Lower Thames Crossing

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, perhaps you will pass on my thanks to Mr Speaker for granting this important debate. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), to her place, although I am sorry that the roads Minister is a Member of the other place and cannot reply.

There is truly an opportunity for us to save billions of pounds that we are about to spend, unnecessarily in my view, on a new crossing of the Thames to the east of the current one at Dartford, to the east of Gravesend. The original idea behind having another crossing of the Thames was to ease the appalling congestion at Dartford. There cannot be anybody watching the debate or in the Chamber who has not sat for hours and hours trying to cross the Thames at Dartford. As is the way of Government, there have been endless studies and consultations on the best way to stop this awful gridlock on the M25. For years, Ministers have told me privately that the solution is to build another bridge at Dartford to ease the pressure caused by the inadequate north-bound tunnels. After all, the M25 runs through Dartford—it always has and it always will.

There is a huge problem that needs fixing, and that is how the traffic gets past the River Thames at Dartford and through Thurrock. During the course of those years of study, other options were explored—one would expect that—including a crossing some miles further down the river to the east of Gravesend. When Kent and Essex County Councils realised that a crossing further down the Thames from Dartford was in the offing, they made sure that the consideration was turbocharged, seeing massive economic benefits to both counties if they had a link road between them—that is understandable. So, slowly, the project morphed from one about how to fix the traffic at Dartford to one about economic development for Kent and Essex, with, to them, the secondary consideration that this economic development tunnel and new road network would also have the effect of reducing some of the pressure at Dartford, and also providing resilience.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Adam Holloway]

Yes, of course, I will give way. I did mention my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s analysis of how we ended up with this route, but does he agree that it is all very well for Kent and Essex to draw a line as to where that road should go when it actually goes through Thurrock, to which they are not accountable? If they were really genuinely interested in supporting it, they should work towards the optimum route.

[Adam Holloway]

That is an extremely good point, and I wish that I had included it in my speech. If I have to speak about this again, I will make that point. I thank my hon. Friend and I totally agree with her.

This all became about economic development. The original purpose of easing traffic became secondary. The aims of the project changed completely, which meant that the problems at Dartford were no longer the priority—in fact, they became a secondary consideration. Then, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the then Transport Secretary, opted for Kent and Essex’s preferred option, which will do nothing to ameliorate the situation at Dartford and will be yet another massive piece of Government spending on road infrastructure just at the moment in our history when roads are to be optimised by level 5 autonomous vehicles. The way I think of it is that if we look across the rooftops of London we see thousands of chimneys, none of them used any more. This road will end up a white elephant like them in future—and not far in the future.

First, the lower Thames crossing does not address the problems on the M25 at the Dartford crossing or provide any resilience in any way, shape or form. I will explain why. The M25 northbound at Dartford remains one of Europe’s worst traffic jams on a major national road—I imagine all hon. Members, even the Minister, can picture themselves there, having sat in those traffic jams.

The problems at the Dartford crossing are primarily caused by the outdated and undersized northbound tunnels. The southbound traffic coming over the bridge moves at pretty much the same speed as the rest of the motorway; it is not immune to traffic jams, but neither is the rest of the system. The problem is the tunnels. The left-hand one is 4.8 metres high and the right-hand one is 5 metres high. They are the cause of the horrendous jams, because no fuel tankers or hazardous loads are permitted unescorted, and no vehicles over 5 metres high are permitted at all.

What happens is that we end up with traffic, including very large vehicles, weaving and causing frequent accidents and incidents, as well as frequent red traffic lights to hold the rest of the traffic in order to extract an over-height vehicle that has managed to go through. Then, of course, a couple of times an hour all the traffic on the M25 going north is stopped, because they have to run the convoys with fuel tankers and hazardous materials in them. That causes congestion and queuing, and hardly a day goes by without a major incident bringing the M25 to a complete standstill and causing gridlock at Dartford.

The lower Thames crossing, the one to the east of Gravesend, does not address those problems at all, nor does it provide a satisfactory alternate route for M25 traffic. Let us note, by the way, that the M25 is not complete—it stops just before Dartford and becomes an A road, and then becomes the M25 again. We have not actually finished building the M25 yet.

