The postponed legislation for creating the new ’guiding mind’ for Britain’s network will now be tabled “before the next election”, according to Great British Railways Transition Team Lead Director Anit Chandarana.
It sounds like an even greater delay than that announced by Anne-Marie Trevelyan (who briefly served as Secretary of State for Transport under Liz Truss) in October. She suggested it could be taken in the next parliamentary year, once the immediate demands of the energy crisis have been addressed.
Pushing through a major package of reforms just before an election has its risks - a change of government could result in the plan being aborted midway through, which looks certain to be the case if Labour sweeps to power in an election in late 2024 or early 2025, the last possible dates for a General Election.
But with the quick succession of two Conservative leaders to the premiership without facing the country, and the perfect storm of the Ukraine war, the cost-of-living crisis and successive Government scandals, many are now planning for an early election. That risks GBR being killed off before it even reaches the statute book.
Railway Industry Association Chief Executive Darren Caplan has described the delays to GBR as “disappointing”, suggesting that they could deprive the railways of the “clear strategic direction” they need.
But Tan Dhesi, the man likely to become Rail Minister under a Labour government, was surprisingly nonchalant when asked about the delays at a Labour conference fringe event in September.
“Look mate, what hasn’t been delayed?” he quipped.
“What we’ve been arguing is there should have been a hiatus while the Government sorts itself out.
“They’ve copied and pasted some of the ideas formulated by Andy and Rachael and others, and then a lot of that reform just isn’t taking place because the industry or the country just doesn’t know which way the Government is going with this.”
In contrast, Dhesi tells RailReview in an interview in November that Labour is determined to signal its direction of travel.
“We will set out our vision - I think Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner and the rest of the team have been very clear on that. I think we’ve seen that with the £28 billion green investment pledge from Rachel Reeves, our Shadow Chancellor, and within that there is a large scope for public transport.”
The basis of that vision is public sector operation of the passenger railway: “We at the moment feel that railways are being led into managed decline - 19,000 services have been cut, and that’s why the Labour party feels that under public ownership, we can determine the level of operation - the level of services - so that no communities are ignored.”
But beyond this headline policy, many in the rail industry feel that Labour’s policy is itself full of vagaries. One rail consultant told RailReview that the document the party produced in early 2020, GB Rail: Labour’s Plan for a Nationally Integrated Publicly Owned Railway, had “significant gaps”.
And while the document remains live on Labour’s website and is (according to a source close to Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh) still party policy, under Keir Starmer’s leadership the party has appeared reluctant to confirm this publicly. And now, for the first time, its rail spokesman appears to be advocating a different legal structure to that which the document outlines.
Dhesi’s CV is impressive. Born in Slough and raised in the Indian Punjab and Kent, he gained degrees in maths, applied statistics and South Asian history from UCL, Oxford and Cambridge. But most of his working life has been spent in the construction industry, giving him a valuable insight into the world of contracting and supply chains - something which has not gone unnoticed among industry insiders.
A former councillor and ceremonial mayor in Gravesham (Kent), Dhesi was elected MP for Slough in 2017, at the General Election in which Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour defied expectations of a resounding defeat and deprived Theresa May’s government of an overall majority.
After Labour suffered heavy losses two years later, the comfortably re-elected Dhesi served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Corbyn during the final months of his leadership. He supported Lisa Nandy in the 2020 leadership election, but was soon appointed by the victorious Starmer as Shadow Minister for the Railways, and he has remained in post ever since.
The provisions set out in GB Rail, published by Andy McDonald shortly before he left the Labour transport brief, have been discussed at length (RailReview Q3-2022, Q3-2019). But its central thesis is the creation of a “single publicly owned railway company, GB Rail”, overseeing both devolved transport authorities and business units, including “GB Rail Mainline” for passenger operations and “GB Rail Freight”.
If that’s not clear enough, it sets out explicitly: “All Business Units will be part of the GB Rail company, not legally separate subsidiaries, and will manage both rail services and rail infrastructure, so as to facilitate maximum integration.”
But sitting down over tea in Portcullis House (the modern extension of the Palace of Westminster), Dhesi says this will not be the case - at least initially. The first clue of his thinking here is his praise for how “in France, or in Germany, or any of the other nations, by taking greater charge of their railways they were able to deliver better value for money, cheaper fares. They were also able to electrify the majority of their railway network.”
In line with the European Union’s “rail packages” of directive legislation encouraging competition, both SNCF and Deutsche Bahn have created separate legal entities for infrastructure and operations. McDonald believed that the structure outlined in GB Rail would still be workable if Britain remained in the EU, but that Brexit would make it easier still.
When pressed on whether track and train would remain under “separate legal entities”, Dhesi says: “Originally, I think that’s how we would want to set them up. It’s a gradual process and then we can see what would work best going into the long run. That’s where we need to gradually take operations and then build upon that.
