Old Oak Common Station

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of Old Oak Common station on rail services to the West and Wales.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. We all know that opinions on High Speed 2 are many and varied—whether or not that line is a good thing is not up for debate today—but nobody would have expected that the development of a high-speed rail line heading from the north to London and back again would have a negative impact on trains heading west. Something about that statement seems entirely illogical. Unfortunately for people in the west and Wales, it is indeed the case that there will be widespread disruption to trains between London Paddington and the west and south Wales for the next six years, and after that six-year period is over, every train between the west and south Wales and London will be slower.

The reason for the delays and slower services is the new Old Oak Common station, which is being built to serve HS2. At this point, it is important to state that today’s debate, and indeed the wider public discussion, cannot be about whether HS2 happens at all or whether Old Oak Common station is built. HS2 is happening, and anyone who has travelled on the Great Western line recently will know that Old Oak Common is being built. But there are three points that we must all take up on behalf of our constituents. The first is how the impact of construction work at Old Oak Common can be mitigated. The second is how Old Oak Common can become a useful station for our regions. The third is how the Government can use their power to mitigate the long-term impact of slower trains heading to and from the west and south Wales, by improving services in other ways. I will ask a number of questions, and although I am sure that some of them do not yet have answers, I hope the Minister will at least be able to address each one to confirm the Government’s position and their intentions.

First, I will deal with the construction phase. Most people who are aware of the new station will know it as the place where the previous Government had intended to terminate HS2. That was before the new Government decided to bring back the suggestion that HS2 will end at Euston. But it is much more complicated than that. Old Oak Common is being built on the Great Western line, as I mentioned, and consequently a decision has been taken that all trains using the line will eventually stop at Old Oak Common.

That decision makes sense to those in charge of big transport infrastructure, but it will not necessarily make sense to the people we serve in the west and south Wales. Rail industry experts tell us that it will add between four and seven minutes to each journey in the long run. During the period of disruption while construction takes place, we will endure 29 days of disruption in this current operational year—that disruption has already begun—30 days of disruption in 2025-26, 41 days of disruption in 2026-27, including 14 days when no trains run at all, 34 days of disruption in 2027-28, including 11 days when no trains run at all, and 47 days of disruption in 2028-29, including 18 days when no trains run at all. The disruption for the following year is not yet known.

The majority of the impact will fall on Sundays and at Christmas. We might assume that Sunday is a quiet day on the railways, but since my election and my need to travel to London, sometimes on a Sunday evening, I can tell Members that that is not the case, particularly when Great Western Railway is unable to run most of its timetable. The number of constituencies that will be impacted by the work is absolutely huge. Starting from furthest away, it will be every constituency in Cornwall and Devon, most of Somerset, Bristol, parts of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, south Wales, Gloucestershire—my own area of the country—Wiltshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. That is a lot of people whose journeys will be slower for a long time, and a lot of people who will have to make alternative arrangements when trains are cancelled.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

My constituency, which includes Penzance station, will be deeply affected. We are five hours away from Old Oak Common and will experience much of the pain with no gain. Just a fraction of the £67 billion being spent on HS2—for example, just one two-hundredth of that budget—could address the issue in Dawlish, which is three hours away from Penzance. Those kinds of things need to be addressed if we are to see some kind of compensation.

[Max Wilkinson]

I absolutely agree. Although joining up London with the north and the midlands is a laudable aim, there is a real risk that the west and south Wales could be left out. The amount of money being spent on HS2 is not matched by rail investment towards the west, as those of us who represent constituencies there are well aware.

My first question to the Minister is: what assessment has been made of the fixed-term construction disruption to the economies of the constituencies affected, including my own in Cheltenham? What assessment has been made of the clear risk that the disruption caused by construction is wider than that which is currently being reported, with perhaps extra days of construction work leading to more cancellations? What discussions have Ministers had with Network Rail about whether the speed limit associated with the construction work could be 80 mph rather than 60 mph?

The second area to explore is how Old Oak Common might become a station that serves our constituencies, rather than simply making things less convenient. That is a much more complex discussion, and those of us who have seen the maps will know that that is still up for debate. Rail industry professionals suggest that there is an opportunity to either improve services or significantly mitigate the impact of the potential disruption, but the core problem is clear. At a time when the national rail network is struggling so badly and the Government are promising a brighter future under Great British Railways, our constituents must be able to see benefits.

