Chester-le-Street: Rail Services

Debate between Lord Beamish and Ian Mearns

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

It is. The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. This should be a way of getting people out of their cars and off other forms of transport into Tyneside, Durham and Teesside. I accept that longer trains are an option, but if the trains do not turn up in the first place, that is a problem.

Delays and cancellations are causing real hardship to many of my constituents. I even had one resident contact me a few weeks ago to say that he had turned down a promotion at work because he could not guarantee to his employer that he was able to get in on time. These are real-life situations that are causing my constituents a lot of hardship.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend and near constituency neighbour is outlining the fact that the Northern franchise has failed. The service that it provides to the people of the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside is disastrous. Everyone knows that, yet the franchise is allowed to get away with this nonsense and put the jobs of the constituents of my right hon. Friend and many others in jeopardy due to its shoddy service.

[Mr Jones]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend. This is the economic case. People are losing the ability to access the jobs in Tyneside, Teesside and Durham. Many constituents feel hopeless because what can Government do about it? He raises an interesting point about the franchise and how it is operating. Whatever we do about the franchise, the penalties need to be tightened.

The other issue facing my constituents is that, when trains are cancelled, the trains that do turn up are overcrowded. It is only a short-distance commute, but we have had situations where people have been unable to get on later trains. One of my constituents was travelling further afield for a day out in York and had booked his seat some three months in advance because he was suffering from a bad back and was travelling with a friend with cancer, and they had to stand all the way from Chester-le-Street to York, which cannot be acceptable.

Some of the issues affecting the regularity of services to Chester-le-Street are directly related to the timetable. There has rightly been a lot of publicity on the issues in Manchester and Leeds, but a lot of that congestion has been having a knock-on effect further north, because the companies are then cancelling trains. The trains might go to York but they go no further north and other services are cancelled altogether.

The chaos in the Manchester and Leeds areas has been well publicised, but I remind the Minister, and certainly the operators, that the north is further north than Leeds and Manchester. The people who rely on this service in my constituency should not be sacrificed to ensure that the operators get their times right in Manchester and Leeds.

My constituents’ other frustration has been with the appalling way in which TransPennine Express deals with customers. No information is given to stranded commuters when trains travelling south from Newcastle to Chester-le-Street are cancelled in the evening, and no alternatives are offered for getting them home. People are just left to make their own way or make alternative provision. When that happens regularly to people with childcare responsibilities, it is not acceptable, and I know of one constituent in particular who has to care for her elderly mother. When a person is expected home at quarter past 5, it is not acceptable for them to arrive after 7 o’clock. I have raised the lack of information with TransPennine Express. There are not even staff at Newcastle to give information or to provide alternative forms of transport, be it replacement buses or alternative train options.

There is a compensation scheme but, again, TransPennine Express is not good at advertising the fact that people are entitled to compensation. As a one-off goodwill gesture, I think TransPennine Express should offer all regular travellers a month’s free travel, because people have had to put up with this for far too long. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any powers to intercede in making sure that TransPennine Express pays reasonable compensation to people.

I come back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) about the franchise. It is clearly not working. Either TransPennine Express needs to up its game and start acting like an organisation that cares about its customers, or the franchise should be taken off it. If we are going to refranchise, we should look in detail at how appallingly it has operated it so far.

Given the location of Chester-le-Street, travel by train should be an ideal opportunity for people to access jobs around our region, but an inconsistent service is not going to endear train travel to people. It certainly will not attract people to live in Chester-le-Street. It is not a selling point if people cannot rely on what should be an easy commute.

I have been raising for many years now the issue of why later in the day the service goes to a two-hourly service. In any future franchise, we should be looking at a more regular service. There is the capacity to grow the usage of Chester-le-Street station and—to reinforce the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—to take people off the roads and on to the railways.

I would like to raise an issue about the CrossCountry service that stops at Chester-le-Street railway station. There is a consultation about reducing the number of stops that CrossCountry does, and one of the proposals is to remove the service stopping at Chester-le-Street to increase the connectivity between major cities and towns on the CrossCountry route. If that happens—I have made representations on this, as has the county council—it will be important that those lost stopping services be replaced. Will the Minister ensure that that is taken into account in the consultation? If those stopping services are taken away, it is important that we have a replacement service, especially in the evenings.

[Ian Mearns]

There is speculation in the industry that CrossCountry is proposing that some if not all the services from the south coast of England terminate at York, not serving Chester-le-Street, which is obviously between York and Newcastle.

[Mr Jones]

If that happened, it would be a detrimental step for the north-east. It reinforces my point that many people look at the north and perhaps think it goes as far as York, Manchester and Leeds and no further.

I want to raise the issue of investment in Chester-le-Street. I have raised this with Network Rail. The footbridge over the station is in an appalling state of repair, but I have been told it will not be painted until 2020. Anything the Minister can do to get Network Rail to address that would be very important because, again, if we are going to encourage more people to use the station, the facilities need to be improved. Network Rail leaving it until 2020 to paint a bridge is not acceptable.

My constituents have had an appalling experience and rail service through no fault of their own. The purpose of this debate is to raise their concerns and the terrible way they have been treated, but there is also an important point about the economy and future of my constituency and how viable it is to attract people to come and live in what is a pleasant part of County Durham.