West Coast Main Line

Debate between Baroness Vere of Norbiton and Lord Jordan

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Yes, I know that the noble Viscount is a great champion of freight. The west coast main line is a key corridor for rail freight, particularly between the deep seaports and the distribution hubs both in the Midlands and across the country. Indeed, the industry estimates that about 90% of all intermodal trains use the west coast main line for part of their journey—that is, 90,000 trains a year—so that is also great for emissions reduction. We want to keep rail freight moving. We understand that this can be challenging when there are engineering works, and we take that into consideration. Where there is strike action, we do our best to communicate with the freight sector to ensure that it can plan accordingly.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

It is the turn of this side; noble Lords from other parties have had three questions on the trot.

Can the Minister be brought back to the here and now? There should have been a national strike tomorrow; it has been transferred to next week, which is the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. On Monday, there is rail strike and a Tube strike; on Tuesday, there are no tickets for sale for the north on Avanti trains; and on Wednesday, there is a national strike. I spoke to the manager of the Union Jack Club this morning, who told me that this is going to have devasting effects on bookings by people trying to come down for Remembrance Sunday. So what can the Government do to stop this indiscriminate guerrilla strike action that is bringing misery to hundreds of thousands of people at the very time of remembrance? This is a time when people want to remember the freedoms we got from people who died in the First and Second World Wars and other conflicts throughout the world: freedom to move, freedom to associate with each other and freedom to come to remembrances. These union barons must be held to account for at a whim changing these strikes to make it more difficult for people to travel at times when they need to travel—it has to stop.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: there are capacity constraints on the west coast main line that impact both passengers and freight. It is also the case that the west coast main line is fairly old, and therefore engineering works are necessary; that caused some disruption between 22 and 30 October. So he is absolutely right that we must continue to invest in our railways, and that is what the Government are doing.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the promises made by Avanti to run three trains an hour from London to Birmingham have not been honoured, and, worse still, that it is now running only one train an hour between two of the country’s largest cities? Could she tell us why—despite making surely the understatement of the year that the performance of Avanti trains was dreadful—its contract was extended?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not entirely sure where the noble Lord gets those figures from, because my understanding is that on weekdays between 7 am and 9 am—for example, between Birmingham and London—the services are actually at pre-pandemic levels. Of course, there have been changes to the timetable at some other points, but that is very much down to changes in travel habits, such that the system needs to have a demand-led timetable so that we can ensure that people can travel when they need to.