Speeches by Smith.

“So freight will still be prioritised?”

“Will money be allocated by GBR to them? What has happened in Cornwall is great, but its neighbour Devon does not have a mayor and is not likely to have one any time soon. Is it therefore going to get less money for developing local services than Cornwall, just as an illustration?”

“Very quickly, do you think that there needs to be a more level playing field between GBR and third-party retailers on the face of the Bill?”

“But the National Rail website allows you to buy tickets, doesn’t it? I do not use it, because I do not find it very helpful.”

“We know the Bill will strip the ORR of the ability to grant access rights to the network, and instead allow GBR to make those decisions. With that, is there a danger that GBR will effectively just cherry-pick the best bits? What will you do to make sure that the lines that might currently be offered to open access do n…”

“Can you set out the expected development, operating and ongoing upgrade costs of the GBR retail app and website, which you are suggesting are going to happen and which are set out in the Bill? How will the Department demonstrate that this represents good value for money for taxpayers, particularly given that high-quali…”

“Will it essentially be a rebadging of the National Rail app? There is already a website where you can buy tickets at a national level through the National Rail app.”

“I suppose the specific question is around what is currently offered through open access. It makes sense that the existing network would not necessarily be changed, but, on those routes that could now be offered under the current open access system, how would GBR ensure that that competition and opportunity still exists…”

“You are right—there is no incentive at the moment, because actually, it is not the train companies that pay it, but Government. Forgive me on that point, but in terms of how you would use it to drive performance, now that it is the Government delivering the railway service and having to pay out delay repay, is it going…”

“At the moment, we have the delay repay system in place. If a particular train company is not delivering its passengers to where they need to be at the right time, it has to give money back. I have certainly benefited from that in the past, in getting to where I live. What are you going to do about incentives to improve…”

“Are you fairly confident that the Secretary of State will not end up running it by decree, and that separation exists?”

“The Secretary of State may issue directions and guidance to GBR in the exercise of its statutory functions. Could those provisions not fatally undermine the concept of a railway run without daily micromanagement from Whitehall?”

“You mentioned the organisation’s agility at the beginning of your remarks. If we think about how Parliament works, ultimately, if there is an issue with GBR, my understanding is that the Secretary of State will have to come before Parliament and talk about that. How is that relationship going to work, and how understan…”

“You have not actually answered my question. My question was, what are you going to do to incentivise performance along the lines of that? It is great to have that ambition—I hear that and it is laudable—but in the process of getting from A to B, from where we are now to this utopia of perfect performance, what will hap…”

“That links helpfully to my last point on this, because I am conscious of time. Given that, how would GBR be expected to manage its capacity duty in conjunction with its other duties, such as the use of rail freight, on the already congested railway you have just described?”

“I did not mean delayed, but we get this a lot with Bills: we are told it is going to come and then we do not actually see it till very late.”

“I will not stay too long on licensing, but we talked earlier about the delay in being able to see the draft licence, and we have talked a lot about the role of the private sector, and particularly some of the retail businesses. Given the fact that the retail code of practice does not really get given life until the lic…”

“Sorry—this year as in by December, or during the passage of the Bill in the Commons?”

“I just want to go back to the accountability piece, given the fact that these objectives and details are not on the face of the Bill. Lord Hendy said that, when he ran TfL, he never looked at the statute and just got on with running the railway; that does not make me feel that this is in any way going to be accountable…”

“I am sorry, but what you have just described sounds incredibly like what we already have; it is just that services are franchised rather than devolved from GBR. If a railway line at Fulwell, for example, was not delivering before it was brought into public ownership, ultimately it would still have been the Secretary of…”