quite frankly, people are getting tired of empty promises.

Amendment 88 is on climate duty. We have had this kind of duty at past events—for example, in the London Olympics framework, where sustainability and wider environmental considerations were explicitly built into delivery. What we are seeing here in the Bill is a step backwards from that approach, just at the point when climate risks are more immediate, not less. We are told, including in the Government’s forthcoming major events strategy, that major events will continue to drive economic growth, enhance the UK’s soft power across the globe and strengthen social cohesion. Of course, they can do those things, but they cannot only be about that, and they certainly cannot deliver those benefits at the expense of our climate and environmental responsibility.

At the moment, the Bill is built around delivery, organisation and facilitation, but it is silent on sustainability. We need to put in place something that should already be clear here: a clear duty that, when exercising functions under the Bill, we must have regard to greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable transport, waste reduction and the UK’s climate and environmental targets. We can continue with a system where climate is assumed to be somebody else’s problem, or we can put in place a basic duty that ensures it is properly considered every time decisions are made on these events. I beg to move.

I closed the debate saying: I thank all the Lords who spoke. On the point from Lord Harlech, I am an Arsenal supporter but I do not take responsibility for every single Arsenal supporter. It is appalling that there was so much waste. I thought he showed great discretion in not mentioning that Islington Council is a Labour council—that was very kind and sweet of him. Sadly, the Greens are only in opposition there, so perhaps by 2028 we might have more sway.

Lord Whitty, tabled his Amendment 95 after the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, tabled hers. Had I seen his, I would probably have just supported it, but this has contributed to a debate, so it has been quite useful in that way.

Lord Moynihan, made some very kind comments. After his tabling that regret amendment yesterday on the Climate Change Act, and winning the vote, I really thought I would never speak to him again. But obviously, his kind comments have completely changed my mind. It is a pleasure to agree.

On the difference between the two Mayors of London, Ken Livingstone and Boris, I would just like to say that Ken did all the back-breaking work for the planning and in carrying it through. As for Boris Johnson, to cut any further emissions he put potted plants along the major roads, which was a fairly inadequate way of dealing with carbon emissions. But, you know—that was Boris.

It was fascinating to hear from Lord Mawson, about these different things that happened during the Olympics. I felt quite heavily involved, but I had completely forgotten about the water situation, and all the pre-planning as well, which I did not know anything about. That was all fascinating.

In response to Lord Parkinson, I hope the Conservative Opposition are going to be really heartened by the fact that there was so much support for putting climate change issues into the Bill. Given that we have had support from all around the Chamber, I hope we can do something much more progressive.

Lord Addington, said that really, this is an obvious thing to do. The Minister knows I have huge respect for her and for her work here, but also at the London Assembly. But the Government have a problem here. With so much unanimity on this issue, the Government have to give way a little bit on this—a bit more than they perhaps want to.

Quite honestly, something that annoys me again and again with this Labour Government is that they talk about climate change, but they just do not get it. They do not see how to apply climate change measures to all the legislation they are putting through. The fact that it was completely left out, especially the transport sustainability issues, I just find astonishing. So, I will be pushing on this. The Government have to be seen to be aware not only of climate change but of the measures we can bring in to improve it.

I do not want to overstate the case, but we are responsible for future generations here. This really matters. I would love to be included in the discussions—although the Minister might not want me there. But if I can be, that would be great. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

Amendment 70 (to Amendment 69) moved by Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

70: After subsection (1A)(b) insert—

“(c) measures to improve the resilience of sporting infrastructure against the impacts of climate change, including flooding, extreme weather and heat.”

Member’s explanatory statement: This amendment adds climate resilience to the list of considerations to be made by national authorities providing financial assistance to sporting events.

My speech to the House: I fully support Amendment 69 in the name of Lord Addington. Obviously, major sporting events generate significant commercial benefits, but we have to ask what their legacy will be or could be. Too often we celebrate the spectacle, the television audiences and the economic boost, but the local clubs, pitches and volunteers, which sustain sport every week of the year, may see little benefit.

Amendment 69 seeks to address that by creating an expectation that those who benefit from major sporting events should also invest in grass-roots sport, community facilities and participation. After all, elite sport does not emerge from nowhere. Every international player and every Olympian starts somewhere. They start on local pitches, in community halls, in amateur clubs and in local swimming pools, with volunteer coaches giving up evenings and weekends. In many places, the local sports club is one of the few remaining community institutions where people of different ages and backgrounds come together regularly. So I warmly support the principle that grass-roots foundations, on which all sport ultimately depends, should be strengthened.

My Amendment 70 takes that further to add that the climate resilience for grass-roots sport should be included too. This is a month when I was locked out of my office because of potential flooding and, of course, we now have this incredible heatwave, so I argue that this amendment seems particularly relevant.

When we talk about investing in grass-roots facilities, we must also talk about protecting them. Across the country, grass-roots sport is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Football matches are cancelled because pitches are waterlogged, clubs face increasing repair costs after flooding and storms, and facilities are damaged by extreme weather. Heatwaves are clearly creating new challenges for us all, and these are real present-day problems for sports up and down the country.

Estimates suggest that between 120,000 and 150,000 grass-roots football matches are cancelled each season because pitches are unplayable due to rain and flooding. In parts of the country, pitches are already losing weeks of playable time every year because of changing weather patterns, and every cancelled match means lost revenue for clubs, disruption for volunteers and fewer opportunities for participation. Over time, of course, it threatens the viability of facilities that communities depend on.

The irony is that we can spend money improving a clubhouse, upgrading a pitch or expanding facilities only to find that those investments are increasingly vulnerable if resilience is not built in from the start. If public money or event-related investment is helping to support a community sports facility then surely it makes sense to ensure that the facility remains usable for years to come.

Hansard record here: Sporting Events Bill [HL] – Hansard – UK Parliament

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill Committee Stage Day 2

Published on by jonesjb

There is no such thing as sustainable aviation fuel. Too often, we have these grand promises that are never backed up— I would argue that carbon capture and storage is another one. But if the Government are to press ahead with so-called sustainable aviation fuel, the very least we should expect is full transparency about what is being produced, where it is coming from and what the real impacts are Continue reading “Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill Committee Stage Day 2” →