I am certain that most Members present will agree that those additional four to seven minutes must be offset, and Old Oak Common has the potential to become a significant interchange, enabling travellers from the west and south Wales to switch to the London transport network earlier, perhaps via the Elizabeth line or London Overground services. Achieving that aim would ensure smooth onward journeys, not just into central London but, if it is done right, elsewhere. What assurances can the Minister give us that the station interchange will be just as convenient as Paddington, if not more so? Is the convenience of the interchange with the Elizabeth line as secure as Members have been led to believe in some of the briefings, or is that not yet guaranteed?

If an interchange to the Elizabeth line is secured, can the Minister tell me the anticipated journey time to central London to and from my Cheltenham constituency after those works are complete? Can the Minister also confirm whether technical studies on interchanging with overground services have begun, so that we can work out what is possible? Nothing that Members are hearing so far suggests that the technical work has been properly considered, or even whether it has been started at any level. If studies have begun, what work has been done to cost future works? If they have not, when will those studies take place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. The south-west is a region with enormous untapped economic potential. We already have a brilliant clean energy industry, which is growing. We have a fantastic defence industry, with lots of small and medium-sized enterprises. We have a thriving agricultural sector and a flourishing food sector. We have a tourism industry that welcomes more than 20 million visitors per year. Our economy depends very heavily, with all these things, on reliable transport links.

We in Devon are bucking the trend nationally. Since 2019, the proportion of rail journeys taken across the country has fallen by 6%, but in Devon, it has increased by 9%. Time and again, however, we have seen the west country miss out on rail investment, which has been concentrated in other parts of the country—in the midlands, the north of England and, of course, London. The south-west is left grappling with an underfunded and unreliable rail network.

The construction of Old Oak Common will exacerbate some of those challenges. Over the next decade, passengers travelling on mainline inter-city services serving the south-west will face severe disruption. Planned works will reduce the number of available seats on trains that are already crowded and have slow journey times. We will see a fall in the number of direct services to London Paddington. Last month, the Government pointed to a £30-million mitigation package. That is woefully inadequate. Compare it with the £6.5-billion cost of Old Oak Common —by contrast, £30 million is a pittance. Worryingly, that £30 million has already been committed to operational adjustments such as depot changes and electrification in London, with little or no regard for the south-west.

The Tories’ catastrophic management—or rather, mismanagement—of the rail system was exemplified by the two-year industrial dispute that cost taxpayers an eye-watering £25 million per strike day, and led to reforms that have saddled the public with hundreds of millions of pounds in additional cost. Nowhere is the previous Government’s legacy of transport failure more apparent than in relation to High Speed 2, where flip-flopping over the last 15 or 20 years has led to ballooning costs, neglected communities and misery for passengers.

I want to point out how that has affected people in some west-country communities. It might be supposed that it is only HS2 communities—people in the midlands and the north—who have been affected by some of the cost overruns and the indecision, but that is not so. When we saw the cancellation of HS2 by the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), there was then some big announcement about Network North, and we were promised that HS2 money was therefore going to be ploughed into stations and the redevelopment of stations across the country.

In the constituency I represent, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton came to visit. He hired a community room in a farm shop—a sort of farm shop conference centre. He and other Conservative activists held up British Rail placards with the word “Cullompton” underneath, as if to encourage people that somehow there was money from HS2 that could be invested in our local rail transport. That was absolutely not the case, as has since been revealed. Now we can see that those were all empty promises.

Old Oak Common is one more step in this misadventure, with an additional 20 minutes that it adds to a journey from Paddington to the south-west. That could be enough to influence holidaymakers to choose other destinations overseas, which would be a tragedy for the south-west economy. I really hope that the Government look kindly on proper mitigation.

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case, as did our hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson). Of course, his constituency of Honiton and Sidmouth is three and a half hours away from Penzance, so a 20-minute delay for people at Penzance is not necessarily the issue. It is the disruption, the uncertainty and all the other factors on the route that make the current service completely inadequate. That is really why we want to see investment in improvement, to bring the service up.

[Richard Foord]

I recognise the particular plight of my hon. Friend’s constituents, who are as far south-west as one can go in England. My time is up, but I plead with the Minister to think again about the £30-million mitigation fund and whether it really offsets the costs that south-west residents will bear.