Comment: Great British Railways and the balance of power

Great British Railways must have a duty enshrined in law to increase passenger rail use.

That’s one of FirstGroup’s reactions in its submission to the Department for Transport’s consultation into GBR’s creation, which closed on April 15.

First operates three major passenger companies under contract to the DfT - Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway, and South Western Railway. The latter goes back to the DfT on May 25, and all three were originally let on the basis of driving passenger growth.

First argues that GBR needs an explicit duty to grow passenger numbers, to counterbalance the duty that GBR is expected to have to grow freight.

Yet over on that side of the railway, there’s real doubt about GBR’s commitment to freight, despite talk of the growth target. That’s because the six objectives that DfT outlined in its consultation document for GBR last February talk only about passengers.

That’s the view from the Rail Freight Group, which also argues that having GBR held to account only by its chair and board is not adequate for freight, or for other non-GBR operators. RFG wants to see the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) continue its role to, in future, hold GBR to account.

DfT explained the change it wants to bring with GBR in its February document: “At the heart of that change is a simplified, unified structure brought together under Great British Railways: a single directing mind that will run our rail infrastructure and passenger services in the public interest.

“GBR will take responsibility for the day-to-day operational delivery of the railways: from delivering services to setting timetables; managing access to the network; and operating, maintaining, and renewing infrastructure.”

Rail Minister Lord Hendy has since explained that his vision has one person responsible for the railway. This is what he had with London Underground when he was Transport for London’s commissioner.

Of course, he had it slightly easier with LU as a self-contained, vertically integrated network. It’s been many years since freight ran from the Great Western Main Line to Smithfield Market, for example. And I can’t recall a heavy rail service linking west London with Shoeburyness via the District Line.

So, there’s a clear need to transparently balance the competing needs of GBR’s own services and those from other operators - chiefly (but not only) freight.

This comes to a head when deciding which services should run. DfT proposes that GBR is to be judge and jury when deciding access rights, although it plans an appeal mechanism via ORR (which today is the organisation that independently assesses and grants access rights).

For freight, the RFG wants the Act of Parliament that creates GBR to include the criteria on which GBR will make decisions about access, including a description of how rail capacity will be used in the public interest.

Meanwhile, FirstGroup is unhappy with ORR’s diminished role as an appeal body. It wants stronger assurances in law that embed within GBR more certainty of impartial access decisions from this monopoly supplier.

This creates a strong feeling that DfT’s drive for simplification is creating a future monopoly that, if left unchecked, will simply make decisions in its own interest, squeezing from the network anything that makes life harder or inconvenient.

RFG raises the matter of engineering access. This is vital for maintaining tracks and infrastructure, and usually involves closing lines to trains. There has been pressure between keeping tracks open for traffic and closing them for maintenance since the railway’s first day.

Freight, as expressed by the RFG, wants DfT to give GBR a clear duty to minimise engineering access, and to have a compensation scheme for operators when freight services cannot run or cost more to run as a result of line closures.

This would replicate current compensation for planned and unplanned closures - commonly known as Schedules 4 and 8 and which is set for dismantling under GBR.

And while DfT talks about creating GBR with a single directing mind, there’s also a power grab from DfT contained within its consultation.

This grab comes in the form of giving the Transport Secretary wide powers to change the way access decisions can be made. According to FirstGroup, this gives the Transport Secretary powers over devolved and third-party networks.

Such powers are nicknamed ‘King Henry VIII powers’ and give ministers the ability to change primary legislation (Acts of Parliament) with much less scrutiny than would usually be applied to creating new laws.

Even Parliament’s website says: “The expression is a reference to King Henry VIII’s supposed preference for legislating directly by proclamation rather than through Parliament”, and notes that they shift power to the executive.

Trade body the Railway Industry Association (RIA) has also noticed this likely shift in power. While it admits that DfT’s consultation gives few details, it adds: “Previous legislative proposals brought forward by the DfT proposed an open-ended power of direction, unlimited in the circumstances in which it could be used.”

RIA is clear that this creates significant risk of ad hoc interventions in operational matters. In practice, it would mean that DfT could keep GBR under close control - arm’s length maybe, but with very short arms.

DfT’s is not the only power grab. Greater Manchester hasn’t been shy in its response to a consultation that explicitly contradicts its directing mind proposal by also pushing for devolution to local leaders.

So, a report from Transport for Greater Manchester Managing Director Steve Warrener in late March calls for a statutory role for Greater Manchester in “governing, planning, developing and specifying the GM rail network services”, as “co-specifier (alongside its regional partners and GBR) of regional services radiating from central Manchester”, while requiring GBR to adopt and progress the rail parts of its local transport plan.

Oh, and it not only wants to set fares within the Greater Manchester area, but also its wider travel to work area. Which would take its powers into other mayors’ areas.

Unlike the old days of Passenger Transport Authorities, which worked through committees, local power is increasingly wielded by individual mayors who are (generally rightly) vocal about their communities’ needs.

Combining these two grabs leaves GBR at the mercy of potentially rival politicians wielding powers in a style more presidential than we’re used to.

Tomorrow’s railway under GBR will be nothing that we’ve seen before. It will not be the monopoly British Rail was. It will continue to have private operators that BR never had.

BR started life in 1948 with a regional structure that reflected the private companies that came before it. When the 1969 Transport Act created metropolitan Passenger Transport Executives, they arrived on a railway still managed geographically.

Even when BR reorganised itself into operating sectors (InterCity, Provincial, Network SouthEast and Freight), there remained a strong geographical streak within them.

That’s still visible today, with several train operators covering areas of the country (Greater Anglia and Northern are two examples), while others cover routes (LNER and Avanti West Coast being the best examples).

This means that train operating boundaries do not match NR’s maintenance areas - and neither match the limits of city regions and their mayors.

To date, the DfT has been quiet on how it would see GBR organised, other than for Hendy’s ambition for single people in charge.

We may yet see a return to regional fiefdoms under all-seeing general managers. BR created six in 1948, but the future could be smaller units aligning track and train operations.

Whatever their size, they will still have long-distance trains crossing boundaries. Many will have private operators and vocal mayors demanding their slice of the railway.

DfT is also quiet on what it wants GBR to deliver. The six objectives in its consultation smacked more of ‘motherhood and apple pie’ than strategy. If DfT is to create an effective GBR, it must know what it wants the new organisation to deliver for Britain.

Network Rail asked this question when it was considering how to use the spare capacity that opening High Speed 2 would have released on the West Coast Main Line. Should this maximise revenue, level up deprived areas, encourage modal shift, stimulate new markets, or support freight growth? And if all of them, in what proportions?

Meanwhile, RIA calls on government to produce a 30-year strategic plan for rail. Great sentiment, but something no government has ever produced so it’s probably unrealistic.

Nevertheless, ministers should be able to explain their long-term vision for rail and its place in society.

FirstGroup signs off its consultation response with a couple of valid thoughts. The first calls on DfT to implement what can be done now to reform rail through collaboration and co-operation. The second urges DfT not to wait for GBR and to use the tools Network Rail has now to deliver improved performance.