In a couple of years’ time, a new organisation, Great British Railways, will employ some 110.000 people and run much, though not all, of the rail industry. But its gestation has been as slow and painful as an elephant pregnancy and there is some dissatisfaction within the industry about the lack of progress and the uncertainty this is causing. At the moment GBR consists of a chairwoman and one employee.
It is quite difficult to pin down what is happening with the shadow Great British Railways as, in effect, it does not exist. The organisation has no official status although the chair, Laura Shoaf, has fortnightly meetings with the core team rin charge of the railways – Robin Gisby who runs the government controlled franchises, Andrew Haines the boss of Network Rail and Alex Hynes, now the top rail man in the Department for Transport. Other people occasionally are invited but there are no published minutes or accountability because legally the organisation does not exist as the legislation creating it has not yet been passed.
Shadow GBR therefore exists in a strange limbo land and despite the murmurings from some in the industry about the lack of direction, Shoaf is generally well regarded. She is dynamic and keen to work to the five parameters set by the Secretary of State, Heidi Alexander which include improving performance, fares and ticketing, integration and innovation. Overriding all this is what the railways are for – how they contribute to societal and environmental benefits.
Apart from banging the heads together of these senior railway personnel, shadow GBR has few weapons at its disposal. However, ministers have suggested that some progress could be made even before legislation is passed. Indeed, there had been hopes that the core of a plan would be published around Xmas time but then Louise Haigh, the secretary of state, was forced to resign over a minor scandal which had nothing to do with the railways. Her replacement, Heidi Alexander, seemingly had different ideas about the future structure of the railways and therefore GBR had to go back to the drawing board. This was rather strange given that Keir Starmer, the prime minister, had seemed to endorse the scheme to create GBR which begs the question as to why the change in transport secretary should result in a reconsideration of the strategy on the new body.
GBR now hopes to publish a strategic plan in the summer but there are still fundamental questions to answer over how it will run the railways. First, it should be noted that this will not be the re-creation of British Rail. There will be vast swathes of the industry which are outwith its purview, such as the supply industry, the rolling stock and engineering companies and even quite a few operations – such as Scotrail, open access trains such as Lumo and Grand Central, Heathrow Express, the London Overground and the Elizabeth Line as well as freight services. GBR will be the big beast, but what powers will be left with the regulator to ensure access for these trains? There is some hostility among ministers to the idea of an independent regulator but the rules could be written in such a way as to constrain their freedom. The devil will be in the detail.
There is an added further complication which will need to be resolved. GBR will be an ‘arms length body’, with its budget set by government but with a certain amount of freedom to make decisions. The issue is how long will the arms be – if the organisation is to be genuinely separate from government, then they will have to be quite long. That is open to question but to be successful it will need to be able to take risk – I,e. invest in schemes that may not work, or create new services that might not attract sufficient passengers to be worthwhile. If it is not allowed that commercial freedom, it may as well be run from Whitehall. But hold on a minute. Just a couple of weeks ago, we have seen the demise of another ‘arms length’, the unlamented death of NHS England, a quango employing some 10,000 people which was widely felt to be man-marking decisions of the Department of Health and consequently creating widespread duplication. NHS England has now been killed off precisely for the crime of being arms length and therefore unaccountable.
There is potential for a contradiction here. Supporters of GBR need to demonstrate that its creation will not result in duplication or else a couple of years down it could face the same fate as NHS England. The answer to this is that GBR must not create its own new bureaucracy but simply take on existing personnel from the industry and the DfT. The test will be if the number of civil servants working for the DfT on transport – and indeed to the Treasury – is greatly reduced. That will be a key measure of success of the new organisation.
Another positive pointer will be if GBR recreates successful bits of British Rail. One of BR’s strengths was marketing – remember those fabulous TV ads for InterCity and excellent posters for Network SouthEast. Marketing budgets are often the first to go in cutbacks and in these constrained times, it will take a brave manager in GBR to spend money on trying to gen up new business. But that is essential to show that the railways are not only important socially, but also have commercial intent. GBR has, like BR, to perform those differing roles effectively. And another positive will be the creation of apprenticeships. Vast numbers of employees are reaching retirement age and they need to be replaced not by people drifting into the railways for want of other work but rather by young people seeking a career in this great industry. Again that will be a key measure of success.
In the meantime, while we await the strategic plan and the legislation, GBR could bare its teeth, even as a two woman operation (it has just taken on its first employee} It could put pressure on Network Rail to speed up the introduction of new technology and to be clearer about what contracts it is letting as it has a habit of announcing schemes and then withdrawing them. It could ensure that operators taken in house quickly stop playing games over delay attribution and consequently cut staff. No one could claim that the railway is in a perfect – or indeed a good – state and therefore to show a few quick wins would demonstrate that GBR will be a force for change. At the moment it seems a shadow of a shadow…
Tweet no more
I have moved my social media from Twitter/X to Bluesky. I have about a quarter of the number of followers but the responses I get are about the same and far friendlier. Yet, so far, there are few railway companies who have moved over from X despite the toxicity of the brand. SouthEastern is a rare and welcome exception but it is noticeable that so far government agencies, even the Department for Transport have not shifted.
It seems that they do not understand the very fundamental problem with X. It is not a matter of disliking the man-child Elon Musk and his fascistic tendencies. It is far more than that. The algorithms he has created push right wing posts while ignoring any more measured contributions. Not to recognise this is to fail to understand that this has implications for the treatment of all policy areas including transport. X will favour posts highlighting the benefits of cars and motoring, while not supporting those in favour of more sustainable forms of transport. Therefore transport organisations who subscribe to an environmental agenda should stop using X since their posts are likely to be sidelined.
There is no shortage of evidence about this misuse of the platform. One poster put a pro-Ukraine message on both X and Bluesky and found that his X post was initially ignored until it elicited a flood of pro Putin responses from bots. It is time transport organisations understood the fundamental toxicity of the platform and moved to other more neutral ones. I am now heading for China to spend a week on the high speed rail network and talking to officials running the system. There will be much to report.