Once the lower Thames crossing is built, the Dartford crossing will still be operating at capacity and the problems there will continue. The long-suffering residents and businesses of Dartford will continue to suffer, and I believe they are being hoodwinked. We must sort out the problem of Dartford first and foremost, either with the originally promised relatively cheap and cheerful bridge for northbound traffic, or with a variant of option A14, which is the idea to have a big tunnel going underneath Dartford and Thurrock, separating all the national, long-range traffic, so the existing crossings could be used by residents of Dartford, Thurrock and so on.

Secondly, we have been assured that having a completely different crossing will provide resilience, so what will happen when the incidents continue to happen on the northbound bit of the Dartford tunnel approaches? As soon as traffic on the M25 comes to a standstill, it will seek an alternate route to the lower Thames crossing, but to exit the M25 at junction 2, the junction just before, it will have to go through a traffic light-controlled roundabout, which will be totally inadequate for the volume of traffic.

Having negotiated that obstacle, traffic will head east towards Gravesend only to find that, unbelievably, there will be just one lane from the A2 to the lower Thames crossing tunnel to take traffic into Essex. Not only will Dartford be gridlocked, but so will Gravesend and the whole of the A2 eastbound from M25 junction 2.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, and he is now getting to the nub of the problems with the design of the lower Thames crossing. It is being applied as a piece of national infrastructure without sufficient thought to the impact on the local road networks in his constituency and mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). He highlights the lack of connectivity beautifully. For my residents in South Ockendon, if we have a tailback going south and the traffic backs up, not only do they face congestion at the Dartford crossing, but the lower Thames crossing arrives at Ockendon, so residents there will be subject to congestion from both crossings.

[Adam Holloway]

Absolutely. In a sense, my hon. Friend’s residents and those over in Essex are having it very badly with all the additional roads to be built as well, so I completely concur. We have established that when Dartford is gridlocked, so will Gravesend be, and her area at Ockendon.

With junction 2 of the M25 blocked, the M25 traffic will seek an alternative route to the lower Thames crossing. We will then find that the A227, and all the villages and lanes approaching the new crossing, will become choked with traffic. Just to be clear, although the project is terminal for my hamlet of Thong and terrible for the people of much of Riverview Park and the villages that will become rat-runs, the worst will be for the residents of Dartford—more on that later.

Of course it is absolutely correct that the new crossing will provide a useful alternative for traffic heading to and from the ferry port of Dover, but that is all. Channel tunnel traffic will still try to use the M20 and the M25 and so will still use the Dartford crossing. There is more. National Highways is busy planning another kick in the teeth to motorists once the new crossing is built. In its wisdom, it intends to split the A2 and M2 into two separate two-lane highways midway between the A227 and Marling Cross. The outer two lanes will be for M2 traffic going down deeper into Kent; the inner two lanes will be for the A2 to Strood and the lower Thames crossing, and the Hoo peninsula. That is a recipe for disaster. Not only will it cause dangerous weaving and accidents while the traffic tries to get into the correct lane, but the A2 will be narrowed to two lanes, which is completely inadequate for traffic heading towards the M2 at peak periods. It is ridiculous. In 2009, Highways England actually widened the A2 at this point from three lanes to four lanes to cope with increased volumes, and now the proposal is to narrow it to two lanes.

Let me return to the contention of Kent and Essex County Councils that this crossing would bring large economic benefits. The cost of the project for central Government has increased from £3.72 billion in 2016 to £8.2 billion now. We make these throwaway comments about billions, but imagine having a stack of a million £1 coins and then creating 8,200 stacks of £1 coins. That is an enormous amount of money, and because the project is no longer being privately funded, it is taxpayers’ money. We have a cost of living crisis. Every time people go into a garage or a shop, or pay their income tax, the money for this white elephant is coming off them. It is a financial turkey right now and truly it will be a transport white elephant in a decade—and it will inevitably end up costing more.

