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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), on securing the debate, and all the Committee members who have attended it as well as the other hon. Members who have participated in it.
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) has, to her surprise, enjoyed the debate. Let me warn her to be careful: rail is a very seductive and addictive issue. Transport was my first Select Committee, and look what has happened to me. I put it down to the good stewardship of its Chairman that I am where I am today, so the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw should watch out for what might occur, either here or in Edinburgh—who knows?
I thank the Select Committee for its report, which is of the usual high standard. As has been suggested, I take these reports very seriously indeed. I know how much work goes into compiling them, cross-examining witnesses and drawing sensible conclusions, so I never take any report such as this lightly.
Much of the report came from an evidence session that I did on, I think, day three of being in my current role. I was a little petrified, to say the least, but the report reflects what I said, and I stand by every word of it. However, since that appearance, my knowledge has developed a bit—thank goodness—and of course the circumstances that we are addressing on the railways have changed. I want to use this opportunity to discuss some of the recommendations in the report, as well as the points made today by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass).
One important point made—by the hon. Member for North West Durham, I think—was that actions speak louder than words. We can all agree to specific points in reports and so on, but what matters is actions. Ticketing reform is a good case study for that. I remember when we looked at ticketing reform in the Select Committee—I think that was in 2012. There was a big, thick, wodgey Government document—I think it was about 200 pages in two sections—with everything that they were going to do to reform ticketing and make it all work fine on behalf of the consumer. Nothing ever happened with that. I got it out soon after my appointment as a Minister and reread it, thinking, “Maybe there are some clues in here.” And I thought, “Well, I’m not going to repeat that mistake.”
In my first week as Minister, there was a significant news story about split ticketing on the front page of The Times. I immediately sat down with my officials and said, “Right. Passenger experience has to be the key issue that we focus on,” and everyone said, “Okay, how do we define passenger experience?”, because in a sense, as we have heard today, it means everything.
Passenger experience is every single interaction between a customer who wants to travel by train and the train operators. It is quite hard to segment down, but segment we must, so when it came to my recent fares and ticketing action plan, I did not want just a list of actions that I wanted the industry to take at some future date. I wanted quite specific itemised actions, with a delivery date—because delivery dates are often quite rare in these action plans—that we could hold the industry and, indeed, the Department to account on. As the Minister, I could then start to measure whether we were achieving those goals.
Just this week, for example, I was pleased to note that the Rail Delivery Group has changed its rules on how those who leave their railcards at home are compensated. Gradually, slowly but surely, the ticketing action plan is coming into effect; that is happening as rapidly as possible. I find that all too often the greatest hurdles relate to system change—programming the computers and ensuring that each computer can speak to every other computer, so that we can then get the outcomes we want.
A large number of comments today and, indeed, the bulk of this report, focused on the issues involving GTR. I know that the Select Committee has taken a close interest in that matter, so I want to try to address it. It will come as no surprise to those gathered here today when I say that the performance of GTR is not good enough. It continues to be not good enough; I continue to be dissatisfied. I expect GTR to run a timely, reliable and predictable service for passengers, but I will only ever look at changes to that franchise arrangement if that delivers an improvement on behalf of passengers and is not merely for the sake of structural change.
The report highlighted the fact that we did not wholly accept the case that someone might do a better job. I entirely accept, philosophically, that yes, someone one day might be able to do a better job. My concern at the moment is to ensure that there is not a severe deterioration in provision because of yet another handover in franchise operator. We need to evolve this franchise into a much better place.
Paul Maynard
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. I do not think that it is for me as a Minister to say that there is a specific target that must be hit. What I expect GTR to be doing on a regular basis is seeking to improve performance, and I will talk the hon. Lady through what I expect GTR to do.
The punctuality of services operated by GTR was at 73.1% over the 12 months to 4 March 2017. That compares significantly unfavourably with the London and south-east average of 85.2%. No one can pretend that it is anything other than simply unacceptable. It is despite the establishment of joint industry recovery plans. None the less, we are doing everything we can to improve the situation.
