Rail Services

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start on a positive note—I like to do that—by saying that we welcome the successful negotiations with Network Rail, although all those who regularly travel by train, as I do every day, will wish that this had happened 10 months ago to avoid all the misery inflicted on both the staff involved and the passengers.

I wonder whether the Secretary of State and the Minister have any idea of the incredulity with which yesterday’s announcement of the extension of the Avanti contract for a further six months was greeted by residents, businesses and community leaders all along the route of Avanti West Coast. This is a company that has flouted all attempts to improve services, has treated its passengers with contempt and has left those working tirelessly to improve the economy in those parts of our country despairing of ever having the public transport system they need.

Last chances are all well and good when applied to a naughty toddler who has crayoned on the bathroom wall or a teenager who has stayed out too late. When they are given to a company that has done its best to wreck the economy of large swathes of our country and disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of passengers, it is intolerable.

To hear the Minister speak yesterday of improvements in the service would, I am sure, have been excruciating for those who have to use Avanti services regularly. Even under the intense focus and scrutiny of a government improvement plan, those trying to get to work, school or college and to carry out their businesses are still faced with a barrage of late trains and cancellations. Avanti West Coast has had the highest number of trains more than 15 minutes late and the worst single month of cancellations ever—worse even than in August, at the height of the chaos, and worse than during the pandemic. And we still see the number of trains arriving on time falling, with only one-third meeting their scheduled arrival time. So I ask the Minister why this incompetence has been rewarded with a further six-month contract and how much worse services have to get before the Government act.

Just what message does this send to people and businesses, let alone potential investors, about the Government’s commitment to levelling up? Your Lordships have spent many hours discussing the levelling-up Bill in this House in recent weeks, but for people out there, actions speak so much louder than words, and the Government’s complacency about the long-term and chronic failure of railway services to the north, the north-west and Wales does nothing to convince them that there is any real commitment to levelling up at all.

Because it is not just Avanti that is failing. Consider the consistent deficiencies that passengers of TransPennine have had to endure. These go back at least to when my son was at university in Preston over 20 years ago, when a weekend visit to him would become an endurance test. Yesterday, for example, more than 35 services were cancelled on TransPennine. There really are no adequate excuses for this continuing debacle. Will the Minister press her colleagues in the department to end this indefensible shambles for good in May by not extending the TransPennine contract?

All we hear from the rail companies are attempts to blame the trade unions and the workforce for issues that quite clearly sit right at the top, with management and with Ministers. There were 4,100 cancelled services last month, on top of 17,800 fewer services altogether. Surely, the Minister can understand that rail passengers of Avanti and TransPennine have had enough. Why would she and the Government want to put them through another six months of chaos by extending this contract? Why, in spite of Avanti having the most complaints of any operator in 2021-22, did the Government sanction a £12 million dividend for Avanti shareholders and £4 million of taxpayers’ money being paid in bonuses to company executives? Surely it is the passengers, who are being failed so badly, that need compensation.

Even when the trains do run, the service for passengers is woeful. My noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock travels here from Cumbria every week and often finds there are no catering facilities at all on trains for a journey of some six hours. We hear other reports of mouldy food and locked toilets on these lines. The provision and support for passengers with disabilities is often woeful. The passengers really do seem to be the very last consideration of these failing companies.

To turbocharge our economy and to encourage the use of public transport, which could then transform our ambition to achieve net-zero emissions, we need railways that are efficient, trusted, reliable and affordable. Not one of those adjectives applies to Avanti West Coast or TransPennine, yet the Government shrug their shoulders and push decisions back into the railway sidings for another day. They hold on to this broken railway system for their own ideological reasons, presumably believing that competition will always serve passengers best and deliver lower fares: neither of these is the case. In some circumstances, it is cheaper to buy a return air ticket to Berlin than to travel to Wales on the train from London.