The cost-benefit analysis carried out in 2016 had mysteriously changed from the analysis carried out in 2013 to show a benefit of the lower Thames crossing of 2.4. But in 2013, the cost-benefit analysis supported the Dartford option and was against a crossing east of Gravesend, which then apparently provided a benefit of 1.1. Somewhere along the way the figures magically changed to suit the argument. Anyway, at a new cost of £8 billion, any benefit must now be marginal at best. I can completely understand why that might not matter too much to Kent and Essex County Councils, because it is not money from their budgets, but it is the money of hundreds of millions of people who will remain sitting snarled in their cars in traffic jams at Dartford over the coming decades. Far from a new crossing away from Dartford being a victory for the people of Dartford, they are now condemned to decades more noise and pollution. An intergenerational chance to sort out the M25 has been blown by muddled thinking and a political class in local government thinking only of their own political lifetimes. Now would seem to be an appropriate time to carry out an in-depth review to determine whether to proceed with the lower Thames crossing or to go back to the drawing board, sort out the M25 at Dartford and relieve the taxpayer of accruing yet more unnecessary debt for their children and great-grandchildren to repay.

The crossing will not prevent the delays, incidents and gridlock at Dartford, and it will not provide an alternate route for M25 traffic. It is a massive missed opportunity for the people of Dartford, who will have to endure more decades of misery until finally either the northbound bridge or the long tunnel under Dartford and Thurrock is built—one or the other will have to be built eventually. Indeed, I believe that the current tunnels are close to the end of their design life, so why are we building a white elephant further down?

The crossing is far too expensive at £8.2 billion and does not represent value for money for taxpayers. As we have discussed and I have outlined, better, less expensive solutions are available. I urge the Minister to think it through herself and stop listening to Highways England before it is too late and we commit all that money unnecessarily. If there were ever an opportunity for a Secretary of State to put a red line through a massive piece of spending, this is it.

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[Stephen Metcalfe]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The east-facing slips are absolutely vital; we must build them. People are coming down the A13 and round junction 30 to go back to Lakeside, which is utter madness, so we certainly need to do that. There are also issues locally because three different agencies deal with the roads round there: Highways England, Thurrock Council and Essex County Council not far past the Thurrock boundary. Local roads interact with the main network of roads but no one controls all the various pressure points. When the existing crossing fails, it may only be one set of traffic lights somewhere on one of the industrial estates that is causing such catastrophic congestion, because it was designed to allow through a far smaller number of vehicles than are trying to use it when there is a failure.

As I have highlighted over the years and as the Thames Crossing Action Group has highlighted, this is a destructive project, it is costly and it is environmentally damaging. It is destructive because it will put on the Essex side a vast amount of new concrete road leading from the Thames all the way up to the junction with the A127. It is very costly, as we have heard, at £8.2 billion. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham described his 8,200 towers of 1 million coins very aptly. If I had time, I could work out the volume of that, but it is a vast amount of money. Of course, the project is environmentally damaging not only in the amount of construction work that will go on, but, I think, in inviting more vehicles into the area. I know that the lower Thames crossing team are keen to decarbonise, but it cannot be built without having a huge impact on our local environment.

We have time, but I do not want to detain the House too long. The fundamental problem as far as I see it, looking back to when the route was confirmed in 2017, is that the proposal as it stands does very little to address the fundamental problem at the existing crossing. The commitment one will have to make to the new crossing, as it is so far away from the existing crossing, means that thousands of vehicles will be beyond the point of no return, and my hon. Friend described junction 2—of the A2 or the M2?

[Adam Holloway]

The A2.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

People will be trapped inside an area that they cannot escape from. I once heard, on one of my visits to Thurrock, that the congestion when the existing crossing fails backs up at the rate of a mile a minute. That is extraordinary, but it is because of the volume of traffic, with so much traffic trying to get through that pressure point.

I am deeply concerned that, if and when the new lower Thames crossing gets built, it will not actually address the problem. When it does not address that problem and we have spent £8.2 billion on it—I suspect the costs will go up—people will rightly look at us and say, “How on earth have you spent £8.2 billion on a project that still means, on the very rare occasions when there is a catastrophic failure, that people end up having to sleep in IKEA?” That is a true fact: once the congestion was so bad that nothing could move, IKEA opened its doors, and people slept in its beds and on its sofas.

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[Mr French]

I completely agree, and everyone who is directly impacted should have their voices heard. I hope that the Department will listen closely to those calls. Getting that balance right between a national project and the local impact is difficult for any Government.

Dartford congestion causes complete misery, backing up even as far as where I am in Bexley. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said, if the wind blows one way or the other way, the bridge closes and we have congestion, and it is complete misery for people, whether they are commuting home or trying to see family on either side of the bridge. As our population continues to grow in south-east London, Kent and Essex, it is vital that we secure the supporting infrastructure and make sure it is in place to support the people in these areas—both the current population and the new population who might be moving in.

