Commuter Services (Chelmsford to Liverpool Street)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. May I say for the record that, like my right hon. Friends the Members for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) and for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), you assiduously campaign on the railway service for your constituents?

It is incredibly important that we continue to talk about the issues on the line, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford does. We discussed the challenges on the line on 28 January, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden also attended that debate. Since then, there has been a series of steps forward to improve services for the 8,000 commuting constituents of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford and for others from further afield. However, there have also been some real challenges. I will set out some of the things that are happening and offer some words of reassurance about what we will be looking for in the new franchise, which will start in October next year.

A series of performance improvement plans have been put forward by Abellio Greater Anglia in conjunction with its work with Network Rail, which have been approved by my Department. They were first given one in April 2014, to which it responded. Indeed, the performance, measured by the public performance measures, started to improve. However, it then dipped because, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, there were ongoing issues relating to signalling on the lines, and there was unfortunately a series of fatalities on the line.

Some services on those lines, such as those running into Enfield, were then devolved to Transport for London. In fact, those were the higher performing services, in terms of punctuality, so a new baseline had to be set for what good looks like for the remaining services. The Department is still having that conversation, so at the moment there is no firmly agreed baseline for the PPMs, although it is worth noting that the numbers on punctuality started to tick up in the summer before taking an unfortunate dive in the past couple of months. The reasons for that are severalfold, but they fall into two main groups. First, there was a series of fleet issues, partly relating to the old rolling stock. Secondly, there was a series of infrastructure problems, particularly relating to the classic adhesion problem of leaves on the line. Research I have seen shows that the preparation of the lines and the scraping-off of the leaves is not what it could be and is not done as assiduously by Network Rail as it is in other parts of the country. That is definitely something to work on.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden said, capacity on the line is so stretched that a minute of delay exacerbates a series of problems for many commuters. Sadly, the ongoing station improvements at Chelmsford, which we all welcome, are a long way behind schedule as a result of a contractual dispute between the original contractor and the train operating company that has to retender. The train operating company is working hard to fix that problem. My right hon. Friend the member for Chelmsford said that there were some serious engineering overruns. Although there have been only four main ones over the past 12 months, their impact has been substantial. As he rightly pointed out, the most recent caused a shut-down of services at 11 am.

There has been a root-and-branch transformation of Network Rail’s approach to engineering works, particularly after the problems we saw last Christmas. Whether the works are major or minor, there is now a zero-tolerance approach to overrunning. The route operating directors are far more involved in decision making. I am disappointed that that is not coming through in these cases. I am particularly disappointed to hear about the late-running freight train, because it is policy that freight is always sequenced behind passenger trains, particularly during commuting hours, so I am disappointed to hear that that has not happened.

There are infrastructure problems on the line, but my right hon. Friend and other colleagues will welcome the fact that, since we last spoke in January, £170 million has been invested in railway lines from London to Norwich on a series of upgrades, and there has been a £20 million investment at the start of this short direct-award franchise, which includes the refresh of the existing rolling stock and some improvements on the class 317s and 321s.

I want to say a couple of words about disruption before I turn to the challenge of rolling stock and what is specified in the franchise. We are at a critical point for the railways. We are investing an unprecedented amount in railway and, indeed, road infrastructure over the next five years and that investment has to deliver on the ground. It is no good saying, “We have 2,000 engineering projects and, oops, three of them went bad.” That is unacceptable when thousands of people face disruption. I am pleased to tell my right hon. Friends here today that there has been an enormous review of engineering plans, a lot of contingency planning, and an evaluation of what happens in stations. I personally met the gold commanders at the various stations to assure myself to the best of my ability that the works will happen. The train operating companies have been present in all those review meetings.

It is fair to say that we are waiting for the new franchise to unlock the journey time improvements that we know are so crucial to the “Norwich in 90” campaign. I congratulate my right hon. Friends present, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has just joined us, because the aspiration would not be so advanced without Members’ assiduous campaigning. I hold it up as the poster child for what people need to do if they are trying to make improvements through rail spending in a region. However, until the franchise is in place and we get firm performance measurements, we will not see the level of improvement that we all expect, particularly for those constituents paying £3,728 a year.

