GWR and Network Performance

Debate between Andrew Jones and Stephen Doughty

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I will start by thanking everybody who has contributed to the debate, and congratulating the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on securing it in the first place. Many issues have been raised, and I will try to address as many as I can in the short time allowed, so I must press on fast.

The question has been asked, “Are the Government investing in railways?” The answer is yes, of course; we are investing a record amount to deliver more reliable, more comfortable and safer journeys for our rail network. Alongside our investment in infrastructure, we have delivered new, more reliable trains on the Great Western main line. There has been a change, however, in the way we approach investment in the next funding period. In the past, we focused very much on enhancements, but we are now focusing more of our £48 billion budget on reliability, and particularly on repairing and replacing the worn-out parts of our network to increase reliability and punctuality.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Jones]

Oh, crikey—go on. I am always generous about giving way.

[Stephen Doughty]

The Minister mentioned reliability; I sat with Hitachi, the manufacturers of the new trains on the Great Western service yesterday, and they took me through their own reliability stats, which they admit have not been good, particularly with the introduction of the new trains. Basic things were missed, such as fitting them with filters to deal with pollen and seeds in summer, which meant record breakdown levels last year, during the hottest summer on record since the 1970s. Surely there was some problem with the commissioning of those trains in the first place?

[Andrew Jones]

With interventions that long we will really have to scamper. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument. New rolling stock often brings with it some kind of teething period, as we have seen throughout the history of our rail network, but the bottom line is that we are seeing new trains deliver a better service.

The modernisation of the Great Western main line will improve more than 100 million passenger journeys each year and will stimulate economic growth from London, through the Thames valley, certainly through Cheltenham, to the Cotswolds, the west country and south Wales. I fully recognise how vital this service is in not only connecting people but driving the economy.

I also recognise that GWR’s performance last year was not good enough and fell well short of passenger expectations. As a result, GWR worked with partners across the industry and put in place a performance improvement plan, which, although there is of course still more to do, has seen GWR move from delivering 72% of trains between south Wales and Paddington on time six months ago to more than 90% today.

The December timetable change was successfully introduced. The industry significantly reduced planned timetable changes to minimise the risk of severe disruption, which has served to stabilise services and to improve timetable efficiency. In the future, we will stage timetable changes, rather than having one big-bang approach.

I am clear that I expect GWR to do everything it can to minimise cancellations and other disruptions to services. It agreed to and implemented a contractual performance improvement plan, which includes a wide variety of activities across the whole franchise area to improve performance for passengers, including matters under the control of Network Rail.