Today’s focus is on transport, but the issue extends far wider. My big cause is ensuring that we secure the health provision we need for the growing population of Old Bexley and Sidcup. We have to ensure that, as a country and a Government focused on levelling up, our part of south-east England is not forgotten.

[Adam Holloway]

My hon. Friend mentioned, as I should have, that when the wind blows the bridge going from north to south can be closed; that was one of the arguments deployed in favour of having the second crossing further down. But I would have thought that that could be simply remedied. If we had what we should have had—a new bridge going from south to north, so we would have two bridges—we would still have two tunnels. In extremis, those could be used.

Anyway, the new bridge will have a new design to sort out the wind issue. We would still have two tunnels that could be used going from north to south in the event of inclement weather. I just wanted to address that other nonsense that has been raised.

[Mr French]

I clearly do not have the same level of detail about that issue, but I take my hon. Friend’s point, which is valid. We must ensure that whatever is introduced stands up to scrutiny and actually works. That is the main point of today’s debate. All MPs in the area recognise that something needs to be done; the issue is working out what that is and how it will work best and have the most impact.

In conclusion, we all see clearly that the Mayor of London is failing miserably at one of his primary objectives: to keep London moving. He has been closing roads and creating far greater congestion. As a Government, and particularly as Conservatives, we have to ensure—I implore Ministers to meet all relevant colleagues—that the project has maximum impact and delivers the goal that we all want to achieve: solving the congestion at the Dartford crossing and its impact on our communities and neighbourhoods, whether in south-east London, Kent or Essex.

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[Trudy Harrison]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government’s priority is to enable more of those journeys to be walked and cycled and for public transport to be used. Reference was made to the future of transport. We will introduce legislation on self-driving vehicles and so on, so we will see significant improvements in this area. As the Minister responsible for decarbonisation and the future of transport, I would be delighted to work with her to identify where the opportunities for better public transport and active travel may be.

[Adam Holloway]

If my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) had had more time, I think she would have made a point about why on earth all these freight trains carrying trucks from the continent offload at Folkestone. They should rumble on north. That is an absolute no-brainer and we should do that anyway.

[Trudy Harrison]

Similarly, I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss freight and how we might improve it, and I look forward to that meeting. As we have heard, the situation at the Dartford tunnel negatively impacts on communities and businesses locally, regionally and elsewhere in the UK. In view of those challenges, the need for the lower Thames crossing remains clear at this stage. In addition, the strategic importance of the Dartford crossing is increasing and now supports the change in working and shopping patterns in England.

Let me give the House some statistics. Some 42% of vehicles using the Dartford crossing are now goods vehicles, which has gone up from 33% in 2019. December 2020 saw the busiest day ever recorded for heavy goods vehicle traffic, which is now consistently above 2019 levels. Furthermore, that supports the point about the conversation that is needed with my hon. Friend and other Members about how we can improve the freight situation and put more of that freight on to the rail network.

The need to increase capacity east of London is greater than ever. That is exactly what the lower Thames crossing hopes to address.

[Adam Holloway]

This is the muddled thinking we have got to: if we build another crossing further down, it will take the pressure off Dartford. However, it will not take the pressure off Dartford because people will still want to use the Dartford crossing. Spending £8.2 billion to build that white elephant will not address the current problems at Dartford.

If people think it is a good idea at some point next year to have a crossing east of Gravesend, for economic development purposes and so on, I say “By all means do it”, but a bridge has to be built northbound at Dartford, because people are still going to use it. The M25 is still going to go through Dartford, and we will see exactly the situation to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) has referred. There will still be convoys going through twice an hour. There will still be oversized vehicles at red traffic lights, and hundreds of millions of people will still spend time stuck in traffic for the next three decades. I say, “Sort out Dartford, and then by all means build the crossing. My constituents will not be happy, but do Dartford first.”

[Trudy Harrison]

No one could deny that my hon. Friend is passionate and frustrated, and knows his area incredibly well. I hope that the meeting with the roads Minister will happen swiftly so that he can make that point to her as well.

The lower Thames crossing will consist of the longest road tunnel in the UK, between north Kent and south Essex, and will include 14.3 miles of new road linking the M2/A2, A13 and M25. By almost doubling road capacity across the River Thames east of London, it will cut traffic using the Dartford crossing by 22%, and will provide national road freight with a reliable new connection.

