Welcome to our third and final panel of today. Could you both introduce yourselves?

I am Alex Robertson, and I am the chief executive of Transport Focus.

Good morning. I am Alex Campbell, and I am the director of policy and insight at Trasport Focus.

We might have to use “Mr”, as you have the same name. Could you outline how the role of Transport Focus will change under the Bill? Particularly important for us is how you see that being a benefit for passengers.

The first thing to say—I will take this step by step—is that it will be built out of our existing functions. At the moment, we are responsible for representing rail users in Great Britain, bus users in England outside London and users of the strategic road network. It will build on the multi-modal work that we already do and the insight that we already have from passengers. We think there is strength in that. The changes give us an increased role as statutory adviser. We will be formally consulted on some of the key documents that will determine the priorities for the railway in the future. Part of what we do now, and what we think this will help with, is ensuring that the issues and priorities that passengers care about are addressed from the start, and that we are not dealing with problems later. There is also a general duty for us to be consulted on matters that might affect passengers—things like fares and timetabling. I would expect us to have a role in making sure the voice of users is heard before decisions are made so that we do not have to challenge them afterwards. The third way in which our responsibilities are changing is that we are acquiring new functions. Essentially, we are bringing together the customer and passenger-focused element of the work that the Office for Rail and Road does into our organisation. As I said before, I think that sits well alongside our existing duties. We will be taking over sponsorship of the Rail Ombudsman, and we will set the consumer-facing standards for accessibility, passenger information, delay compensation and complaint handling. Bringing that together allows us to set standards in the right place and make sure issues that are coming through from the frontline—complaints—are dealt with properly. We can get into some of what that might look like in practice, but it puts us in a position where we can set standards at the right level and make sure they are followed through. The final area is that our general powers are being strengthened. We will be able to require information to be provided to us, require improvement plans to be produced and refer matters to the ORR for enforcement. We will have a range of powers, and—we may get on to this—how we use them in the new railway will be extremely important.

You are both from Transport Focus, so one or other of you will answer the questions as you see fit. With the proposed passenger watchdog, will passengers notice a difference from Transport Focus, and what will that difference be?

Perhaps I can give example and then pick up some broader points. Let’s take passenger assistance failure. I hope that what we will be able to do—certainly the legislation will put us in a position to do this—is take a different approach at both an individual level and a systemic level. A complaint would be made that there had been failure passenger assistance, and we would be setting standards for how complaints are handled. You want that complaint to be handled properly, first time round. In doing that, we would be able to look at the level of compensation that people receive for failed passenger assistance. At the moment, for failed passenger assistance it is possible, although not in all cases, to receive only the value of your ticket. I think that that is plainly wrong. I come from a complaint-handling background, in the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, where, for public service failure, you would typically be getting compensation relating to your distress and inconvenience. With these powers, there is a potential to look at what a better or different form of individual redress might look like in practice. Secondly, with the sponsorship of the ombudsman and the wider powers that we have, we could pick up that individual issue—either a repeated issue for one person or from seeing multiple complaints—and identify a systemic issue. Then we could go to GBR and say, “This is not good enough; something needs to happen.” As I mentioned before, we have a range of tools available to us to make sure action is taken. That is one specific example, on a very important issue, which I hope illustrates it. That would also be applicable in a range of other areas. Alex, do you want to add to that?

Alex mentioned our multimodal remit. When we are looking at the rail passenger experience, we can also consider the bus passenger experience. As we know, most journeys will involve multiple forms of transport. Although in coming across to us it will not necessarily be grounded in a quasi-regulatory role in terms of standards on buses and so on, we can still have that much broader, holistic picture and experience. We can bring it together in our advice to the Secretary of State, GBR or other relevant stakeholders.

What role did you have in shaping the Bill’s provisions around the passenger watchdog?

It was fairly extensive. We had been talking to the Department. We knew that there was the aspiration to create the passenger watchdog, and we were keen to make sure that that was thought about properly. We responded to the consultation independently—we took our own view on it—and we published our response, which you may have seen, in April. Since then, we have been working with the Department. In very broad terms, Jacob, we are content with what is in the legislation. We think it will work. We know that there is a lot more to be done to stand it up and get it to work. Of course, there may be changes and improvements made through the parliamentary process, and we would respond to those, too, but we are happy with where we are at the moment. Alex, is there anything that you want to add?

