Railways: Reliability

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

It will not surprise the noble Lord to hear that I do not agree with him on that point, but I acknowledge that the rail system as it stands is not perfect. We have an ageing railway, which is at capacity. We need to look at how we run things and that is what we are doing through the rail review. It has been well over a decade since the last big change in the rail network. While we have seen record private investment and many more services, the system has of course had its challenges. We think that the time is right for a comprehensive review to ensure that our railways are run in the best way that they can be.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, this is a specific example, but one of many that have been brought to my notice. In the three months leading up to Christmas, Southern Rail cancelled the Wallington to Victoria service 205 times and it was delayed 896 times. That is 1,101 times that passengers on that route faced disruption and misery. How can the Government justify a 3.2% fare hike on that route in the light of such appalling service—or are the Government not responsible for the fare hike either?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we have frozen fares in line with inflation, but I understand the frustration that people must feel when they have seen such significant disruption. We do of course have a compensation scheme that actually amounts to more than the rail fare freeze would be. On the particular line that the noble Baroness mentioned, London Victoria has 240,000 passengers a day. Over the Christmas and new year period, we did some work to improve reliability and make space for new services, and 99% of those engineering projects were completed on time. We installed new tracks, points, signalling and overhead structures to help improve the reliability of services at London Victoria.