If the Government cannot or will not make the vital decisions on public transport that we need for passengers, for our economy, for the environment and for levelling up, then they should step aside. Labour will end the fractured, fragmented system which is failing passengers, communities and businesses, and put them back at the heart of a public transport system that works for everyone. At the moment, it is very clear that while this Government are in charge, the railways will stay broken.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, this Statement sums up the mess our infrastructure has become under a succession of Conservative Governments. I agree with the Government on a couple of points: I welcome progress in resolving strike action, so far as it has occurred. That has been allowed to drift on for far too long and was indeed stoked by the previous Secretary of State. It has badly damaged trust in railway services just when recovery from the impact of the pandemic should have been crucial. I also agree that discussions on who owns the railways is irrelevant, because the Government have effectively nationalised them and taken responsibility. That is the important thing: the Government have taken responsibility for how the railways are run.

However, turning to the rest of the Statement, I have some major points of difference. First, awarding Avanti a six-month extension is an extraordinary decision, and I mean that in the proper sense of that term. FirstGroup has failed in this franchise and continues to fail with TransPennine Express. Other train operating companies have faced exactly the same pressures—Covid, weather, strikes—but by better management and decision-making, they have more effectively minimised the impact on customers. So my first question is: how badly does FirstGroup have to do to lose either of these franchises? Because they are truly being rewarded for failure.

The improvements that the Government cite at Avanti seem very recent and very insubstantial. My question is: there have been months of past poor service; will Avanti or its shareholders face any financial penalties for poor service, repeated cancellations, late running and systematically misleading the public and the Government about cancellation rates by cancelling late on the night before? Another question refers to the 100 extra drivers that the Government cite. Can the Minister give us a view as to whether that is enough in the Government’s eyes? How long will it take to train those drivers?

Reference is also made to a new discounted ticket scheme on some routes. What proportion of routes will have this new discounted scheme? I remind the Minister that what passengers want is to be able to book ahead, because advance fares are cheaper, and they want to be able to book ahead on all routes. When will they be able to do this? Have the Government just handed Avanti another golden cheque, or are there some useful conditions to this funding? I recall that Transport for London has very stringent conditions attached to its funding. What are the stringent conditions attached to the funding of Avanti for the next few months? While we are talking about railways, is it true, as is reported in the Daily Telegraph today, that the Government are about to announce a reduction in passenger rights to delay repay compensation? If that is true, it really is adding insult to injury.

Finally, the Statement looks vaguely at the issue of reform, which is, of course, long overdue. There is a great deal of consensus on the issue of reform, so when can we expect legislation on it? The Government have repeatedly told us that simplification of ticketing is just around the corner and that it does not need legislation, so I ask the Minister when we can expect to see it happen.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Randerson, for their contributions to this Oral Statement repeat. To a certain extent I am always very sad when I do not get to read out the Oral Statement, because sometimes it helps to set the tone and remind noble Lords of what was in the Statement. There were certainly some elements that may have slipped the minds of noble Lords to date. I will go through as many of the issues as I can and, I hope, helpfully provide those bits of information that may have slipped noble Lords’ minds.

I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, welcomed the news on the strikes. It is good that the RMT workers “overwhelmingly”—their word, not ours—accepted the National Rail offer by 76% on a 90% turnout, which leads one to ask why the RMT chooses not to put a very similar offer to its members around the train operating companies. We believe it would be extremely beneficial for them to do so and may well bring strikes to an end, but they, for whatever their reasons, choose not to, and that is extraordinarily disappointing. As we all know, it causes an immense amount of delay and disruption to passengers’ journeys and is something that we absolutely want to avoid.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said that Avanti “has flouted all attempts to improve services”—except that it has improved services, so I could not quite put those things together. If we look at what Avanti has done, it has increased its weekday services, in many areas back to pre-Covid levels. There has been an enormous increase, up to 40% in some areas —from 180 weekday services a day up to 264. Cancellations are now down from 25% to 4.2%. I accept that needs to go lower, but I think all noble Lords can agree that that is an improved service, which the noble Baroness was not even willing to admit has even happened. Then we know that at least 90% of services arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time. I can confirm that today 92.5% arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time, and there was just one partial cancellation, the 7.30, which would have already departed by now.