We are in the process of letting the invitation to tender. I pay tribute to Members present for highlighting the importance of new rolling stock, but I want to say gently that the days of the Department absolutely specifying exactly what train operating companies should buy and do are over, which is a good thing. The commercial sector is involved in the industry so that it can bring its best innovation to bear, but the specifications that we have put in the franchise cannot be delivered without new rolling stock on many routes or substantial improvement to the newer existing rolling stock. I think we will all be pleased with what comes back in the bids. In this invitation to tender, the emphasis on rolling stock quality is greater than it has ever been. Its importance is firmly recognised

However, I do not want Members to feel that everyone is sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the franchise to happen. I have just been reading the correspondence that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has had with the current managing director of the franchise holder, Abellio Greater Anglia, in which he says that it has

“engaged an external company to assist us in a major transformational change for our Engineering Team.”

The company is really trying to nail down the planning-led approach to engineering. The letter continues:

“The stated objective is to increase productivity by 30%, which will lead to greater reliability and availability”.

The franchise holder is therefore working hard to improve operations with the existing fleet.

I want to touch on suicide, about which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has spoken movingly before. While the instances of suicide on the line have actually fallen on a year-on-year basis, it is still an absolutely tragedy when it happens and it can create enormous disruption for passengers. AGA is addressing shortfalls in measures to prevent suicides and is working on all sorts of services, particularly from organisations such as Samaritans, with which AGA is working closely, but it is an ongoing battle. New technology, such as intelligent CCTV that can identify people who exhibit behaviour known to result in a possible attempt on their life, is being trialled in the new control room in Romford, but it will take time to roll the programmes out across the network.

I will finish with a couple of quick points about fares and the future approach to the railways. I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend talk about the fact that fares have been held down by an RPI-plus-zero accelerator this year and for the duration of this Parliament. It will be the first time in 10 years that fares will rise more slowly than wages, which is a good deal that is worth some £700 million over the Parliament to rail users. For that money, however, commuters from our constituencies expect to get a reliable service. With all the investment, it is imperative that franchise holders deliver their services, which is why the franchising process has been improved and is securely focused on passenger benefits, and that, ultimately, Network Rail delivers on its responsibilities in a way that does not create disruption through late-running engineering works.

[Sir Simon Burns]

Does the Minister agree that the rail service operator tends to get the blame for problems such as overrunning engineering work, faulty track or signal failure because it is at the sharp end, although it is in fact not responsible? Network Rail and its maintenance department are responsible. We do not want both organisations at each other’s throats, but it seems a little rotten for the rail operators to get the blame every time.

[Claire Perry]

As a former Rail Minister, my right hon. Friend understands this better than almost anyone. He is absolutely right to say that various players are involved in problems that occur, but our constituents do not care. They just want to pay their fare, feel that they are getting a reasonable quality journey and get to work and then home to their families on time. One-off disruptions are clearly a problem, but the really insidious problem is the daily disruption on the parts of the network where we are undertaking massive improvement plans which leads to people being unable to say when they are going to pick up the kids from day care or when they will be in for a meeting in the morning. We are focused on such issues and we are addressing them. Most fundamentally, whether it is Network Rail or the operator or my Department, it is about putting the customer front and centre of railway decisions.

I will share briefly my theory of railway management. The railways have historically been run by gentlemen—only 17% of the workforce across the whole network is female—who probably had trainsets on their bedroom floors as little boys, but the problems with trainsets are twofold. First, all the trees are evergreen—bits of broccoli will do—and do not shed their leaves, so leaf adhesion is never a problem. Secondly, there are no teeny-tiny passengers to stuff into the train as it whizzes around the floor. I have been told by a departed senior person in the railway industry that were it not for passengers, the timetabling would be perfect. I assure all Members here that that my Department and I utterly reject that view. We will do all that we can, working with Network Rail and the operators, including Abellio Greater Anglia, to ensure that passenger interests are put front and centre of this unprecedented investment in railways.

Question put and agreed to.