Jerome Mayhew MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I turn now to the Bill, rather than the broader situation. There are huge powers in the Bill for the Secretary of State or the Department for Transport, in relation to setting out the long-term strategy, intervening in fares and their structure, and giving guidance and direction. Those are the key areas, but there are a number of others. Are you a bit concerned that there is going to be some backseat driving going on? Keith Williams: From the Government?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You agree that it is very, very narrow. John Larkinson: Absolutely, yes.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you all for coming in person or, Emma, for joining online. I am going to focus on clause 18 of the Bill, which is on the general duties of Ministers, GBR and the ORR. In particular, I will jump straight to clause 18(2), which sets out the functions and how they should operate those functions. Paragraph (c) states that one such function is “to promote high standards of railway service performance”, itself defined in clause 18(3): “‘railway service performance’ includes, in particular, performance in securing each of the following in relation to railway services— (a) reliability…and (b) the avoidance or mitigation of passenger overcrowding.” My question about that definition of service performance, which is very narrow, is for everyone, but I will start with you, Emma. Are you concerned that the focus is primarily on reliability and overcrowding? What about comfort, heating, wi-fi, food, frequency, cost and all the other good stuff—and disability access? Emma Vogelmann: I completely agree that accessibility really needs to be explicit in the requirements set out in the Bill. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make sure that we are not making the same mistakes of the past in having accessibility not explicitly enforceable and not having it in the Bill as much as possible. Disabled passengers already experience accessibility being deprioritised in the name of efficiency and other considerations. We absolutely agree that it needs to be considered. Ben Plowden: I certainly echo that point from Emma about accessibility. The broader point is that in the absence of any duty on GBR to grow passenger demand over time, which we might come back to, one can imagine a scenario in which, in meeting those two specific duties on passenger service standards, GBR might be incentivised to improve reliability on a route by reducing service frequency and then to deal with the crowding duty by pricing people off the network.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The second issue I wish to draw out is the fair treatment of other fare providers. At the moment, a number of independent retailers have very good tech that facilitates passengers using the railway. In the new environment, Great British Railways will be the holder of the data—the holder of the ring—but it is also intending, perfectly reasonably, to be part of the game as well: it will have a retail operation, so it will be directly competing in that retail market. This issue has been considered in other state-owned organisations, such as SNCF, where it was recognised that there was a structural conflict of interest; as a result, the retail side of SNCF is a stand-alone, independent organisation. The Government have chosen not to do that. Do you not think that that is surprising? Would it be beneficial to have GBR retail carved off as a stand-alone? Ben Plowden: The Government’s own documentation acknowledges the benefit that independent ticket retailers have brought to customers in terms of competition, ease of buying tickets and so on. The Government intend managerially to separate GBR’s ticketing and retail operation from its commercial and operational arm. It seems to us that if the Government are not willing to set up a stand-alone ticketing operation, as SNCF has done, it is important to hold GBR to the same standards as the independent operators in terms of how it does fares and ticketing. It will be required to comply with ORR guidance on ticket retailing, but that is simply about how it engages with the other retailers. Clearly, it should operate on the same terms as the independent retailers, and there should be independent regulatory oversight to make sure that GBR does not use its position as the core ticketing provider essentially to crowd out the other suppliers.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What if the Government refuse to carve it off, as has been done in other international examples? The Bill does not require a level playing field. Would you support improving the Bill by expressly stating that GBR must provide a level playing field on data and access for all retailers? Ben Plowden: We would. In particular, it should be subject to the code of practice on retailing that the ORR issues, rather than simply guidance on how it deals with its relationships with the other retailers.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, from Government rather than GBR being the director. Keith Williams: No, the way I see it is that, actually, there is a good segregation of functions within the system now that were not there previously. Again, if you look back to 2018, the failure of the system was in part brought because every decision went back to Government. The Secretary of State finished up having total responsibility for the timetable fiasco that happened in 2018. That is when we came to the review. One of the clear things we wanted to do was to get a segregation of functions, which I think the Bill successfully does. It holds good to the review in that respect. Government are responsible for strategy—and hopefully longer-term strategy than we have seen in the past—then they hand the operation down to the people who can run it in the interests of passengers and customers, with strong regulation, safety and a public ability to react when things go wrong. I think that system is very good. I come from a business background and in some ways it echoes what I see in business: a board sets the strategy and then passes the management down to the CEO and the people who run the business. I am not concerned about backseat driving to that degree.