Alistair Strathern
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Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the performance of Thameslink train services.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. Many of my constituents in Mid Bedfordshire rely on Thameslink services on the Bedford line to get to work or get into London for leisure. About 1.5 million passengers use Harlington and Flitwick stations in my constituency each year to meet friends, go shopping and take advantage of everything our capital has to offer. Commuters from the Flitwick and Harlington stations might also take advantage of the convenient connection that Thameslink offers to our local airport in Luton, or perhaps use the Thameslink direct connections to Gatwick airport, slightly further afield.
I have spent much of my career commuting to work on Thameslink services, so I know that many constituents in the eastern part of Mid Bedfordshire also rely on services from the Arlesey and Hitchin stations on the east coast main line, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), and many others use Thameslink services from stations including Bedford, Leagrave and Luton.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. Like him, I have been a regular users of the Thameslink services in his constituency and mine, and, like many of my constituents, I have been consistently let down. My constituents’ two most common bugbears are the lack of drivers, which means that Thameslink cannot consistently put on the services it advertises—that seems the bare minimum—and the fact that when services go wrong, the emergency routes home via taxis and buses, which are so important in rural communities such as ours, are an afterthought. Does he agree that securing sufficient drivers for the line and getting back to putting passengers at the heart of our rail operations will be fundamental to delivering the rail services that my communities and his desperately need?
Blake Stephenson
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for joining this important debate for the communities across Bedfordshire that rely heavily on rail services for leisure and work. The disruption is also having a huge impact on our economy; I will come to that later in my speech.