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[Trudy Harrison]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I would be grateful to receive further details of the homes or specific communities he feels are affected. That would be much appreciated.

Since the preferred route was announced, and following the withdrawal of the development consent order in 2020, National Highways has continued to work extensively with stakeholders—including my hon. Friends, as we have heard today—to improve and refine the scheme. This has been part of a comprehensive programme of consultation, and in addition to the consultation in 2016, it has included four further consultations since 2018, with 26 consultation events in Gravesham, 100 across the whole project and more than 30,000 responses. I am pleased that Members have referenced their gratitude for the effort that has gone into the consultation.

There is more to come. A further targeted consultation will take place after the local elections in May to engage stakeholders and local residents and to ensure that they will have their views heard on the use of Tilbury Fields following the positive resolution of a land clash. This will be the fifth public consultation, showing that National Highways is continually listening to those impacted by the scheme to ensure that they benefit as much as possible. Further work with parliamentarians has resulted in 11 parliamentary forums designed to bring local and regional MPs together at key project milestones between the contact programme of one-to-one briefing meetings. The forum series started in 2017, with the most recent forum being held this month. As a result of the tireless work by everyone, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham and the other Members who are in the Chamber tonight, National Highways has made several key changes in the constituency of Gravesham, including several requests that my hon. Friend put forward in an Adjournment debate in 2017 regarding the design and development of the lower Thames crossing.

[Adam Holloway]

On that point, can I pay tribute to my constituent and local councillor, Bob Lane, the chairman of the local parish council, for his extraordinary work on this?

[Trudy Harrison]

I would also like to extend my gratitude on behalf of the Department to Councillor Bob Lane for his engagement.

In summary, the improvements that have been made include the removal of the A226 junction from National Highways’ proposals, limiting potential rat-running on local roads as well as reducing the overall footprint of newly proposed junctions. Also, the southern portals south of the A226 are being moved. Since 2017, National Highways has made significant changes to the lower Thames crossing design to limit its visual impact. The tunnel itself has been lengthened by around 1 km, and the route has been lowered or hidden behind earth bunds. Now, around 50% of the route in Gravesham is in the tunnel and 80% of the entire route is hidden from view, either in tunnels or cuttings or behind earth bunds.

To maximise the use of green corridors to reduce noise pollution and environmental impact, National Highways is planning to provide new or improved green spaces and pathways for communities in Gravesham to enjoy. This includes plans to build Chalk Park, a new 40 hectare green space in Gravesham that will provide a new public space for the local communities in Chalk and Riverview, including new landforms with views across the Thames estuary. It will also create a green buffer between those communities and the road, improve biodiversity through the planting of grassland and woodland, reuse significant amounts of excavated material from the construction route and reduce carbon and HGV journeys.

[Adam Holloway]

If I truly believed this was the right thing to address the congestion at Dartford and nationally, I would man up and say to my constituents, “I’m really sorry that your house will be blighted by all this noise.” I would do that, but I do not believe this is the right thing to do. Whatever happens, we will have to go back and build a bridge at Dartford because the M25 runs through Dartford.

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

There are 20 km of new or improved pathways for walkers, cyclists and equestrians. There are three new green bridges, one of which is 84 metres wide—one of the largest in Europe—connecting this network of pathways to the area’s rich mosaic of parks and woodland.

Members have expressed their discontent with the proposed road—that is loud and clear—and, straight after this Adjournment debate, I will reflect that to the roads Minister. As everyone has agreed, there is a clear need to address the challenge at Dartford crossing, and the lower Thames crossing aims to relieve congestion and provide resiliency to the strategic road network.

I am sure all hon. Members agree that we must plan not just for the short term but for the medium and long term.

Outer London Congestion Charge

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for a superb speech. My constituency is neighbouring his. Although we do not have as extreme a situation, his point that the borders of London are not neat is very apt. That really does reflect the position of many of my constituents. I will read a couple of quotes from emails I have received:

“I have elderly grandparents who reside within Greater London… I often go to their aid, bringing shopping or medication or (before covid) visiting to keep them company.”

Another says:

“I have relatives in the London Borough of Bexley. I also visit my mother’s grave in Hither Green.”

