<Railway Services: South-West>

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley]

I agree entirely that the impact of Old Oak Common is immense, and will not be just during the construction phase.

The six or seven years of delays and cancellations at weekends and Christmases have been covered in this Chamber before, so I will not repeat the list of weeks and weeks of diversions to Euston and significantly reduced services.

I have already started to receive complaints from my constituents about the inability of Euston station to cope with the volume of passengers when the trains cannot complete their journeys to Paddington. But the piece of the plan that adds insult to injury for the millions of passengers from the south-west, is the idea that every Great Western Railway train will stop at Old Oak Common, even after construction is completed. It has been somewhat unclear—some misleading averages have been quoted—but having met with GWR and Network Rail, I understand that stopping at Old Oak Common will add some five to 15 minutes to every single journey. Adding 15 minutes on to the fast train—of around two hours—from Exeter to London is significant, and even more so on the quicker trains from Cheltenham or Bristol.

Travel to Birmingham is already available via Bristol. Looking at journey times, it will usually be faster to go to Birmingham via Bristol, unless users are further east than Swindon or Westbury. Stopping at Old Oak Common will bring little or no benefit to the majority of the long-distance rail users of the west, south-west and Wales.

Can the Minister confirm that fast trains from the south-west should be able to go through Old Oak Common without stopping?

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Penzance, west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are all in my constituency, so I know that if there are problems on the link at Dawlish, that can multiply the impact of those disruptions for people in the far west of Cornwall. Does he share my concern that it seems that with this multi-billion pound HS2 project, people in Penzance, in west Cornwall, and no doubt in his constituency as well, will experience all the pain but none of the gain? If it is two hours to Exeter, it is another three hours down to Penzance. It needs to be considered that we want to avoid the unnecessary disruption to people’s lives for the next seven years.

[Martin Wrigley]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is even harder for those down in Cornwall than it is for those in Devon.

Both of these significant impacts are examples of the historic lack of investment in the railways in the south-west. In the south-west, we can often feel like second-class travellers—watching our services get worse so that other services can be made better. Local rail services in Devon are few and far between. Rather than a few minutes between services—as we enjoy here in London—we are lucky if we have one or two trains an hour.

Trains are often made up of fewer carriages than planned due to faults or breakdowns. Schoolchildren travelling locally between towns have been unable to get on to services because they are too full, due to their having only half the expected number of carriages. A constituent told me that her young daughter was left in tears, having been denied access to a train with her group, which triggered an anxiety attack. On the London services, mobile phone coverage is barely useable for much of the journey. While for some that may be a blessed relief, it means that wi-fi connections are not reliable—a huge issue in a world where so many people rely on good connections to usefully work on the train.

I consider myself fortunate, going to Devon. If I were to continue the journey in Cornwall, the train speed would slow down considerably—as my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) just mentioned. Journey times could be significantly reduced by even partial electrification, as hybrid trains on the line could speed up faster and climb some of the hills quicker. I am sure my Cornish colleagues could elaborate.

I ask the Minister to consider what might be done to show my constituents, and the population of the wider south-west, that they have not been ignored. I am asking for us to receive some benefits from new investment, not just delays to accommodate fast access for others to the midlands and the north. I am specifically asking for more train carriages for more local services; full metro services with no greater than half an hour between scheduled trains; monitoring and accelerating the roll-out of the Access for All programme; reliable wifi across the entire route; electrification to improve journey times to Cornwall; fast trains from Wales to the west to the south-west not stopping at Old Oak Common; and commitment to complete the Dawlish rail resilience programme.