East Coast Main Line
Debate between Andy McDonald and Stephen Phillips(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Andy McDonald
I thank my hon. Friend. He makes a valid point, and I hope to return to it.
Andy McDonald
If I can make some progress, I will come back to the hon. and learned Gentleman.
I have laid out reforms that it might be thought would cause disruption. In oral evidence to members of the Transport Committee on 24 April this year, the Minister made the following comment about punctuality on the east coast main line:
“If you look at the latest monthly figures for reliability and punctuality, it is the worst of the 19 franchises.”
Were that the whole story, it would be extremely concerning, but East Coast during the latter half of 2012 achieved the best train punctuality on the east coast franchise since records began in 1999. In recent months, some challenging external circumstances, such as the weather and overhead wire problems on the southern part of the route, affected performance, and East Coast is implementing a joint action plan with Network Rail to ensure that operational performance on the line returns to the record levels achieved in the autumn. The results the Minister cited are completely atypical. One has only to look at Network Rail’s moving annual average for punctuality, which puts the east coast main line in the top three of the seven long-distance franchises, to see that. The encouraging performance improvements in period 1 and to date in period 2 of this year are an early reflection of that collaboration with Network Rail. The latest available figures show that nine out of every 10 East Coast trains were on time, according to the industry’s public performance measure—up considerably on the previous quarter and up year on year.