I was in my early thirties when I found myself with a huge responsibility. As part of my job as the Political Officer of the RMT trade union, I was assigned to work with the opposition Labour Party on its response to the legislation being introduced by John Major's Conservative Government to break-up and privatise Britain's hitherto state-owned and integrated national railway system.
Throughout the entirety of 1993, it was my privilege to collaborate with a series of Shadow Ministers in both Houses of Parliament to try to defeat the Government's Railways Bill or – at the very least – mitigate some of its consequences for railway workers, customers and communities. The measure was in fact so controversial that I found myself liaising with Liberal Democrat MPs and Peers, independent members of the House of Lords and even dissident Conservatives in securing important concessions from Ministers.
All too many of the people I worked with at that time have now sadly passed away, so I find myself with a special duty to track the significance and the subtleties in what today's Labour Government is doing that very largely reverses the process begun by the 1993 Railways Act. Labour's Railways Bill – introduced on 5 November 2025 – is itself a pretty mighty tome at 93 Clauses and 3 Schedules - and that's before the Government has added in the things it's inevitably forgotten about or Parliament has had its say.
This volume of text reflects the challenge of recreating a national railway structure which is far from being a simple return to the world before John Major. The Government has to take account of more than three decades of other changes to the governance of Britain and the way that railways are operated and regulated. Let me address some of the top issues without even attempting to cover them all. In doing so, I'm drawing on the Government's response to a major consultation on rail reform that was published at the same time as the Bill itself.
This is not, of course, the first attempt at changing the structure of the railways in recent years. The Conservatives themselves fell out of love with the 1993 model when it served up a politically embarrassing crisis in timetabling during 2018. This led in 2021 to the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail which envisaged Great British Railways (GBR) as the new entity which would get the trains and the track working together more effectively.
The Conservatives only got as far as publishing a draft Railways Bill before they were defeated in the 2024 General Election. This measure, strangely you might think, didn't actually mention the proposed GBR explicitly. In almost unfathomable legalese, the Draft Bill envisaged creating the concept of an 'Integrated Rail Body', with designation as such then being applied to the existing nationalised rail
infrastructure owner Network Rail would subsequently be told to change its name to GBR.
Labour shows no such inhibitions, confidently naming GBR on the face of the Bill but then – more controversially – going on to replicate the Conservatives' plans by building the new organisation out from Network Rail. The reason for controversy is that not everyone in the railway industry relishes Network Rail – already the biggest beast in the forest with an extraordinary amount of muscle and some 40,000 personnel – being strengthened still further. Consumer organisations are worried too that an organisation dominated by its engineering remit won't be as customer focused as it needs to be to retain and attract both passengers and freight.
A significant change from the Conservatives' 2021 plan is that Labour has already legislated to bring the remaining franchised passenger train operating companies into public ownership - the previous Government envisaged a new round of more tightly-controlled private sector operating contracts. With such a preponderance of the industry under the direct control of the state, the new Railways Bill envisages a Long Term Rail Strategy in which the Government sets out what it actually wants our trains and tracks to deliver together for society. The duration and scope of this plan is all pretty vague at the moment, so expect close scrutiny and lots of suggestions as the Bill goes through Parliament.
What's also unclear – and the Government will wish to keep locked away in a different silo – is how much money will be available to support socially necessary passenger services and enhancements to the network in the future.
One of the changes that the Bill does not wholly reverse is the advent of open access commercial passenger train operators who provide services outside the existing franchised network. Labour had indicated early on that it was pretty relaxed about this form of competition but the Bill now suggests these services may wither away, helped along in their demise by GBR's control of the access regime hitherto independently regulated.
Although the Bill goes out of its way to promote freight and talk of close working with devolved administrations that control their own local services – in Scotland, Wales, London and Liverpool for example – these authorities will themselves be anxious to protect their access rights as they have their own passengers as well as economic, environmental and transport strategies to take care of.
A further twist on the theme of legacy competition relates to ticketing and fares. After a counterintuitive assault on independent retailers back in 2021, the Conservatives dropped their enthusiasm for an all-powerful state ticket selling platform. Labour faces both ways in its Railways Bill by envisaging all of the channels established by the renationalised operators being combined while still encouraging the independents to do their own thing. This will be another area of intense scrutiny by Parliament.
These are just some of the features of Labour's new Railway's Bill which stand out, resonating with the issues from 1993 and the intervening decades. Coming full circle and thinking about my job all those years ago, I'm struck by the fact that the Bill –
perhaps inevitably for such a document – overlooks the role of people in making all the machinery, systems and services of the railways function.
The incident at Huntingdon at the beginning of November reminds us that it's always the professionalism and dedication of the people who run the railways which ultimately delivers safety, efficiency and value for money to customers and taxpayers, so let's hope the process of passing the 2026 Railways Act never loses sight of them.
Cogitamus is a highly experienced public affairs and communications business specialising in transport. For further insight on how the Railways Bill will progress through Parliament to become law and the scope for the industry to make representations, go to: https://cogitamus.co.uk/general/railways-bill-what-happens-next
