Great Western Railway Routes

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for arriving a few seconds after he rose to his feet. The previous business finished rather earlier than a lot of us expected or had been forewarned about, but I congratulate him on being the driving force behind this timely debate.

At the end of the week, when I get into carriage A at Paddington with my bike in the bike space just in front of it—carriage A is the quiet carriage—I sit down, and I usually have the best two hours of my week. Every time I am on that journey, I give thanks to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the brilliance of the line that he created back in the Victorian age, from which we are still benefiting. It still think it incredible, given that very little has happened since, that on a good day someone can get from London to Exeter—quite a long way, as I am sure hon. Members who know their geography realise—in under two hours, and that is very much thanks to Brunel.

I completely agree with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), because for all its frailties, Great Western is my favourite railway line. I travel across the UK quite a lot, and it is certainly better than the new franchise owners on the east coast main line, and the pokey little carriages on Virgin and the west coast main line. Great Western is comfortable and bright. The loos do not work, and when they do they flush straight on to the tracks. That is completely intolerable and unacceptable in the modern age and must change as a matter of urgency. The ventilation is idiosyncratic, and one can often find a carriage that is far too hot or far too cold, but the staff are always delightful and friendly, and the service is excellent.

I have one plea to all railway companies, which is that they should do much more to publicise a passenger’s right to a full refund if they are delayed by more than an hour. I really think that they are getting away with too much, and far too many people do not realise that they are entitled to a refund. I was an hour and a half late coming back at the weekend because of some of the problems that the hon. Member for Torbay referred to, and, in terms of good customer service, such compensation should be announced on the trains as a matter of course.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

In highlighting the beauty of the line to Exeter, may I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to stay on the train and see how even more beautiful the line gets once it passes along the coast? It is not just about the beauty of the line, which I hope everyone will experience, but the economic importance of the line via Dawlish to the economies of south Devon. Will he join me in saying that whatever we do we must protect the line through Dawlish and protect the economies of south Devon?

[Mr Bradshaw]

I know the line through Dawlish very well. I spent childhood holidays in Salcombe. In fact, my parents used to get a train all the way to Kingsbridge in the good old days before Beeching took his axe to our rural rail network. It is beautiful, but vulnerable. I will come on to say something about it in a second.

Having said all those positive things, we still have rolling stock that was introduced, I think, in the early 1970s. As I have said, travel speeds have not actually increased very much for decades, if not for a century. I mentioned the loos and the heating, and the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned electrification. It is puzzling that Spain and Italy have full comprehensive networks of high-speed electric trains, but in this country we still do not have a network of high-speed trains. We are getting one slowly, but in the south-west we are set to be probably the only major region with big cities left in western Europe that does not have either high-speed trains or electrification. There is absolutely no reason why we should not already have electrification down to Exeter. There have been technical challenges, but having been on electric trains in the Alps that go up steep gradients I have never quite understood what the barrier is to electrification where there are gradients. As the hon. Member for Torbay says, we will very soon have the technology to overcome that.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who, given the speech he is making today, I will call my right hon. Friend even if that is not strictly correct. Does he agree that the question arises of how long it takes us to deliver infrastructure projects in the UK? We touched on this in relation to western rail access to Heathrow and electrification. We just take too long to make decisions and to deliver on them.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree. The Labour Government set up an independent infrastructure body—I cannot remember its name—and the hon. Gentleman’s Government have gone on to do something similar. We need to be much more radical in how we manage big infrastructure improvements. Network Rail is currently pleading, in today’s Financial Times, with the Government not to privatise it, but instead to hand over such decisions to an independent rail commission. That is a very sensible and sound idea, and I hope the Government will listen to it. The fragmentation and privatisation of Network Rail would be an absolute disaster. It is worth reading the piece in today’s Financial Times.

[Oliver Colvile]

If we want business to use railways, we also need to ensure a good level of broadband so that people can actually work on them.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I forgot to mention that broadband is terrible in standard class. It never works. I just use 3G, or 4G, if I have it, on the train. I raised this issue with First Great Western a number of times, but it still has not been resolved. I am told that it is fine in first class, but who travels first class? MPs certainly do not; not in my experience, anyway. I never have and since the new expenses system came in we are quite rightly not allowed to.