Another asks:

“Would it also be possible for Adam—

that’s me—

to talk to Kent County Council to charge London motorists to drive on Kent roads?”

As I said, although we do not have the same situation as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford, we have large numbers of people who work in hospitals and travel to large retail in Bexley. We have plenty of people who, as their families have expanded, have moved out of south London into towns such as Gravesend. We have large numbers of building contractors who have no choice but to drive their vans into town. Many of my neighbours work in the hospitality industry and have suffered so badly commercially over the past few months. They drive in and out because they have antisocial hours.

Please will the Minister ask my old friend the Mayor to think again on this? It will cause massive inconvenience and cost huge amounts of money to lots of people here, who are just trying to live their lives and do their jobs.

High Speed 1: Rolling Stock

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is exactly right and she makes a good point about season ticket prices. Obviously, season tickets are slightly more expensive for my constituents and, the further towards the coast, the more expensive they get. As the inability to sit down spreads along the line, the difficulties she rightly pointed out will no doubt get worse for people. The need for extra train services and longer trains is clear.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. The service goes through Gravesend. Why on earth are the people who pay most for their tickets standing up for 23 minutes from Gravesend, or indeed for 38 minutes from Ashford? That is completely wrong, and something needs to be done about it.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

On current projections, 31 high-speed services a day will be full to capacity by 2025, meaning that those passengers who have paid for expensive season tickets and rightly complain about having to stand every day might not even be able to get on the train. Things as they stand will get worse rather than better and, on top of the 31 inaccessible services, another 25 trains a day will be standing room only. The scale of the problem is becoming clear.

In preparing for this debate, I spoke to the rail industry. Hitachi made the interesting point that the trains on the HS1 line are specifically designed for it and for the Southeastern conventional network. The trains use two different power sources and have three different signalling systems on board, so standard UK network trains cannot be used. How to extend or replace the rolling stock on this particular line is a special issue. Hitachi itself advises planning for a lead time in the order of four years before new train sets could come into service on the line—consider the design time, procurement, testing and approvals for a specialist product. For that timescale to be achieved, clarity on the future of the franchise at the earliest opportunity is vital.

The Minister is of course aware of the history of the franchise, its difficulties and the succession of relatively short-term solutions brought into being to keep the franchise operating. I appreciate the problems that he, the operator and the industry more widely have faced with the franchise—this debate is not the time to discuss those—but I plead for some long-term thinking to be introduced now, instead of our continuing simply to apply short-term patches to franchising or to whatever succeeds it after the review is published. Now is the time, on this specific issue, to impose some long-term thinking and to say, “We need to start planning now”, if we are to avoid something that would be tragic for the rail industry, turning a success into a failure in the future.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

It is a pleasure, as always, Mr Hollobone, to serve under the chairmanship of my near neighbour. I hope that you will look kindly on me if I make any errors and inform me later, rather than during the debate.

It is also a pleasure to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). I congratulate him on securing this debate on rolling stock on High Speed 1, and all Members who have contributed by intervening this morning: my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for Gravesham (Adam Holloway), and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale).

My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford was right to say that in my time as a Minister I have been interested in the affairs of Kent—or, depending which side of the Medway we are on, Kentish affairs. I appreciate how he has phrased his words today, his tone, and how he has gone about the debate. It was kind of him to do that.

The Southeastern high-speed franchise has cut journey times dramatically for passengers travelling into London from all destinations in Kent. For example, Ashford to London has seen a reduction of 43 minutes, from the bad old days of 81 minutes to a regular journey time of 38 minutes. Over the past decade, more than 100 million passenger journeys have been made on Southeastern’s high-speed service. As my right hon. Friend highlighted, the popularity of Southeastern’s high-speed service has led to significant growth in passenger numbers, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 11%, more than double that on the rest of the Southeastern network. It is a very successful railway.

My right hon. Friend rightly stated that the national rail passenger survey results from spring 2019 showed that overall satisfaction with the journey for the Southeastern high-speed service was 92% satisfied or good, placing it in the top 10% of all UK train routes; and 82% of passengers were satisfied with the level of crowding on their service, placing it in the top 14% of all UK train routes. In addition, Southeastern’s customer satisfaction survey from the end of December 2019 indicated positive overall passenger satisfaction with the high-speed service, which received a score of 91%. If only the other franchises and train operating companies operated with such levels of satisfaction, my job as Rail Minister would be a lot easier.

