Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

That is exactly the mechanism that will be used in GBR and by the Secretary of State in her management of it, to get better deals across the sector. You do not need legislation to do that; you need some clear objectives. For example, we are already taking steps to secure a genuine seven-day railway, working with staff, management and unions across the railway to identify the best way to achieve it for passengers in a collaborative way. I wish that that had been done in the recent past. Coverage on Sundays, particularly from drivers in some companies, has long been a problem, but nobody sought to deal with it, and we are starting to deal with it. In the present series of pay deals, the delta between CPR and RPI has been paid for by real productivity. The delta is fairly small, but the productivity is worth having. It includes not only the use of modern technology but improvements in things such as route learning, and it gives genuinely better availability of staff to run the train service. I assure noble Lords that pay decisions in the future will reflect the Government’s determination to have a motivated, empowered and productive workforce. Indeed, creating GBR will help with this. It will bring an end to the fragmentation and short-termism that have characterised rail workforce management practices for 30 years—for example, the systemic reliance on excessive overtime and rest-day working, leading to cancelled services when volunteers are not available—which will allow productivity to be increased over time. We have that issue well in hand. I do not support Amendments 315 and 316 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harper. The Government passed the Employment Rights Act 2025 to remove restrictions on lawful industrial action because they believe that collective bargaining rights are key to tackling problems of inequality and discrimination across sectors. We want to foster co-operation between trade unions, employers and the Government. In doing so, we will support employers to amicably resolve disputes with their workforce and reduce disruption and costs overall. Frankly, we are not revisiting the Employment Rights Act in this Bill. That improvement is what we have seen in the rail sector. The Government have improved relationships with the trade unions, and the collaborative approach has meant that the number of rail services lost due to strikes has more than halved compared with the number under the previous Government.