As you would hopefully expect, we have been working closely with the Department, the ORR and the Rail Ombudsman through a working group to make sure that the operational and practical matters, which we know we will have to get into in a lot more detail next year, are well under way. That extends more broadly to things like the GBR licence, which, as you heard previously, will be consulted on at some point next year. We expect to be working quite intimately with the Department and others on the detail of that.

Are the provisions in the Bill broadly what you recommended? Are there any areas where it perhaps does not go as far as you wanted?

There is one, but let me be clear about what I mean by that. We had said that one of the additional powers we wanted was the ability to call representatives of GBR and others involved in the railway into meetings, so that we could hold them to account in public. That is very important. We have received assurances from the Government that we will get that power; it will probably be through the licence, rather than on the face of the Bill. I think that we are agnostic on the route through which the power is set, but we think it is important. More broadly, holding GBR to account in public will be quite an important feature of how the new system works. It is important to have that power and the clarity that people should be expected to come in and answer questions from us.

Are there any parts where you think it does not go far enough, where it needs to be strengthened in terms of provisions that are in the Bill for the passenger watchdog?

No. That is not to say, of course, that through this process it could not be improved. But from where we have been sitting and the questions that we have been asking, we are content that it does give us additional functions that make sense, which I mentioned earlier, and also the additional powers that we need to exercise.

The passenger watchdog will have the power to set standards on behalf of passengers. How do you envisage those powers will be used? What are your parameters going to be when you set those standards? What will you have regard to? As well as exactly how the passenger feels, are you going to think about the value for money, the capacity on the railway, etc?

I will give you something more general to begin with. It is very important that we start from what passengers want and expect from the railway. That is the unique thing that we bring and we have a deep understanding of that already. We would take the four areas of standards and look at what passengers want from the railway and think about how the standards could focus on the outcomes that passengers receive—their experience as opposed to the processes. That would be one general starting point. But how we do it is very important—I think you are alluding to that—particularly on the accessibility standard and working with disabled passengers to make sure it is co-created with them and genuinely reflects the priorities they have. It is also very important in setting the standard to think about how it would be monitored, so that it can be, again, moving into a place where we are able to clearly demonstrate that the standard has been hit in terms of people’s experience. There may be different ways to achieve the right outcome for passengers, but it is important to make sure that works. The other thing that is important is in the legislation. We need to do this with the ORR, and ultimately it will be signed off by the Secretary of State as well. The ORR are the enforcement body for this. We need to work with them in developing the standards, as well as making sure they are the right standards. Alex, do you want to say a little bit more on that?

I have a couple of other points on the general duties. As you will be aware, we have a particular duty to have regard to the interests and needs of disabled people. We also have a requirement to take into account public spend. That does not mean we will have a team of economists poring over every proposal that comes forward, but it needs to be in the back of our minds as we consider things. More broadly, we are now deep in discussions with the ORR, because they have those standards already. They are responsible for thinking about the practicalities of how they would then come across to us. As our colleagues mentioned when they gave evidence to you, there is potentially a transfer of staff involved, so we need to be sensitive to that. And, of course, one of the other key elements will be the GBR licence and how that interacts with the standards. We expect that to say a little bit about the need to meet the standards, but there will be detail that needs to be worked through in practice.

We have heard the view that the passenger watchdog will lack the necessary independence, power and resources to effectively stand up for the interests of passengers. Would you agree with those concerns? If you do, what suggestions might you make for changing the Bill to avoid that risk?

We actually said in our response to the consultation that it was very important that our independence was guaranteed in any future arrangement. We have had assurances from the Government that that was the case. I have been chief executive here for two years. What we would want that independence to mean is complete independence in decision making and the advice that we provide. That has been my experience in the last two years. You will remember, I am sure, just over two years ago the Government of the time went out with a consultation on closing ticket offices and we opposed every single one of them. That clearly was not what the Government wanted us to do. They accepted our advice, and we made that independently. So I do think it is very important. We have had assurances and that must be the case going forward. The other point you raise is about resources. Again, I think you are right. Let’s be clear: we are creating a single, very large organisation that will be a very powerful force in the rail sector. We must have independent, well-resourced organisations to challenge it, and I am confident that the Department for Transport sees it that way, too.