There was also a 96% positive response to the question, “Did you get a seat on the train?” My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford is talking not only about what is going on now but about the future, but that is a remarkably good statistic. However, we are not sitting on our laurels in any way.

Southeastern has quite a lot of capacity. In the morning peak, Southeastern provides 9,772 seats into London, with passenger demand that is higher than that, at 10,888. Already, as my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford and for Chatham and Aylesford indicated, people are standing on their journeys—the statistics prove that to us without any shadow of a doubt. In the evening peak, Southeastern provides 9,423 seats out of London, with a passenger demand of 10,354. Overall, capacity of about 13,000 is provided on HS1 services during peak hours.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford talked about rolling stock. Southeastern regularly reviews whether reallocating stock to different trains would be appropriate to ensure that capacity is catered for. For example, last December Southeastern transferred an Ebbsfleet stop from an overcrowded six-car service to a 12-car service with spare capacity to continue to make the best effect of the assets. However, as my right hon. Friend indicated, only the class 395 and Eurostar trains can run on that route, because High Speed 1 trains need to run at 140 mph, with the technical issues and excitements that he detailed, so it is not possible to use trains from other routes on this one.

Regrettably but inevitably on a rail network, delays occur. However, performance on the Southeastern network on the whole has been positive. This year, around 90% of Southeastern services have arrived at their final destination within five minutes of the published timetable. More specifically, about 87% of peak and off-peak HS1 services have arrived within five minutes of their destination time. Those are relatively good statistics for the rail industry.

Eurostar carries about 11 million passengers a year on services between London and Paris, Lille, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, with seasonable services to the Alps in the south of France. Some services call at Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International on the HS1 line. At peak times of year, the number of daily Eurostar services operating in and out of London St Pancras via the HS1 line can exceed 55. We know that it is becoming quite a busy railway.

On 13 June last year, a direct award was signed with Southeastern to extend its franchise for five rail periods to 10 November, with an optional extension of another five periods, which has been exercised. The franchise is now due to expire on 1 April 2020, to ensure continuity of services for passengers following the cancellation of the Southeastern franchise competition.

My right hon. Friend alluded to uncertainty about the franchise’s future. My Department’s objectives for the franchise in the near term include enhancing capacity and continuing to build on the recent improvements in operational performance and reliability. My Department is focused on determining how that can be achieved now that the competition for the franchise has been cancelled. An important consideration for my officials is to align that work with the emerging recommendations of the Williams rail review, due for publication in the next couple of months.

I highlight that because it is quite an important factor to answer one of my right hon. Friend’s questions: what could be done to sort out the problem of overcrowding and to bring in new rolling stock? It is highly likely that the Williams review will decide that franchising is not the way forward for our rail industry, and another model will be introduced quite swiftly. Within the new contracts, an ask could be framed on what rolling stock needs to operate along those routes. I gently suggest to my right hon. Friend that this debate is extremely timely because the thought processes are already happening. The whirring heard in the background is the brains of officials and others in the Department for Transport ticking over how best to include in the ask for companies that might operate those lines in future what rolling stock might be required to improve that service. Now is the best point in which to intervene to get the answer he requires.

[Adam Holloway]

On the point about the future, vis-à-vis HS2, if we had different technology—not obsolete rail technology but new technology such hyperloop— we would be able to avoid some of the problems of HS1, because pods are far more scalable than great big trains.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I guess my hon. Friend is slightly unlucky to have the Rail Minister in front of him; had the Minister of State for the future of transport responded to this debate, my hon. Friend would get a good 15 minutes about the wonderful new technologies becoming available on our rail network. My job is to try to ensure that the existing rail network works for the people who use it. I understand his enthusiasm for what could come this way, but I want to improve things for passengers on our railways now and, in this debate, to talk about what we can do to improve the journeys of passengers who use HS1 in the next few years, as improvements will be required.

The Williams review, which will be published very soon, will not just be parked by Government as in the normal process of reviews—we have had a few rail reviews that have reported like that in the past—but will come out in the form of a White Paper. There will be proper consultation. The Select Committee on Transport and Members will obviously take their views, and we will have a Bill in this Session—as mentioned in the Queen’s Speech—that will take the review into legislation. There will be a relatively short-term pitch for my hon. Friend to get involved in.