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Lord Harper (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 8 September 2026

Debate

Railways Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I just want to speak briefly about three groups of amendments within this group. Amendment 145 in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan has quite a lot to recommend it. The Bill, as set out, sensibly says that the UK Government and the Scottish Government should have a memorandum of understanding about how cross-border rail services should work. That is very sensible, but it seems to me that you would want to have the documents published at the same time; you want them on the same timeline because you want a GB rail strategy to be produced, given the way the rail network works. The whole point about GBR bringing together track and train and having some consistency means it seems very sensible that, if you are to have this memorandum of understanding between UK Ministers and Scottish and Welsh Ministers, you want them on the same timeline. Then what you publish is, in effect, a GB rail strategy with a level of consistency.

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