That out labour's policy for rail. Louise.

Thank you very much, Jodie, for your introduction and for hosting us today here at Trainline. The last few years have certainly been interesting ones for transport in this country, from HS2 Chaos to our transport secretary parroting bizarre 15-minute Conspiracy Theories at last year's Tauri Party conference. You could call the government's transport agenda many things, and I have called it many things, but one thing it is not is boring. We are all here today because we are passionate about transport and the people it serves. All too often, people are lost when we discuss transport policy. But there is a reason that Trainline is the UK and Europe's number one most downloaded rail travel app because you make it easier for millions of passengers to buy tickets, to use the railway, and to find the best value fares. Trainline's success is driven by its relentless focus on passengers. It listens to the people who use the railways, and it focuses on improving their experience. It is these lessons and those from right across the best of the private and public sector that we draw on in setting out labour's plans today. Britain was, of course, the country that invented the railways and brought them to the world.

Next year, we will mark 200 years since the world's first passenger railway ran from Stockton to Darrington. The innovation which followed transformed Britain, supercharged our industrial revolution, and made traveling the country a possibility for millions. We deserve to be proud of that legacy. But under the Conservatives, our railways have become a symbol of national decline. Of a country that no longer works and a government with no plan to fix it. Cancelations are at record highs. Fares have risen almost twice as fast as wages since 2010, and strikes are costing us £25 million a day. Today's broken model simply doesn't work. Decisions which should be straightforward, like timetable changes, new ticket types, or fares, can take years to happen. When things go wrong, like delays, armies of lawyers argue over who's fault it is and who pays for the mistake instead of how to fix it. Huge sums continue to be wasted on management fees and shareholder dividends, and despite 30 years of prioritization, shockingly, it is the taxpayer who still props up our failing railways to the tune of billions of pounds every year. That is why today I am setting out Labour's plan to fix Britain's railways.

Now, You may not know this, but my boss is keen on something he likes to call mission-driven government. The idea at the heart of this is that for government to succeed in making a difference and in making things better, it has to be focused. It has to set itself objectives, and it has to be transparent and accountable. The alternative, as we have seen for much of the last 14 years, is drift, dither, and dysfunction. Our railways underpin all of the five missions that Keir Starmer has set for an incoming labor government. They are vital to achieving the growth that we need and to unlocking opportunity for all. They must drive forward our ambitions on green energy and the net zero transition, and we cannot keep people safe unless they feel safe to travel on public transport. Our railways are critical to making our country a better, wealthier, and happier place. We can only achieve our five national missions if we unlock the trapped potential of our railways to boost growth and opportunity and to connect all of us with each other, with work, and with leisure. But I believe that mission-driven government also gives us a framework for understanding how to go about driving change within the railway itself.

Under the Tories, we've seen what consequences purposeless drift can have. Constant chaos and changes of direction, canceled upgrades and half baked plans. The conservative Party has achieved the worst of all worlds for by railways. Partially privatized, overly centralized, expensive but unreliable, confusing in the extreme and shamefully unaccountable. It is passengers who always pay the price. Stranded at a station in the middle of the night when their train is canceled, crammed into over-crowded and unpleasant trains with broken toilets and dirty carriages, unable to work as they travel because there's no WiFi connection. They pay through the nose to prop up this failing system with huge amounts wasted every year through inefficiencies and fragmentation. Unlike most privatizations, that of the railways has never become publicly accepted because its failings have remained all too obvious. The fragmentation of the network has made it more confusing for passengers and more difficult and expensive to perform the essentially collaborative task of running trains on time. Those aren't my words. They're the words of Grant Shapps. Remember We've already had Keith Williams, the government's independent reviewer of rail, endorsing our plans today, so I wouldn't rule out Grant Shaps or perhaps one of his aliases, endorsing us by tea time.

Now, when Keir asked me to take on this role and to plan for how we will fix Britain's railways, I set myself an exam question. Not how do I achieve an ideological outcome, but how do I place passengers back at the heart of how our railways are run? That is my mission. It is the delivery of that mission, a railway network that is relentlessly focused on the passenger interest that underpins the policies I am launching today. They amount to the biggest reform of our railways for a generation. Labor will sweep away the broken model and bring private operators into public ownership as their contracts expire. We will establish Great British Railways, a single directing mind to control our railways in the passenger interest. Yes, we're keeping the name, I'm afraid I was overruled on calling it rail Bretagne. If I am Secretary of State, I won't be running the railways day to day, but I will act as the passenger in chief, setting the strategy and objectives for Great British Railways and holding it to account on behalf of passengers everywhere. But unlike current ministers, I will trust the experts. Experts who don't just come from the rail sector, because we all know it can sometimes be a little inward-looking, but external experts in providing exceptional customer service.