As hon. Members will remember, two years ago last week we had the catastrophic severing of the line at Dawlish. As the hon. Member for Torbay said, it had a huge impact on the region’s wider economy. Flooding then cut the line on the Somerset levels and this weekend there was flooding between Taunton and Castle Cary. My train was diverted from Exeter because of flooding. There are a lot of resilience problems throughout the network. As we all know, with the growing threat from climate change there will be increasing occurrences of extreme weather events. There has been meaningful and substantial investment in the railways, including in the south-west—although not as much as in other parts of the UK. Following the Hatfield disaster, hon. Members will remember that under the Labour Government there was a major programme of work to make signalling and track safer. That work is ongoing. Improvements at Reading have already made a significant positive difference to the reliability of the service. There used to be regular delays, in particular when coming into Reading on the return journey.

There have been improvements, but we in the far south-west, as opposed to the Bristol-south Wales corridor, where major electrification is planned, still feel the poor relation when it comes to investment. There were a lot of generous—I will use that term rather than grandiose, because we took them at their word—promises made by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Transport Secretary after Dawlish and particularly in the run-up to the general election. I lost count of the number of times the Chancellor and the Prime Minister appeared in Devon and Cornwall wearing a hard hat and a fluorescent jacket and promising us more than £7 billion of rail and other infrastructure investment. They will be held to those promises. A whole swathe of Conservative MPs were elected in Devon and Cornwall on those promises. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] They are laughing, smiling and “hear-hearing” now, but if those promises are not delivered the smiles will be on the other side of their faces come the next general election. It is up to them to get their Government to deliver.

I feel sorry for my Conservative colleagues. We are friends—we have regional solidarity—and I feel sorry for them. In the past two weeks, we have had an absolute public relations fiasco over a tiny sum of money. The Peninsula Rail Task Force in the south-west is a group that got together after Dawlish. It is run by a Conservative councillor. All the councils have taken part and most of them are Conservative. It came up with a fantastic document, on which the hon. Member for Torbay based most of his speech, about what needs to happen in the south-west. Its very small initial ask is for £250,000 for the necessary feasibility studies into electrification and resilience, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. We were promised that this would happen. There was going to be a press release. It was going to be announced last week on the second anniversary of Dawlish. I hope the Minister will use the opportunity this evening, when she responds to the debate—it is not a very good time to put out such a fantastic news story that our media in the south-west would absolutely love—to come up with this small amount of money. It is £250,000 for two feasibility studies. Nothing has been said about when the work will happen.

[Johnny Mercer]

Will the right hon. Gentleman concede that Network Rail committed to paying for the studies? The Government have not given money to a project and then taken it away. The money has fallen through as a result of what Network Rail has done. We have asked the Government to step up and deliver in its place.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the Government have never come up with the money. I am suggesting that they should. Network Rail is not able to come up with the money because of the massive cost overruns and delays on the whole of the rest of its infrastructure investment projects; not just the huge cost and time overrun on the Great Western line into south Wales but on its overall investment all over the country. Incidentally, the Government knew about that before the general election when they were making all those great and grandiose promises about what they were going to deliver to us in the south-west. Those are the conversations the hon. Gentleman needs to have with his Front Bench colleagues. I will leave that to him and wish him the very best of luck.

It is completely obvious to me why the money has not been made available. Network Rail has not got it because it has massively overspent and overrun on all its other projects. I hope that when the Minister responds we can hear a little bit more detail on exactly what we can expect in the far south-west and when. If she cannot tell us about the feasibility study money this evening, perhaps she can tell us: when we might be able to hear about it; when we might have some hope about the prospect of electrification beyond Bristol into our part of the region along the lines that have been suggested; and when we might have some idea about the timetable for an additional alternative line to Dawlish.