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Given those enormous constraints, can you sit before the Committee and say that this is a strong appeals process? John Larkinson: Using words like “strong” is quite difficult in the context of it being an appeals process that is designed to fit with the underlying model, which is a directing mind for GBR. Therefore, as you correctly say, our ability to override a GBR decision is very narrow indeed. I agree with your description—it is a very narrow role.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Mr Brown, there are very few references in the Bill to value for money driving competition. In fact, the competition remit of the ORR is specifically excluded for large sections of the operation of GBR, and the Secretary of State has no ability to grant provision of service contracts to private companies—it has to be to a GBR or a subsidiary of GBR. How can operations of GBR be challenged on value for money for taxpayers? Do you think they have the balance right here? Richard Brown: Do I think what, sorry?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  That would be rational. Ben Plowden: It would be perfectly rational, and I understand from media reports that that may indeed be what is happening on the west coast main line. It seems to us that you either need to broaden the number of things that GBR must take into account in terms of passenger service standards and/or introduce a growth duty, which would help deal with some of the other issues. Michael Roberts: I believe that the impulse should be to try to improve the passenger experience in the round, including all the things that you mentioned, such as accessibility, as Emma said. My personal view is that the place for that to be expressed in detail, potentially through targetry, is through a combination of the long-term rail strategy and the business plans over five years.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for coming. Broadly speaking, we are talking about governance and accountability in this session. I am going to dive straight in, Mr Larkinson. On the appeals process as envisaged by the new ORR, we can see from clause 68 that there is to be no appeal on the merits of economic considerations; it is only to be approached on the basis of judicial review in the High Court, which means only an appeal on a matter of law and procedural issues, and a time limit for applications of just three months. First, will you confirm that that is your understanding of the constraints of this particular appeal process? John Larkinson: May I add one thing to that? When an appeal comes to us, there are various things that we can do. For any appeal, we can in effect send the decision back to Great British Railways and ask it to reconsider. In doing that, we could also in effect direct it to look at particular issues. That is the first thing that we could do. On our ability—I think this is probably what you are coming to—to substitute a decision, or in effect to require a different decision, that is extremely narrow indeed. That comes back to the judicial review principles. In my mind, that is because the bar is set very high. It comes back to the broad intent of the Bill, which is to make GBR a directing mind and to give considerable power to GBR. Alongside that, the intent of the Bill is in effect to empower GBR to learn from its mistakes: things are put back to it and it gets a chance to reconsider. What the Bill does not want, however, is for someone else like us to say, “No, the decision should have been this.” It comes from the intent of the Bill, I think.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q If someone goes through the appeals process on that very, very narrow front and is successful in their appeal, the ORR can order only two things to happen. The first is that the decision is sent back to GBR to have a think again, and the second is to substitute a decision, where the failure has been an error of law and there is only one possible alternative in the circumstances. It is in those very, very narrow circumstances that you can substitute your answer, because there is no other answer. John Larkinson: They are very narrow, yes.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I thank both the witnesses for coming. There is a lot to get through and we are short of time. I will start with Mr Williams. You have written a report on the future of railway. You proposed the creation of GBR, but to operate through private concessions as opposed to nationalisation. The Government have now taken a very different view. Please can you set out briefly the pros and cons of nationalisation over what you proposed. Keith Williams: When we did the review, the real focus was on passengers, to be honest. I was asked a number of times: “Is it nationalisation or is it privatisation?” I left that to one side because from my perspective, it was the better running of the railway, which is the structure that is now in place. To some degree, during the course of the review, franchising had been seen to be failing, and that was one of the premises of the review at the beginning. Of course, what happened in the intervening period was that covid came along, and that changed everything, so everything was de facto put back into public ownership. To a large degree, we were agnostic on that. However, if you look at the railway even today, parts of it are run in the private sector and parts of it are run in the public sector. As I see it, public ownership was accelerated through covid and through the end of the franchising, which in my period was due to end in 2029, so it was a long way off. Obviously, that was brought forward because of covid.