We will deliver simplified fares and ticketing, a best fare guarantee across the network, as Trainline has already managed to achieve. We will roll out the innovations that you have trialed here, digital season tickets and automatic delay repay so that they are available to all passengers. We will create a tough new passenger watchdog that will hold Great British railways to account on behalf of the passenger, both on performance on the quality of the service they provide, because we believe that customer experience matters, and it matters to growing our railways. Now, I know what some are going to say. Same old labor, always calling for public ownership. But the truth of the matter is that neither the passenger nor the taxpayer can afford for things to continue like this, throwing good money after bad at a system that simply isn't delivering. As part of our a new approach, we will reset industrial relations on the railways, which have hit a new low under this government who have continuously and deliberately provoked these disputes. Labor will take a consciously different approach. We will see We will see our workforce as an asset rather than a liability. We will work with them, and where there are disagreements, we will get around the table and we will work them out.

Now, there are two stages to the reforms I am setting out today. Step Day One is urgent action we will take immediately if we enter office. We will instruct the Department for Transport, Network Rail, the rail delivery group, and the operator of last resort to work together from day one to create a shadow Great British railways. This will fire the starting gun on reform and make sure we don't lose valuable time or momentum. Step two will see us pass the primary legislation needed to formally establish Great British railways as an arm's length body, ensuring that it's structured around the needs of passengers and freight. Every five years, the Secretary of State will issue a long-term strategy which will set out how the railway must deliver against clear passenger objectives. Great British Railways will be incentivised to grow the number of people using rail and the revenues from it. And importantly, it will provide the clarity and certainty of outlook that the sector has been missing for so long. That will help address the boom and bust cycle our rail manufacturers like Olston and Hitachi in Derby and the North East have been left in by this government, which has failed to set out a clear pipeline of rail investments for years.

To reassure both voters who worry that a railway run in their interests will cost too much. To reassure beloved colleagues in the Shadow Treasury team, these fully costed proposals will save the taxpayer money through efficiencies delivered by eliminating duplicate costs across the network. This is an entirely new approach to our railways, and consciously so. There is no future in simply reinventing the past, and there is no hope if we remain weathered to the current mess. This is our plan to put our railways back on track, to put passengers at the heart of our railways, and to hold the railway to account, to make traveling by train accessible and reliable again, and to cut the waste and the short-termism that has characterized the last 14 years of dysfunction. It isn't going to be easy, and it will take hard graft, but it will be my mission to get us to the right destination and to deliver for the great British passenger. Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. I believe we've got some questions from the press. I have got a hard deadline, and my team are going to signal when I need to go because I do need to catch a train.

But we'll start with Sam Coates from Skye.

How are you going to make sure that you don't end up falling into the same old trap as British railways, where effectively, to get train upgrades, you are competing for cash with schools and hospitals, and given money is going to be very tight, aren't the trains going to be a lower priority?

Thanks. Well, obviously, we are in a very constrained public spending environment. There is no doubt about that. But the reforms we're setting out today will deliver significant efficiencies and cost savings for the taxpayer. As I've said earlier, the taxpayer simply can't afford to continue with the current broken model that is throwing good money after bad and wasting very, very stretched taxpayers's money. Now, we're not changing the way that trains are financed. We're not bringing the trains themselves into public ownership. Our model will continue to lease from the private sector. As I say, it will deliver significant efficiencies. We think we will save the taxpayer as much as £2.2 billion every year.

Have you got an agreement from Rachel Reeve that your savings, your efficiencies, can all be channeled back into the railways?

We would hope that we would reinvest some of those savings. We've not got an agreement that all of it would be. But the taxpayer, what we've got to remember, already subsidizes the railways by over £4 billion a year. That level of subsidy has not changed since pre-COVID in the previous system. The taxpayer is already footing the bill for the railways in a very broken and inefficient model. Passengers are paying the price and the taxpayers are getting very poor value for money. These reforms will allow us to demonstrate that we can get better bang for our buck and deliver a better service for passengers as well. Thanks. Harry from ITV.Thank you very much.That can't be right. You're not on holiday.

Not on holiday, not today. The latest stats I've been looking at suggests that around 2% of all journeys in the UK are made by rail. Why are you focusing so much attention on a service that not that many people seem to use on a day-to-day basis. Secondly, rail operators say that this proposal is a political one, not a practical one. Is this a pro-business proposal?

It's true that the The vast majority of people don't rely on the railways on a day-to-day basis, but the railways do serve our economy to the tune of billions of pounds every year, both by moving goods and people around the country. Although people who don't rely on it, they understand that our railways are broken, that they're simply not working at the moment. As I say, we're not getting good bang for our buck as the taxpayer. That's why we are so committed to this bold reform, because we cannot allow the current system to continue any longer. So the early failing passengers, the economy and the taxpayer. Now, I've seen the criticism from the rail operators, but the problem is they can't defend the current system. The Tories have promised reform for four years now and have failed to progress it. So the choice is between the failing status quo or the bold reform that labor has on offer. We're not ideological about this. We are encouraging working with the private sector, both through open access, with freight, and in the wider supply chain, which is why these plans today have encouraged endorsement from a really wide range of industry experts, including Keith Williams, who was the architect of the Tories reforms.