I completely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). We do not want to lose the line at Dawlish. It is beautiful and the people of Dawlish do not want to lose it. However, the fact is that if we talk to any engineer or climate change scientist about the long-term viability of the route, they do not just talk about storms and sea level rises but the fragility of the cliff. The biggest problem with the block last year was that the cliff kept falling down. It is a multiple problem and the line is between the sea and quite a soft cliff. As hon. Members will know, there was a plan back in 1939 to build a sensible, slightly inland alternative from Powderham Castle to Newton Abbot. That did not go ahead because the second world war broke out. There are other options. I can understand that people in north Devon and north Cornwall like the idea of the Okehampton line being reopened. Let us have a look at that and have some idea about what is going to happen and when. As the Prime Minister himself said, we cannot afford to have the south-west cut off like that again. Our economy cannot afford it. I was on the right side of that block, so it did not affect me, but the Plymouth, Cornwall, South Devon and Torbay economies were seriously affected by it.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

May I add to the right hon. Gentleman’s shopping list? The Minister might like to reassure us about where the south-west and south Wales sit in the Government’s wider priorities. It would appear that we have neither resilience in our network, nor had significant investment in the speeds of our journeys since the ’70s—certainly beyond Bristol, there is no evidence of that coming soon. Other regions, therefore, will zoom ahead with much faster high-speed rail within a decade or two. It would be useful if the right hon. Gentleman added to his list this question about where we stand in the Government’s priorities.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree, and we look forward to hearing the Minister respond at the end of this debate. I intend to finish with what I hope will be an attractive suggestion to all those Conservative Members who were swept to power—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I simply hope that at some point the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that there will be a new station opening in his constituency next year.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Yes, and we have already had a new station opened just outside my constituency—and the investment programme for it was put in place by the Labour Government, so I am very grateful that the Minister did not cut it. [Interruption.] Of course I am grateful for that.

[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Mr Bradshaw]

I am sorry, but I am not giving way again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. The right hon. Member is not giving way.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I have said I am grateful for that station and that I am grateful for the investment programme that the Labour Government initiated. I say to the Minister simply that she has cut that investment programme over the last six years at a time when every sensible economist in the world thinks we should be investing in our infrastructure for the long term. We have record low long-term interest rates in this country and a faltering economy, so now is the time when we should be investing in infrastructure, and particularly in rail. I repeat that I am very grateful that the Minister did not cut the money for that station and that we are going to get another station—but, incidentally, the Labour Government initiated the plans for that, too.

I am going to end with the following suggestion to the Conservative MPs in Devon and Cornwall who were swept to victory last May on great and grandiose promises of a rail revolution and renaissance in the south-west. I got into a great deal of trouble with my Whips in the last Parliament for refusing to vote for the money for High Speed 2 up to the north. To give credit where it is due, one Conservative Member, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter)—sadly, he is not in his place tonight—did the same. We withheld our support for that money. The Government now have a majority of only 12—

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bradshaw]

No, I will not. I am finishing and the hon. Lady can speak in the debate.

More than 12 Conservative Members with constituencies in Devon and Cornwall could stop the Government putting that money through if they do not get what this Government promised over the next five years. I challenge them to do that—to stick up for their constituents, stick up for the south-west and stop taking no for an answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate.

The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) said he might be departing for pastures new. As he kindly namechecked me, may I say what a pleasure it has been to serve under his chairmanship of the Environmental Audit Committee? It has been my first experience of a Select Committee, and it has been extremely fruitful. We will miss you—I mean, we will miss the hon. Gentleman. I apologise. Ooh, I think I’ve got away with it.

Like many Members on both sides of the House, I am a regular user of the Great Western main line. I travelled up this morning. As others have said, the journey was considerably delayed, but I pay tribute to the GWR train staff, who always kept us well informed and advised. On such days, they operate in extremely difficult conditions. It can only be a challenge to deal with a lot of stroppy passengers who want to know why they are an hour late, but they performed in an exemplary fashion this morning and kept us all advised. Although we got into Paddington an hour late, that was fine.