Looking a little bit more deeply at the ORR, what do you see your relationship with it being under this new system?

Our current relationship—Alex will want to pick this up—is generally positive. As you might know, we share an office with them in London. As it happens, we also share an office with them in Manchester. Our general working relationship is good and close. We have also worked with them on specific pieces of work. Some of you may be familiar with the work we did recently on stranded trains. Obviously, the relationship is changing. There will be some colleagues who transfer across. We need particularly to make sure that the areas where we are setting the standards and monitoring, and where they are doing the enforcement, must be set out properly. We must work very closely with them as we set that arrangement up. We have started some of the conversations, haven’t we, Alex?

It is also worth noting that we already have quite a strong overlap with those specific areas that are coming across to us—the accessibility complaints, delay repay and so on—so it is not as if it is an area that we have shown no interest in. They are really core to the passenger experience. We are working through, with those teams, exactly how they manage those processes at the moment. There will be elements of the process that will sit with ORR at least in the short term around some of the data collection, so we need to make sure that flows through to us—that the arrangements are appropriate and in place. The potential handover to enforcement is crucial. To avoid duplication and the ORR feeling that it has to do a separate investigation itself from scratch, we need to make sure that it is happy with what we are providing to it. As Alex mentioned previously, the ORR also needs to approve the standards that we will be setting. I worked in a regulator for 10 years—not the ORR—and there are processes that go through an organisation. The fact that we will be slightly outside that does not fundamentally change it. A compliance team—an enforcement team—will still need to be reassured that the people providing them with the information and the case have done their job, and there need to be processes in place to do that.

Do you think that the ORR will be able to enforce things that you cannot, and do you have confidence that it will have sufficient powers to escalate issues that the watchdog is not able to?

We see our role as being that one right up to the point of enforcement, through the full suite. That is speaking to people informally on a telephone call or in a meeting, through to more publicly publishing results and findings and, if necessary—if we get the power in the licence—bringing people into a public meeting and so on and challenging them publicly in this sort of forum. Ultimately, however, it is the ORR that will enforce against the licence. I do not think there is anything else for the ORR in the licence—that is a question more for ORR, but I do not think there is anything there. From our perspective, it is clear that we hand over to it at that final point.

Would you welcome further powers for the watchdog, so that you are able to take more of that enforcement? The concern is that you will do all the nice “Let’s have a conversation about this and try to solve it and see if it changes” but could then get to a point where you cannot do anything. Do we need to be clearer that you could potentially then enforce, rather than the ORR effectively going right back to the beginning and going through all that process again? That would be keeping passengers as the focus, rather than elongating the time it would take to get anything done.

That last point is key. We do not want the entire process to go through again, hence the good—

Do you need more in the Bill, then, to make sure that that does not happen?

On the question of us having enforcement as well—if that is what Parliament decides, we will work with that, but that is a fundamentally different beast. We are not an enforcement body at the moment. It requires a whole different set of legal and regulatory skills to be in place, which is fine if that is what is required. There is also the whole question about regulatory uncertainty. If you are on the receiving end, which body is it that is going to regulate against your licence? From my experience in regulation, having potentially two regulators dealing with the same part of the licence becomes difficult if you are on the regulatory end, let alone if you are on the receiving end. Again, if Parliament calls for it, we will do it, but I think it is pretty clear for us and for the ORR, and we can work with that.

We have mainly been talking about individual passengers. One thing that concerns me, particularly in the early days, is the standardisation as all the different train operating companies and everything else is brought together. I imagine that even after we have GBR, there will be some forms of regionalisation within it. Is part of your role making sure there is consistency for passengers in different parts of the country?

It is a very good question. I think it would depend on the issue and where consistency of experience is important. One of the areas where consistency of experience is very important is accessibility. You are describing some of the decisions that are to come with the creation of Great British Railways. I was mentioning earlier the power for us to be a statutory adviser. We would expect to be involved in those conversations, bringing a passenger perspective into conversations about standardisation and where there should be local and regional variation. Some of that we can do from our existing knowledge, but we would also potentially want to go out and bring the actual voices of passengers into that conversation, so that we could understand whether the choices made are in fact the right ones.