The Chairman of the Select Committee rightly raised the issue of force majeure. This has been one of my bugbears as Minister for many months now. Indeed, my enthusiasm for solving it rather overcame established procedure in terms of how we go about that. I am pleased to report to hon. Members that we have now completed assessing six full periods of GTR’s performance.
The quality of the data has significantly improved, allowing us to make swifter judgments, but because what we are discussing is a contractual obligation, GTR has the right, if it disagrees with the Department’s findings, to challenge those findings. That is what we are still stuck in at the moment. I aspire to bring that to a conclusion as rapidly as possible. I share the undoubted enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside for putting that particular aspect of GTR’s performance behind us, but sadly I am not yet in a position to do that.
None the less, I am still trying to get Network Rail and the train operators to improve their focus on industry performance outputs. They are concentrating on three key workstreams to deliver improvements across the south-east. The first is the 2018 timetable specification, which will be crucial to increasing capacity across the south-east. The second is a back-to-basics approach—ensuring that trains are on time and correct processes are being followed and, in particular, focusing on the peaks in the morning and evening. We have found time and again that when something goes wrong on this network, what is called the perturbation and the consequential delays are significant.
I remember that in my first week, we had a sinkhole at Forest Hill—it no doubt delayed the hon. Member for Eltham on his way back to his constituency. That was an example of how something that simply could not be expected caused significant delays. It is really important that both the train operator and Network Rail work much more closely together to ensure that they recover from these problems when they occur, rather than allowing them to cascade throughout the timetable.
That is why it is important that the Department as a whole works with all the industry stakeholders to find new ways to measure performance that are more closely aligned with what passengers themselves experience day to day. That is why we are looking at improving our measurement of what is called right-time departure and right-time arrival. A passenger judges whether a train is on time by whether it arrives at the time said in timetable, and not within five to 10 minutes. Right-time departure is going to be a much more important figure in years to come, rather than the old-style public performance measure. I want to bring that change in as part of control period 6.
We also want to make sure that, as the hon. Member for North West Durham mentioned, there is much greater industry transparency on train service performance levels across franchises. I am absolutely committed to a much greater degree of transparency; none the less, it is a difficult process to engineer—if only because every single franchise has a slightly different set of measurements, which are contractual obligations in respect of the individual train operating company. That work is ongoing within the Department; it cannot come soon enough, in my view. I hope to make announcements in due course—as we always say in civil service parlance—and am very eager that we keep the pace going on it.
Many Members mentioned whether the company had a full complement of drivers on day one when they took over the franchise. I was not the Minister at the time, but I understand that part of the problem was that when the deal was announced it said it did have enough drivers, but, when it came to mobilisation day, some of those drivers had left to work in the freight sector. It is entirely right and proper that we express concerns as to how that gap occurred between those two points, but we need to take a wider look at driver recruitment across the industry as a whole.
We all know that there are skills issues across the rail sector. We have an ageing workforce and a large number of workers who are about to retire. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that we are recruiting enough drivers, that driver training is an efficient process and that people have the option of going through driver training themselves—as HGV drivers do—to seek employment somewhere else? Are we making full use of all the training facilities that we now have around the country, which I am sure the Select Committee has visited? We are in close talks with the Rail Delivery Group about how we can improve driver training as a whole to improve the throughput, make sure it meets the needs in the here and now and get the numbers we need.
Many have mentioned the industrial relations problems currently on the network. I am as frustrated as everybody else at seeing yet more RMT strikes this week, but it is clear that they are now having very little impact on the network. Last Monday, 90.5% of Southern services ran. Any strike is frustrating for passengers, but I say to the RMT, “Your strikes on Southern are not having the impact you desire. It is far better that you cease industrial action and have talks with the company, rather than persisting with the strikes.”