It is also worth noting that sometimes the train operating companies have other issues that they need to look at when it comes to the challenges that they face. For example, today—and I have noted the 92.5% of services running within 15 minutes of their planned time—the train operating company had to deal with a trespasser at Cheadle Hulme; a technical issue affecting a London Northwestern service, which caused the Avanti services to be late; a Network Rail track defect between Rugby and Hillmorton Junction; a track failure at Queen’s Park, and a safety inspection of the track between Coventry and Rugby. None of those things could reasonably be put at the door of Avanti to say, “That’s entirely your fault.” Sometimes, it is not. Sometimes we need to recognise that the Government’s plans for bringing together track and train under GBR are to try to deal with such issues. We have issues with the infrastructure, and we need the services to be within that ecosystem such that those issues are minimised as much as possible.

I accept, however, and my right honourable friend the Transport Secretary accepts it too, that this is a journey. This is a reward for recovery, which the noble Baroness was not willing to accept has happened, and not for completion of all of the issues that Avanti might have. That is why this is a recovery plan, and it is why the extension is only for six months, because we believe that further improvements are necessary. We need more reliable weekend services; we need a further reduction in cancellations, and we need improved passenger communication for planned and unplanned disruption.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, then talked about TP and there being “no … excuses” for its poor performance. There are, however, some issues that it would be wise for the noble Baroness to understand, and I am very happy to help her understand them. The first is sickness. The sickness rates among train crews and those providing training at TPE are extraordinary: more than twice the level of other train operating companies. That cannot be right. Why might that be happening? I would also point the noble Baroness to the lack of rest day working, which was—simultaneously and with no warning—withdrawn. We believe that was co-ordinated by ASLEF and it meant that, all of a sudden, various train operating companies that suffered this—it was mostly Avanti and TPE—were forced to reduce their timetables. They did not want to reduce them. Train crews and drivers had been doing voluntary overtime on this basis for decades, and then all of a sudden, it was withdrawn and there was a consequent impact on service. That cannot be laid at the door of the management; it just cannot. It is up to the management to try to fix it, and that is why they are recruiting the train drivers. I am very content to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that we are aware of the number of train drivers who are coming through. There are almost 100—obviously there is phasing over three years—and we are reassured that those train drivers will do the trick.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, asked what financial impact there would be. There is a vigorous performance evaluation system looking at operational performance, passenger experience and financial management, working with National Rail, train operating companies and their shareholders. That is how they are judged: it is independently evaluated and that is absolutely right. It is done in accordance with the contract that they signed up for. That is only fair.

I have said before that legislation will come forward when parliamentary time allows. I will not comment on speculation in the Telegraph; I have not read that newspaper today. On the discounted routes, I will have to write to the noble Baroness, but I can assure her that Avanti does not use any P-codes, so she should rest assured in that area.

What I am struck by from all this is the lack of willingness to understand that it is a very complex system; the levers that the train operating companies have are not always within their gift, and neither of the noble Baronesses who have spoken so far have offered any alternative. The only alternative that I am aware of is that the Labour Party has to date—and we are still a little way off from a general election—made £62 billion of unfunded commitments for the rail industry. We look after taxpayers’ money. It is really important that we do. We need a modern railway that works seven days a week. That is what we are aiming for and that is what I think our reforms will deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am struggling to understand the basis of the noble Lord’s question. What is happening is that the officials are working with the train operating companies and those companies are working with their workforces. Any contractual relationship with an organisation within the Department for Transport requires greater or lesser oversight, depending on what is happening. I cannot really add much more, other than it is government being government with one of its contractors.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

The Minister did not have time to answer all my questions. I simply ask that she review them and answer them in a letter.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am happy to do so but, given that I have a tiny bit of extra time, I will knock another one on the head. On the booking window, I agree that it is very important that passengers have the confidence to book ahead. The booking window now extends to 12 June—another area where Avanti has shown real improvement. We understand that the weekend booking window is shorter, at five weeks, but that is in order to take into account engineering works. That is another example of the infrastructure side of the business impacting on the services side, and of course we want them to work closely together.

I will look at some of the noble Baroness’s other questions. I cannot see too many that I have not answered, but I will ask officials to look through Hansard and we will write accordingly.