Helen Whately

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker. Congratulations on your election. It is my honour to respond to the first Second Reading of a Bill moved by this new Government, which I see as an opportunity to set the tone for how we will act in opposition. We are not going to oppose for the sake of it, and I do not believe that a single person on either side of the House, among the public, among those working on the rail network or even among those running the train companies would say that everything is as it should be with our rail system. We are in no doubt that rail needs reform. Covid fundamentally changed the way we travel. Far fewer people now commute five days a week. The contracts that were brought in to save the railways are now stifling the companies they kept afloat, and the Treasury is subsidising the network’s day-to-day running to the tune of £3 billion a year, so things need to change. That is why, in government, we commissioned a landmark review into our rail system. I welcome the fact that Labour is taking forward our plan for Great British Railways, which is the product of that review. Joining up track and train into a single public body will make the system more efficient and save passengers time and money, which is important because affordability and reliability are what people care about, and the point of being in government is delivering on what people care about.