Paul Maynard
I take the hon. Lady’s point that it is spreading, but we remain open to talking to the RMT if it calls off its industrial action. That is the blockage that stops it from having a discussion with the Government and the various train operating companies. Nobody is losing their job; nobody is losing any pay. The independent regulator has found that the system on Southern can be safe, and GTR is taking all necessary action to ensure that it is delivered safely. I welcome yesterday’s renewed agreement between ASLEF and GTR. I gather it will now go to a ballot of ASLEF members; I hope that they endorse it, and that it then ensures we can focus on delivering improved services across the Southern network.
We are working to improve the service for GTR customers and improve compensation measures. Overall, “delay repay” payments totalled £3.2 million in the last period, of which £175,000 were “delay repay 15”. We have also launched our special one-off form of compensation, the equivalent of a month’s free travel, for all Southern season ticket holders. GTR has handled almost 37,000 special claims in that regard, totalling £8.84 million in compensation. The scheme closes on 30 April 2017, and we continue to advertise it—as does GTR—in the media, on posters at all Southern stations, on electronic billboards, in customer service announcements and on Twitter.
Please be assured that I stay in touch with the situation by having regular meetings with GTR’s chief executive officer and chief operating officer to discuss all the issues. They include compensation and the implementation and progress of all the Government-funded schemes under both the £20 million that was initially given out, and the current £300 million that will go on improving the Balcombe tunnel, removing vegetation and ensuring greater reliability.
I have five minutes remaining. As ever, how can one discuss everything about rail in the time allowed? Indeed, it is even less than that because I have to give the Select Committee Chairman a chance to have her say. I will briefly deal with accessibility, which is a mutual concern for both myself and the Labour party spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham.
It goes without saying that we want everybody to have equal access to transport. We have committed more than £400 million through Access for All funding and other means to improve accessibility, and train companies have to comply with the Equality Act 2010. However, I think the real picture is the fact that more and more disabled people are seeking to travel by train. The challenge for the train operating companies is getting harder with every passing month.
In the past year, we have seen 4% more sales of the disabled persons railcard and 7% more bookings under the passenger assist scheme. With more disabled people travelling, train operating companies have an ever decreasing margin for getting it wrong. I welcome the fact that the Rail Delivery Group is trying to merge the ticket reservation system and the passenger assist reservation system by December 2018, although I query whether that is soon enough and whether it could do more to bring that forward.
I remind all train operating companies that they must ensure that procedures are in place to enable disabled passengers and persons of reduced mobility to board a train in service that is under the sole operation of the driver. Where that occurs, I want to see a second person on board or on the platform to render help to those passengers who need it most. The key difference is that I do not believe that that person should be a safety-critical person. I do not think it is acceptable to have a situation where a train is cancelled and a disabled passenger cannot depart the station in the first place because there is not a second person on that train. It is fair to say that that is a small difference between myself and the hon. Lady.
Regardless of whether such assistance has been pre-booked, the principle of a “turn up and go” railway is important and must become more important in the future. It will include the requirement for all train operating companies to provide appropriately trained staff to meet their obligations. I see that as meaning more staff required on the railways, and more passenger-facing staff—not locked behind a door focusing on buttons—engaging with passengers on a regular basis. In addition, if a disabled passenger is unable to access a station, the operator must provide alternative transport—usually an accessible taxi. That will require much more cross-Government work to ensure that we have a greater supply of accessible taxis.
I am conscious that the Chairman of the Select Committee needs to say a few final words, so I shall leave my remarks there.
Mrs Ellman
I thank the Committee and hon. Members present for their valuable contributions. The Minister clearly has an understanding of these issues, and I like to think that he received his training when he was a member of the Transport Committee in previous years.
Mrs Ellman
The Minister spoke about the importance of having a delivery date. It is vital that we have an early delivery date for the improvement of the passenger experience, and I assure him that we will continue to pursue that aim.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Sixth Report from the Transport Committee of Session 2016-17, The future of rail: Improving the rail passenger experience, HC 64, and the Government Response, HC 905.