Passenger Railway Services Bill (Public Ownership) Bill: Committee: Amendment 21

What happened: On 3 September 2024, MPs voted on Amendment 21 to the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill during its Committee stage (the detailed line-by-line scrutiny phase of legislation). The amendment was defeated by 360 votes to 82. The Conservative Party tabled the amendment, though notably the Conservatives are absent from the voting data, suggesting they abstained or were not present in significant numbers. The 82 votes in favour came predominantly from the Liberal Democrats (68 votes), joined by the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionist Party, and a small number of independents.

Why it matters: The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is the flagship Labour legislation to return passenger rail services in England to public ownership by ending the system of private rail franchises. Amendment 21 sought to modify the process by which this nationalisation would occur, with the amendment broadly framed around supporting modifications to the rail nationalisation process rather than its outright rejection. Its defeat means the government's preferred approach to transferring rail services into public hands remains intact, without the changes the amendment proposed. The bill, if passed in its government-preferred form, would bring passenger rail operators back under state control through a new public body, Great British Railways.

The politics: The most striking feature of this vote is the coalition that voted in favour of the amendment. Rather than a straightforward government-versus-opposition division, the Liberal Democrats provided the bulk of the 82 aye votes, joined by the Greens and Plaid Cymru, parties that broadly support public ownership but may have had specific concerns about the terms or transition arrangements in this particular clause. Labour and its Co-operative Party colleagues voted unanimously against, defending the bill as written. This sits within a broader pattern from the same day's Committee votes, where similar amendments (14 and 17) were also defeated by large margins, and follows the bill's Second Reading on 29 July 2024, which passed 351 to 84.