(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Davies of Gower
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the condition, maintenance, and long-term resilience of rail infrastructure on the Great Western Railway network; and what steps they are taking to ensure its reliability following recent flooding and extreme weather.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, Network Rail has robust plans in place to deal with resilience because of climate change. The Wales and western region will see a £2.6 billion spend on asset renewals and £1.6 billion invested to maintain assets from 2024 to 2029. There is also a comprehensive weather resilience and climate change adaptation plan focusing on safe- guarding assets, embedding resilience into daily operations and adapting to climate change impacts along the route.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, recent months have seen the western region suffer delays and cancellations through infrastructure issues. Signalling failure is partly to blame, but inclement weather frequently causes severe flooding. In particular, Chipping Sodbury tunnel, built in 1902, has been plagued by flooding issues since the day it opened. Successive Governments have funded remedial work over the years on a piecemeal basis, but, as the Minister is aware from his former role at Network Rail, this has not provided a solution to the ongoing problem. Can he therefore commit to resolving the issue in order to bring travel in the western region into the 21st century? As the operator, can he take steps to ensure that GWR provides a full set of rolling stock on its intercity services, as opposed to the frequently provided overcrowded half-set of carriages?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord knows more about Chipping Sodbury now because I arranged for the route director for the western route to talk to him. He is right that it was opened in 1902. Great Western Railway built the cutting and the tunnel straight through an aquifer and it has been flooding ever since. The good news is that remedial work over the past five years has significantly reduced the delays created by flooding in that location. However, there are many other examples of flooding due to climate change, including, as he knows, one recently in Neath, which has never flooded before.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change. My sub-committee’s recent advice to the Government was that we need to prepare for 2 degrees of warming by 2050. That implies that, in many areas, typical weather will be rather like the extreme weather we see today, and extreme weather will be much more extreme than that, with maximum temperatures potentially towards the mid-40s. Can the Minister assure the House that the HS2 line to Birmingham and the recently announced Northern Rail developments will be ready for this weather?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The truth is that the whole railway network has to be adapted to weather that was once exceptional and is now common- place. The budget for Network Rail, as the current infrastructure owner, was at least quadrupled compared with 2019 to 2024, precisely to cope with that. I am sure that the new lines, such as HS2 and the Liverpool to Manchester line, will be built with that mind, but our greater preoccupation at the moment is our existing railway and its reliability.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, recent reports in the press have highlighted the serious shortages of carriages on Great Western Railway services, with one in three engines not functioning properly due to fuel pump issues. What are the Government doing to ensure a fully operating service now, as well as when the Government start to directly run this part of the railway?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Baroness is completely right. At one stage, out of the total train fleet for long-distance services, with 400-odd engines in those trains, some 110 of them were not functioning due to a fault that appears to be something to do with fuel supply and fuel pumps. The good news is that the number is now down to 38. I am very frustrated by the time it has taken to fix them, but they are being fixed.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, and then we will come to the Conservative Benches.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, I am confident that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, will join with me in praising the care of the GWR staff. Nevertheless, both he and I suffer on our journeys, often together, from Swansea, because of the delays. Can my noble friend the Minister say where the GWR stands in the comparative performance rates of all the railways in this matter?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
It was pretty good. It has got worse because of the engine shortage. Reliability has been very poor. I am expecting it to now recover. I am on its back.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, about the quality and care that GWR staff take in looking after their customers, of whom I am one.
I take the Minister back to his Written Answer about Chipping Sodbury. He knows that I raised that issue when I was Secretary of State and he was chair of Network Rail, and I was assured that work had been done to solve the problem. It has improved it, as he said. It delayed the flooding impact of Storm Claudia by 27 hours. He says that more work is going to be done in 2026-27. Is that work planned to fix the problem once and for all?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the noble Lord is a bit optimistic. If mother nature continues to pour water into the railway infrastructure, because of the way it is built, any fix will be related to what the climate is actually doing.
Network Rail is very confident that there can be further reductions, some of which will be through big infrastructure, such as building small reservoirs and fitting more pumps. So, I cannot guarantee that the tunnel will never flood, but I can guarantee that every effort is being made to reduce the delays when it does.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, the points that have been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Anderson, are absolutely right. In particular, west of Cardiff, there are severe problems going through to Carmarthenshire. This is probably due to underinvestment over a number of years. Can the Minister give a commitment that he will look at the situation running through to west Wales, in view of the recent experiences?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have spoken to the Welsh regional manager of Network Rail in the past 24 hours to ask him what the incidence of flooding was in south Wales, in preparation for this question. As I said earlier, there are several sites which have never flooded before—Neath and west of Swansea—and Network Rail it is looking very urgently at dealing with those issues in order to keep the reliable railway running.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, Brunel built the South Devon Railway in 1842, alongside the River Exe estuary and down past Dawlish—a very scenic route. By 1860, it was realised that that route was unsustainable, and an alternative route was planned over the Haldon Hill. Over recent years, we have seen the line collapse in Dawlish and, on an almost monthly basis, overtopping along the Powderham banks alongside the Exe estuary. What plans have the Government to reroute that line to one that is sustainable in the long term? I note my interest as a local resident.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Since the collapse of the line into the sea in Dawlish in 2014, about £140 million has been spent on resilience to keep the railway running. There is work left to do, in particular on the cliffs at Teignmouth, but there is no practicable, affordable alternative route that can be provided any time soon. So railway colleagues have to keep going on keeping that line open, whatever the weather.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
I warn my noble friend that this morning the Environment and Climate Change Committee took evidence from three water companies. We discovered that storing water in reservoirs is very expensive; it is a lot cheaper to store it in aquifers. So what are the prospects of extending the aquifer that is the cause of the problem to the railway?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I could do without anybody storing water in the aquifer next to the Chipping Sodbury tunnel and cutting. If they try it, there will be some serious legal action. The water companies have their part to play in managing surface water, just as landowners do and just as Network Rail does. It is an increasing problem, it needs to be treated seriously and a lot of public money is going into dealing with it.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I appreciate the difficulties for the Minister. However, changing the subject slightly, if there is so little money available for rail infrastructure and so many demands on it, why are the Government persisting with this plan that Great British Railways should build its own retail website and app for selling tickets when that is done perfectly well by the private sector already? Is it not time to abandon this vanity project?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Nobody said that there was too little money. A lot of money is being spent on railway infrastructure. The problem has been that the climate has changed faster than adaptation of the railway infrastructure. The noble Lord is quite wrong about ticket retailing. There are currently 14 websites from train operating companies. They are very confusing. Many people do not think that you can buy a ticket for First Great Western from South Western, but you can. The objective of GBR is to replace this system with one that people can trust and will use to increase rail travel.