30 August 2024
Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill The RMT is Britain’s specialist transport union, with more than 80,000 members working in the transport and offshore energy industries. RMT is the largest union on the country’s railways This briefing focuses on the Government’s Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, which passed its Second Reading on Monday 29th July and which returns to a Committee of the Whole House and Remaining Stages on Tuesday 3rd September.1 RMT welcomes the Bill as an essential first step toward the creation of an integrated publicly owned railway, run by a single arms-length body uniting rail infrastructure and services – ‘track and train’ into ‘Great British Railways’.
Background and need for the Bill The 1993 Railway Act, which privatised the railways, created a duty on the Secretary of the State, Welsh Ministers and Scottish Ministers to secure the provision of railway passenger services under franchise agreements. Under Section 25 of the 1993 Act, public sector operators are prohibited from running franchises. This has meant that the only circumstances under which a franchise could be run in the public sector was on a temporary basis under the DfT’s Operator of Last Resort (OLR). As franchising has progressively failed, so the number of franchises being run by the OLR has expanded. Currently the OLR runs 4 English franchises with its equivalents in Scotland and Wales running 3 more. The government has committed to bring passenger services back into public ownership as contracts expire, reach the end of their core terms or sooner if the terms of their contracts are broken by operators. The legal presumption is that the Secretary of State and devolved Ministers will re-tender each franchise for a private sector operator. Indeed, the last Conservative government stated its intention to return successful public sector operators like LNER to the private sector.
Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill Committee of the whole House - Parliamentary Bills - UK Parliament 1