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You say that it fits with the description of what the Government want GBR to do, but from the drafting of the Bill we can conclude that the Government want GBR to be the final arbiter. There is no appellate course from a decision by GBR, except in an area of law. It is the judge and jury in this. John Larkinson: That fits again with the idea that things go back to GBR to reconsider; it is all put back in GBR’s court. That is the fundamental design, as I understand it.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I do not mean to confuse you; I seek to clarify whether an appeal on judicial review principles means that someone who is unhappy with a decision cannot have that decision reconsidered—so there is no appeal on the merits. John Larkinson: Judicial review principles are things like irrationality and illegality—it is very, very narrow.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Do you think they have the balance right here? How do we drive value for money for taxpayers given those very significant constraints on competition? Richard Brown: Yes, I do. I think the balance is right. Putting everything together into GBR makes it the single directing mind. It will be up to GBR and its integrated business leaders to strike the balance and deliver better value for money. There is a lot of duplication and friction in the current system, which I think is one of the things that Keith Williams was highlighting in his review. The accountabilities are very strong with this Bill. GBR is accountable to the Secretary of State, but is also regulated and overseen by the ORR and the passengers’ council, and has a responsibility to mayoral authorities. First and foremost—I think this featured in the previous discussion—the integrated business units and their CEOs, or whatever they are called, will be accountable to their local towns, communities and passengers. There are strong pressures and forces created with this Bill to actually deliver value for money for taxpayers, as well as for passengers. Keith Williams: Can I add one thing, there? Even in my time on the review, one of the things that started was bringing track and train together again. That allowed cost simplification, but it also enabled GBR to get a full picture of the revenue and costs of running the railway, which previously did not exist. It was surprising to me, on the review, that getting the costs together was an enormous exercise and a bit of guesswork, because the costs were in so many different areas.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q That answer was about the powers you have once an appeal comes to you, but my question was on what kinds of appeal can get in front of you in the first place. Going back to the original question, am I right in saying that, under the Bill, there is no right for an appeal on the merits, and that you cannot have a second look at the decision-making process? John Larkinson: A second look? We can look at whether GBR has followed its processes.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Northern Powerhouse Rail · Hansard source

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  May I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement? She started the statement by saying that people are sick to the back teeth of Westminster politicians promising the earth and delivering absolutely nothing—and then she did exactly that. We on the Opposition Benches know what the right hon. Lady’s statement marks today. It is not a strategy for the north or a genuine commitment to a project costed at £46 billion back in 2019, as the current Prime Minister then promised; instead, it is a flagrant attempt to silence their party’s restless northern mayors, while Labour Ministers, who came into office with no plan to deliver on their promises, butcher the Budget. Let us get straight to the point. The Secretary of State can bluster all she likes, but where Northern Powerhouse Rail is concerned, we have no construction start dates, no completion dates, no published or costed route map, no sequencing, no idea who will pay, or by how much, and no certainty at all, except that it will not be what Labour promised ahead of the election. She says that this is a generational commitment. Well, at this rate it will turn out to be a multigenerational commitment. If the Prime Minister wanted to deliver what he actually promised in opposition, he knows that he would have another black hole of billions, such is the genuine uncertainty caused to the sector by this announcement. What we have is a commitment to fiddling with the paperwork without any secure investment for the actual project, yet the right hon. Lady expects this House to believe that this is some sort of investment in the north. She and her Ministers must be delighted that the Mayor of Greater Manchester overplayed his hand at the Labour party conference last year. Today he feels constrained to profess loyalty to the Prime Minister, perhaps with wonderment at his generosity—that is in public, but we all know what he is doing in private. Does the right hon. Lady take this House, her own Back Benchers and the voting public for fools? Whether she does or not, the Prime Minister certainly does. He wrote in The Yorkshire Post , with some gall, that this announcement is “a serious plan backed by billions of pounds of investment”, when we know from this statement that it is not. Can the right hon. Lady confirm how a £45 billion