I am thinking of parallels with some of our casework, where you know there is a big, systemic issue but it might not come from a complaint or many complaints. Does the process have to start with a complaint or multiple complaints, or can you get working on something where you might not have complaints but you know there is an issue—for example, with level boarding or the ticketing system—where the service could be better for passengers? Do you feel you will have the power to change either through enforcement or some other tool?

In terms of identifying issues—and I think this is one of the strengths of giving it to us as an organisation—there are a range of different sources of information that we would want to use to identify an issue, from operational data about what is going on on the railway, so that we can spot a problem early, to complaints data and information from surveys that we run. There is an industry-wide survey that we will be publishing tomorrow. We will produce a league table of all passengers’ experience on each different train operating company against a range of measures that passengers have said are important to them. That gives us the opportunity to go in without a complaint. From my experience of complaint handling in previous roles, those bigger-picture bits of data will sometimes miss the individual experience that identifies a systemic issue directly affecting a proportionately small but none the less significant number of people very severely. I do think accessibility will be one of those topics.

Which we are about to move on to.

The other thing, briefly, is that the involvement of passengers in the solution is very important. Maybe we can talk about that, but you do not need to wait for a complaint to come through on that.

Including, possibly, rolling stock design.

Well, quite. We did some work some time ago with Merseytravel in Liverpool on the new rolling stock there, which, as some of you will know, has much better accessibility and level boarding. We set up a passenger community that advised all the way through during the design and build phase—genuine co-creation. We would want something like that to be replicated more widely.

We are content with the wording of the legislation at the moment, but before getting too far into what the alternatives would be, accessibility is already a very high priority for our organisation. It is a key priority in our business plan. It is one of the objectives that we have. We think it is extremely important that it is addressed now and in the future through the changes in the Railways Bill. To be honest, I do not know what the effect of an alternative form of wording is. Sitting in the position I am in and knowing the conversations we have, I can say that we will absolutely be prioritising accessibility. We are going to ask ourselves some pretty hard questions, frankly, to make sure that we are ready—as everyone should do—to take on the responsibility; that we are properly resourced to do it; and that we have the right range of experience to do it. We will absolutely be doing that anyway, regardless of what the legislation says.

As someone who works for Alex, I can say that it comes from the top, and it is permeating through the organisation. When we go to the board, it is front and centre. I find the words in the legislation quite powerful.

That goes to complaint handling. As I said before, I have a background in that. It is extremely important that you get the first handling of the complaint right. People have to know how they can complain. A lot of people are not aware of how to do it; they might find it difficult to do. They might also not be convinced that if they do complain, anything will happen, so you have to get that right at what, in a different organisation, we would have called the point of need. You have to get that awareness and information right and deal with the complaint properly, so we are going to set standards for complaint handling to make sure that that is done right. I know from previous experience that the ombudsman is the backstop. If the ombudsman makes decisions consistently in one way, nobody likes having their complaint overturned, so you can get the system lined up so that you get it right first time. Regarding who makes the decision, there was a debate—I am sure it has come up with the Committee—about whether that should effectively be absorbed into our organisation or done independently through the Rail Ombudsman sponsored by us. We favour the option that is in the legislation—being the sponsor—because an ombudsman needs to act independently and impartially. Let us be clear: we are not impartial; we are sticking up for passengers. If you want independent, binding decisions, and in fact to be called an ombudsman, you need to have that independence in your decision making, but we will set the standards, take the systemic issues out of those complaints and make sure, as far as we can, that they are addressed within the system.

And lifts.

It is a very good question. Actually, it is a similar duty to the one we have at the moment. Alex, you might want to pick up on some thoughts about what it might mean in practice. We will engage with that duty through the consultation on the priorities for the railway and the development of the business plan to make sure that, within a fixed envelope of money, the right passenger priorities are reflected. It would be easy for us to keep asking for more and more things that cost more money. Getting involved in the prioritisation of the railway at an early stage will be one very important way of fulfilling that duty.

If it goes to the Rail Ombudsman then, assuming that the same enforcement rights sit with the ombudsman on GBR, they will be able to find in the individual complainant’s favour if that is the appropriate outcome, but that is in respect of individual complaints.

What about if it is a systemic issue? One that bugs most of us is the issue of lifts and Access for All. What do you think will happen when there is a fundamental difference, with GBR saying, “We can’t afford it,” and the watchdog saying, “We really need a timescale and a target”?