Thank you. Jennifer from the BBC. Passengers are worried about affordability and reliability. If there's so much money being wasted, why can't you commit to cheaper tickets? Also on reliability, what are you going to do to end the strikes? Can you commit to improving pay and conditions? Thank you. I can't today set out that we will lower fares, not least because they are incredibly complex and the regulation needs reform as well. But we have said that we will simplify them, that we'll make them more accessible, more transparent, and more trustworthy for passengers. At the moment, passengers have to contend with a dizzying array of different types of tickets and fares, and it means they simply don't trust that they're getting the best value for the journey. That's why We have things like split save that means that you have to buy different components of the journey in order to get better value. We will deliver a best fare guarantee so that people can always trust that they're getting the lowest fare for their journey, just as people currently experience with transport for London when they tap in and tap out of the system. Obviously, our ambition would be to make fares far more affordable.

But we really think that one of the things that's keeping passengers off the railways at the moment is the fact that they simply don't trust or understand the way fares are modeled. That's why simplification is our first priority. Fraser from LBC. Thank you. You say this will be a gradual approach within five years as contracts expire. Is that then fair to say that it would be a second labor term before we can see any real change where all of the system is joined up, as you say? Thank you. We We have a very clear plan to deliver these reforms within the first labor term. Every single one of the remaining private operators, and there are 10 that aren't currently in public ownership under the operator of last resort, either their full contract expires or their core term comes to an end within the first term of a labor government. We will commit to legislation to establish Great British Railways, and all those operations will be folded into Great British Railways well within the first term. But as I said, our plans are two-fold. From day one, we'll be bringing every partner together under a strategic partnership, a Shadow Great British Railways, to start delivering a reform.

Because we believe, and many in the industry believe, that the current government have been hiding behind the fact that they've not legislated to say that improvements can't be made. We believe that we can drive basic improvements from day one and that customers will start to begin to see improvements very early on in a labor government. Katherine from GB News. Thank you. This is obviously a big announcement. Sakeer Starmer, when he became leader, obviously had plans to nationalize the utilities as well. Is this going to be the one thing that gets nationalized? Might you be tempted to nationalize water given the unbelievable state of affairs at Thames Water, the leaks, sewage, etc? Thank you. Well, I think what the plans today and other plans that we've set out in areas shows that where the settlement isn't working, we're We had to take the tough action that is needed. We have, as I have set out, ironclad, and Rachel Reeves has repeatedly said, ironclad fiscal rules. These reforms are within them because we won't have to pay compensation when the railway operations contracts expire. Water is a different settlement because we would have to nationalize the business and it could cost the taxpayer billions of pounds.

In the constrained fiscal environment, we don't think that's immediately the right priority. Instead, we We set out plans for regulation and for tough legislation, criminal sanctions on water directors who dump sewage in our waters, and regulation to ensure that they invest in infrastructure, and it's the water companies that pay the price, not consumers. But we also have plans for publicly owned Great British Energy to act as a challenger to the energy market as well. I think what these plans and wider reforms demonstrate is that where it's the pragmatic and right thing to do, both the users and the taxpayer, we will take those steps, but and we're not ideological about it. Gareth from the Telegraph.

Good morning. Thank you. You've spoken quite a bit about simplifying fares, making it more digital, introducing automatic delay repay refunds, and a best price guarantee similar to how the TFL Oyster Card system works. This is all very digital-heavy and is going to rely on apps and digital technology. Yet there are still tens of millions of people who choose to buy railway tickets in paper form, older people who may not necessarily be comfortable using modern on smartphone apps. How is this system going to work for those who aren't using all these fancy-down digital technologies?

Absolutely. You could see from the backlash against the government's attempts to close almost every ticket office in the country, how dear Those tickets and the staff that serve them are to millions of customers across the country, not just the elderly, but people with disabilities and people with additional needs. It's really important that stations and trains are staff, so we've got no plans at all to change the level of workforce or staffing availability. These reforms that we're setting out are already available on parts of the network. That is what is so dysfunctional about the current system, that innovations like digital season tickets have been able to be delivered on certain operators, but the rest of the network simply will not deliver them despite attempts from the Department of Transport and indeed, former secretaries of State. That's why we are setting up plans for unified, simplified network. That means that these innovations can be trialed and where they work for the passenger, they can be made sure that they are available to everyone fairly across the country. Finally, Sophia from the mirror. Hi. Just off the back of that, I just wanted to just double check on that point.

Can you absolutely guarantee that ticket offices will never be closed if labor gets into power? Then just a quick second one, how will your plans improve the experience of disabled people on the railways? Thank you. We have absolutely no plans to close ticket offices to change the staffing levels on the railways. In terms of accessibility, it's really important. One of our key metrics that Great British railways will be held to account on, both by the Secretary of State and by the passenger watchdog, is accessibility. Far too much of our network is not accessible to disabled users, and they often feel very overlooked. That's why it's one of our top metrics and priorities to hold them to account. The passenger watchdog will be given tough new powers to sanction Great British railways if they don't meet those metrics and those objectives. Thank you ever so much for joining us this morning to launch Labour's plans to get Britain moving, and I'm off to catch my train. Thank you.