cap on a scheme costed as being way more expensive than that back in 2019 can possibly deliver projects already estimated to cost so much more than that value? What guarantees exist that schemes will be completed in full? When will this House finally be given the detail that it deserves? Perhaps she ought to remind the Prime Minister what he told The Yorkshire Post back in 2019, when he promised to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail in full. Today’s announcement offers nothing better than dither, delay and a further decade away from spades in the ground. How can the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister pretend that this is the delivery of Northern Powerhouse Rail when it is anything but that? By their own admission, no budget has been set out. The cap in funding gives no confidence that funding that will have to be raised from the private sector or through local taxes is in place. Can the Secretary of State tell the House which local taxes will have to rise, and by how much, to fill the gap created by her own £45 billion cap? I know that the Secretary of State, like me, cares deeply about ensuring that Parliament is told the whole truth, but perhaps on this occasion it is the Prime Minister himself who should be lauded. He has said, time and again, that the cuts and downgrades that this Government have foreshadowed today represent nothing more than “a betrayal of the North”. Is it not the case that this is a strategy from a desperate Government to make a cut appear to be an investment, and to attempt to save face with the British public? Spending months and months hiding their mealy-mouthed plans, only to reveal them with bluster and misplaced confidence, is a sad indictment of a sorry Government. To come to this House today without dates, budgets or a plan for how to raise shortfalls after the cap is, frankly, pitiful. To spin this as a plan for the future is a disgrace, and one of which the Secretary of State should be ashamed. She cannot escape the fact that her party came into power with no plan on how to deliver on its promises, and its complete ineptitude in managing the public finances means that it is now having to U-turn on those promises. If the metro mayors and Back Benchers had any backbone, then rather than gelatinously jostling for position under the next Labour leader, they would acknowledge the truth in what I have said and call out this betrayal.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  I rarely intervene on another spokesperson’s speech, but this raises a question: if the Liberal Democrats want these expensive policies and say that consumers should not pay, who should pay?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is exactly the kind of evidence that a judge would assess to establish whether sufficient notice had been given and how onerous a term is. The second part is about whether the travelling public accept that this is a reasonable charge and has become the norm, as the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton asserts. An awful lot of people do not feel that it is fair in principle to charge for this service, because no real service is being supplied. People are occupying a bit of tarmac for one or two minutes. It used to be free, so the feeling of value is limited at best. The hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) talked about a hidden charge, and he was absolutely right. As passengers, we are incredibly price-conscious when it comes to buying our flights. We will wear only one pair of socks for the entire holiday in order not to pay for baggage. We then get lumped with paying a tenner for being dropped off, and it is a hidden cost—it is not in the headline price of the flight. I totally understand the reaction of many that this is unfair, and that the market is not working. The communal reaction is that we must regulate. Perhaps we should, but before we do so we need to understand why airports are raising these charges. I am sorry to say that in many cases it is because this Labour Government are forcing them to do exactly that. If Government policy increases costs for airports, the airports, as rational commercial organisations, will seek to recover those costs from their consumers, because there is no one else—ultimately, the consumer always pays. This Government have increased employer national insurance contributions, levying more than £900 in additional tax for every single employee on the books. They have raised business rates enormously and have increased environmental targets, which also have significant cash consequences. All of it comes for the consumer. I will not deal with national insurance contributions because we all know how impactful that change has been, not just to pubs but right across the private sector.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  The logic is not exact, but if you increase costs, you cannot be surprised if prices go up. Essentially, that is the point I am making. On business rates, Gatwick has had the worst increase. According to the Financial Times , its business rates have increased from £40 million a year to £90 million a year, so the Government have increased Gatwick’s costs by £50 million every single year. Where do they think that money will come from? It will come from the consumer via drop-off charges, other additional charges or increases in the landing rates applied to airlines—such increases would go on to the consumer through increased air fares. It is therefore financially illiterate for the Government to very substantially raise the cost of doing business—particularly for airports, with their increased business rates—and then complain when these companies raise their charges. There are additional costs on airports, which I will briefly talk about, because of environmental and net zero