If we conclude that it is a systemic failing against the standards, we would pass that on to the ORR for enforcement. The ORR would then be in the position of having to take that final economic call on the cost benefit.

Presumably at some point the Secretary of State would get involved.

I think that is right, though this is slightly more the ORR’s territory than ours. We would have to be careful how the Secretary of State used this power, because you want to maintain the operational independence of GBR to plan and make decisions properly, but ultimately the Secretary of State has the power to course-correct—as I think it is described in the explanatory notes accompanying the legislation—through the issuance of guidance and, failing that, direction.

The Bill does not set out any statutory requirements for the composition of the board of the passenger watchdog. Would you welcome it mandating specific requirements, particularly to ensure adequate representation of people with disabilities?

First, that is a very important issue. We now have a person with lived experience of being a disabled passenger on the board, as well as a board of expertise and knowledge about accessibility. That is critical. As Alex mentioned earlier, it creates a culture on the board, and I feel that our feet are held to the fire on that issue—as they should be. As the Committee probably know, the appointments process is not through us but the Secretary of State’s public appointments process. We have not said that we need the kind of change that you are talking about, partly because we now have a degree of representation on the board. If Parliament were to legislate for it, the process would be adapted. In any case, it is not a process that is entirely within our gift.

Transport for All has suggested that the passenger watchdog itself should have powers to issue enforcement notices when there is a breach of an accessibility provision. What do you think the pros and cons of that would be?

That touches on some of the things that we were talking about earlier. It is important that the Rail Ombudsman has binding decisions, as it would do on individual cases as an ombudsman. We were talking before about where we have reached an impasse and being able to point it to the ORR for enforcement and, ultimately, the directions and guidance that are available to the Secretary of State. This is not a point particular to accessibility, but it is important that GBR gets it right. That is not about the legislation but the culture and priorities. It needs to be absolutely hardwired into GBR that accessibility is a priority. I am not sure quite how this would play out, but we need to be slightly careful of having several different organisations that can tell GBR what to do.

Could I gently suggest that it might be more equivalent to the enforcement powers that civil officers have? For instance, traffic enforcement officers have a notice that requires something to be done, or a penalty to be paid. That is quite different from the judgment made at the end of an investigation. Is there not a role for that on the ground detail to be part of the enforcement process?

We will have the ability to request an improvement plan, for example.

But that does not say, “Do this or else”, does it? It does not say, “You must do this now or there will be immediate consequences.”

It goes back to the earlier point: when you have overlapping regulators, that starts to create a degree of uncertainty among people on the receiving end of the regulation.

I respectfully disagree. With the parking enforcement officers in my constituency who issue fines and penalties for drivers—which is very much at the lower end of the spectrum—there seems to be no real conflict with the judicial system or anybody else in the middle. Do we not need some form of practical system that can say, “Stop, do this,” or, “Do this differently”? That would not be about requirements to improve but a particular decision that has or has not been made at a particular time.

I understand that. There are two points: what are those powers you mentioned and who exercises them? In terms of who exercises them, as we have talked about before, having one enforcement body in the system is probably right and that would be the ORR. For us to be able to pass issues across to it at the right point makes sense. The escalation that we were talking about before does ultimately potentially lead to the Secretary of State directing or issuing guidance that could course-correct and require someone to do something differently.

But the Secretary of State does not want to write an enforcement notice about a broken lift. Do we not need some way of getting this stuff routinely prioritised by network managers?

I very much agree that that needs to be done. You create the right environment in which it is done through the priorities set in the business plan, and you check and challenge those. Some of that is through us and some is through the ORR, looking at it from an efficiency perspective as well. Let us be clear: a lot of this will be through the public pressure that we provide—failed lifts, bringing people in and producing reports. A lot of that scrutiny will be done in public, and it will be quite hard to hide from it.

That is helpful. Thank you for your evidence and the time that you have spent preparing. What the Committee has heard from all the panels has been very helpful. Do feel free to write to the Committee if there is anything you feel you would have liked to have added—whether we asked it of you or not. The Committee is going to reflect on the evidence that we have heard today and look forward to our penultimate session on the Railways Bill in a week’s time. That concludes today’s meeting.