Great British Railways plan to oversee rail network delayed

theguardian.com:

A plan to create a public sector body to oversee Britain’s ailing rail network has been delayed.

Great British Railways (GBR), which would take over from the infrastructure management company Network Rail and be responsible for handing out rail contracts, will not go ahead in 2024 owing to the scrapping of the transport bill.

The transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, told the Commons that the bill was being abolished because of the need to prioritise legislation to deal with the energy crisis.

She said a lighter version of the bill could be put forward looking at legislation around transport technologies such as e-scooters.

Asked about the transport bill by the transport select committee, Trevelyan said: “The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that in this third session. What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow bill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.”

She added: “That bigger piece around rail transformation in particular, we will need to look at in the fourth session.”

The Department for Transport permanent secretary, Dame Bernadette Kelly, told the committee: “There are key elements of structural change and the establishment of GBR which require legislation including, for example, I think the formal transfer of franchising powers from the government – from the DfT – to another entity.

“So there clearly are some things that we can’t fully do structurally without legislation and without those powers.”

Trevelyan said: “What we’re looking at, at the moment, is whether actually, across that whole piece, there are a number of parts that