targets and requirements. Many airports have directly cited those costs to explain why they are raising charges. Many of them, including Bristol, Heathrow and Gatwick, have said that they are trying to raise drop-off charges to force passengers to use alternative modes of mass transport. That would be fine and well if additional public transport were available for those people being disincentivised from using their car. However, I do not agree that we should penalise passengers by using the stick of increased charges to force them to use a less convenient mode of transport to get to the airport. Instead, we should lure passengers to airports by providing a method of public transport that is even more convenient than using the car. That is where the Government have gone wrong, because they have incentivised airports to use the stick of payments or costs to beat their own customers without providing an attractive alternative to car use. I fear that I am running short of time—I see that I have one minute left—so I will not do the peroration where I say, “Aren’t the Conservatives wonderful? We are re-evaluating our environmental policies to get rid of the target of net zero by 2050, which is driving the transition at such a pace that it is increasing costs unrealistically, and we should be focusing on the consumer rather than on interest groups.” However, I hope that in the time available to him the Minister will show that he takes seriously what is genuinely an important issue that affects many millions of people around the country. It is an unfairness in plain sight. This is his opportunity to assure all our constituents that they have been listened to and that the Government are taking this issue seriously.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I join all other contributors today in congratulating the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this debate. We often say, “This is an important debate,” and most of the time in this Chamber we do not mean it, but on this occasion I think we do. Through some very articulate speeches, building one upon the other, the debate has exposed two significant problems with the current state of affairs in drop-off charges at our airports: first, whether we should be charging in the first place; and secondly, if we accept the proposition of the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) that it is okay to charge for drop-offs, whether the process of charging is itself fair. Frankly, I was taken by surprise on this point, which was raised repeatedly. At multiple airports, the charging mechanism is itself unfair, as it does not give the opportunity of point-of-service charging—a barrier at which the customer pays—but instead requires customers to pay after the event by what are, at times, very complex mechanisms. I was a barrister a very long time ago. There is a health warning on my legal advice, but this matter was first settled in 1877 by Mellish LJ—I do not have this at the back of my memory; I looked it up—in Parker v . South Eastern Railway Company. When parking somewhere, the terms and conditions are typically on a board. A provider seeking to rely on those contractual terms has to take reasonably sufficient steps to draw them to the consumer’s attention for the contract to be established, and it must be at or before the point at which the contract becomes established. The reason why that triggered my memory is because, in my day, I learned about a very famous judge—Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls—who developed the argument in Spurling v . Bradshaw in 1956. He said that the principle covers typical, expected terms and conditions, but if there are particularly onerous conditions as part of the standard terms, the level of notice has to increase to a commensurate degree. I am interested to hear the Minister’s considered thoughts on this issue. I wonder whether a requirement not to pay now, but to pay later and by a circuitous route, would constitute an onerous term when dealing with a consumer, as these contracts almost always are. If that is the case, has a contract been established at all with any of the people dropping off at these airports? I cannot give legal advice, and I am very out of date anyway, but consumer rights groups should explore this issue with a test case—a group action would run to many millions of pounds if it were proved successful. That is the point about whether charging is fair.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) made the very good point that the notice of the charge was situated beyond the point at which someone could reverse out. Will the Minister undertake to remind Manchester airport that any notice of a charge has to be at a place where people can decide not to accept the charge?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman said earlier that this was a tax on the rich because 20% of dividends are paid to the richest 1% of people in this country, but that means that 80% are not. Does he not accept that dividends are right at the heart of the savings culture in this country and that if we tax them, we will get less savings?

• 8 Jan 2026 · Road Safety Strategy · Hansard source

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  We are one of the safest.

• 8 Jan 2026 · Rail Fares · Hansard source

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  But it is not just LNER, is it? We have also heard worrying accounts about Greater Anglia and c2c, shortly after they have been nationalised. The Government say that fare simplification is one of their key objectives; fair enough, but there are increasing numbers of accounts of discounted tickets being removed in the name of fare simplification. How will the Secretary of State prevent the fare simplification process from turning into just the removal of discounts?