It is the political equivalent of shutting the doors a minute before departure. Too late to get off now. The Railways Bill 2025 has entered the Parliamentary Committee Stage. The UK is now locked into a period of intense scrutiny. No apologies for returning to this theme because, when it’s passed, this will shape the British railway scene for the next generation – maybe much longer. Taking an unapologetic look is RailFreight.com UK Editor, Simon Walton.
In parliamentary terms, the Committee Stage is the point at which a Bill is removed from the strategic map and placed on the working timetable. After the Second Reading agrees the direction of travel, MPs scrutinise the text line by line, probing how each clause will operate in practice. For the UK Railways Bill 2025, this is where high-level reform meets the realities of paths, access rights and commercial incentives. In rail freight terms, Committee Stage is the equivalent of detailed train planning. The route is agreed upon, but it is here that conflicts are resolved, margins are tested, and the final working timetable is shaped. The freight sector is braced to see where that all leads.
Committee stage either wins or loses
This is far from the end of the Parliamentary process – but that’s also a bit like saying taking a tumble from the Shard’s observation deck is far from the end of a fall into London Bridge. Amendments can still be made, but the window is narrow. Once Committee scrutiny concludes, the scope for fundamental change shrinks rapidly. For rail freight, that should concentrate minds. It was refreshing, though, to see freight and passenger interests sitting alongside each other in the Committee Room earlier this week, with Rail Freight Group director general Maggie Simpson OBE alongside First Group MD Steve Montgomery and ALLRAIL policy director John Thomas.
The freight sector has long accepted the direction of travel towards Great British Railways. Few argue with reform in principle. But Committee Stage is about detail, not vision. It is about who holds power, how disputes are resolved, and whether private investment can proceed with confidence. Those questions go to the heart of freight’s future. The sector does not have the luxury of waiting to see how GBR behaves in practice. Legislation outlasts personalities, ministers and market cycles. If safeguards are not embedded now, they will be painfully hard to retrofit later.
Rail Freight Group steps into the breach
Unsurprisingly, the Rail Freight Group has been the most vocal and technically detailed contributor to this debate. That reflects its role as the sector’s core representative body, and the fact that freight stands to lose the most from poorly designed governance. RFG’s central concern is the proposed downgrading of the ostensibly independent Office of Rail and Road.
Under the Bill, ORR would lose its proactive role in awarding track access. Instead, it would become an appeals body operating under judicial review principles. That matters because judicial review is not about whether a decision is right. It is about whether it was lawful. RFG has obtained legal advice suggesting the bar for successful appeals would be so high as to make them almost unusable in practice.
A regulator stripped of teeth
The Bill allows ORR to overturn a Great British Railways decision only in exceptionally narrow circumstances. There must be an error of law. There must be only one possible alternative outcome. In a complex railway timetable, that is a vanishingly unlikely test to meet. Worse, ministers retain powers to add further constraints through regulation. Time limits could be shortened. Fees could be increased. Additional procedural hurdles could be imposed without primary legislation.
RFG’s warning is stark. Without changes, ORR risks becoming toothless. GBR would be marking its own homework, deciding access to a network it also operates. That is not a theoretical risk. It is a structural one. In a world where voters vote, not freight trains, it would be preposterous to say freight would have the ear of a politically controlled railway, where a freight path impinges on a commuter service.
Investment depends on certainty, not goodwill
RFG is careful to acknowledge that current GBR leaders are supportive of freight. The problem is not today’s intentions. It is tomorrow’s incentives. Whereas the political cycle is just five years (or five minutes if the life-span of ministers is the measure), rail freight investment is long-term and capital-intensive. Locomotives, wagons, terminals and interchanges are financed over decades.
Not even the most clairvoyant of observers can predict the political climate in ten, twenty or thirty years from now. Multi-decade investors need assurance that access rights cannot be quietly eroded by policy shifts or internal priorities. The Bill gives GBR sweeping discretionary powers over capacity, charging and even the extinguishment of existing rights. Without a strong, independent appeals function based on merit, not legal technicality, confidence will drain away. This is not special pleading. It is a precondition for growth.
Logistics UK echoes the concern
Logistics UK has raised similar issues, albeit from a wider supply chain perspective. Its earlier response to rail reform stressed the need to hold GBR accountable for its statutory duty to promote freight. Like RFG, it warned against reducing ORR to a reactive dispute resolver. It argued for objective access criteria, proactive oversight and protection from excessive political influence.
Logistics UK also highlighted the absence of clarity on how freight growth duties will be enforced. Without transparent reporting and scrutiny, statutory obligations risk becoming aspirations rather than constraints. Its proposal for regular parliamentary and regulatory reporting by GBR deserves serious attention at the Committee Stage. Then again, many deserving cases get overlooked in the parliamentary process.
Supply chain nerves are already fraying
The Railway Industry Association, representing the supply chain, has approached reform from a different angle. Its conclusions also reinforce the urgency. RIA welcomes the Bill and the creation of GBR. It also sees reform as overdue. Yet its latest assessment paints a nervous picture. A majority of suppliers expect a contraction in the rail market. Many are freezing recruitment or laying off staff. Confidence is fragile.
For suppliers, freight is not a niche. It is a source of private investment and long-term work. If freight growth is stifled by governance uncertainty, the consequences ripple far beyond operators. RIA’s calls for clarity, timetables and firm strategies underline a wider truth. Delay and ambiguity carry real economic costs. Worryingly, this is a policy that RIA has pursued for years, and still we have the destructive regime of start-stop and boom-bust. The current UK Government’s record on “U-turn politics” does not give cause for optimism.
The clock is now ticking … loudly
The Committee Stage is not a debating society. It is where text hardens into law. Rail freight has done the analysis. It has commissioned legal advice. It has proposed specific, targeted amendments. Remove judicial review thresholds. Allow appeals on merit. Limit ministerial powers to erode the process. These are not radical demands. They are safeguards that benefit the national economy. The danger remains that, once again, railways will be examined in a vacuum, rather than holistically as an integral part of the national economy.
The Railways Bill 2025 will pass. Great British Railways will be established. The only remaining question is whether freight emerges with a framework that encourages growth, or one that quietly discourages it. The doors are closing. The freight lobby has very little time left to make itself heard. If considerations are not secured now, they will not be secured later. Let’s do more than just hope that Parliament pays more than lip service.