Lord Liddle (Lab)

I will make a brief intervention. This is the first time I have spoken on the Railways Bill and I am generally extremely supportive of it. I have listened with great sympathy to all the amendments put forward. I understand the motive of most of them, but I worry about the general principle of loading the Bill with lots of duties that Great British Railways has to follow. One of the reasons why the British state is failing and has been failing for some time—this is a criticism of both Conservative and Labour Governments—is that we have got into the habit of wanting to include everything that the state is trying to achieve; it all has to be there. If we want effective public sector organisations, a lot of that everythingness has to be cut away and the board has to decide on its priorities, be accountable for its priorities and be challenged in that way. If we put a lot of statutory duties on the board, that is the road to the bat tunnel—look at the £100 million wasted on HS2. We should be very careful about how we load up this Bill with contradictory duties, putting lots of difficult choices on the statute book. It would be much better to have an effective board that made those choices.