As mentioned, faster broadband would be gratefully received. The train is a valuable opportunity to work—I had an unexpected extra hour this morning—but although the broadband works after a fashion, it is, like the curate’s egg, slightly patchy. Like the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), I choose to travel in the quiet carriage, but never has anything been so misnamed. It is certainly not always quiet. The train is a vital place of work for people on their journey from the south-west to London and elsewhere.

[Mr Bradshaw]

This has been suggested to me once or twice before. In my experience, if one politely asks somebody making a noise in the quiet carriage to desist or move, they do so. It is a great example of British self-policing. I recommend that the hon. Gentleman try it, if he has not already done so.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I am a shrinking violent and would never presume to do such a thing, but I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point.

The vital nature of this main rail link for the south-west—our major rail artery—has to be stressed again and again, but it is extraordinarily important for another reason. As others have said, not only is it a fragile link, but it complements what is, by any definition, a fragile series of road links to the south-west. On the M5 or the A303, you pays your money and you takes your choice. There are times when both are unhelpful to the travelling public. For that reason and many others, it is vital that the south-west line is resilient, as many Members on both sides of the House have said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald]

I have given way. Mark Carne, Network Rail’s chief executive, told Members of Parliament in October that the estimate for the project had been £874 million in January 2013, and £1.5 billion in September 2014. He said that because of “inadequate planning”, the cost of electrification could now reach £2.8 billion.

The upgrades that were expected to have been completed by 2018 are significantly behind schedule. Under the original plan, the Reading to Didcot route should already have been completed, and routes to Oxford and Bristol were on schedule to be completed this year. Didcot is now expected to be two years late, in 2017, and Newbury and Oxford three years late, in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Bristol Temple Meads will not have electric trains until 2020, and the east-west rail link from Oxford to Bletchley is delayed until the early 2020s.

Some of those improvements have been delayed by up to four years, significantly affecting commuters who rely on the Great Western line, as well as on the towns and cities that the line serves. Progress on the Great Western electrification has been hampered by this Government putting electrification on hold after the 2010 election, and not fully confirming the project until July 2012, meaning that essential planning work was delayed. The Office of Rail Regulation has said that because a number of major enhancements were added to control period 5 at a relatively late date, several important projects were started in 2014 without being fully assessed. At the start of control period 5, £7 billion of the £12 billion of enhancement spending had not been signed off by the regulator. Calvin Lloyd, Network Rail’s head of long-term planning and funding said:

“There are cost pressures across the whole portfolio of enhancement projects, which should not be a surprise to anyone given that we did not have the level of confidence we might have wished at the start.”

It is the taxpayer, commuters and those who rely on Great Western who will suffer the consequences of poor cost estimation and poor planning. If the Great Western tracks are not electrified according to schedule, the Department will be liable to pay compensation to the private consortium that is delivering the new generation of electric intercity express programme trains. The Department for Transport is considering converting electric IEP trains so they can run on diesel, at an unclear cost to the taxpayer. They may not be able to reach speeds of 125 mph, raising fears that some journeys could actually slow down, compared with today, if electrification is delayed.

The Government’s plans for replacing uncomfortable and inaccessible Pacer trains on branch lines in the south-west are dependent on the success of the electrification programme. If the Great Western electrification project is significantly delayed, passengers in the south-west could endure vehicles for years that the Government have, quite rightly, said are unacceptable in the north of England.

Poor planning and the premature announcement of projects have left commuters uncertain of the future of the Great Western, yet the Government were repeatedly warned that rising costs could lead to some projects being delayed or cancelled. Labour first raised problems with the Great Western main line electrification programme in May 2014, just weeks into the start of the investment period, and challenged the Government to explain which electrification projects will be delayed or cancelled as a consequence of rising costs. Those concerns were echoed by the Transport Committee, which warned in January 2015:

“We are concerned that key rail enhancement projects—such as electrification in the North and North West of England—have been announced by Ministers without Network Rail having a clear estimate of what the projects will cost, leading to uncertainty about whether the projects will be delivered on time, or at all.”

Worse still, commuters were kept in the dark by the Government throughout this period. The chief executive of Network Rail confirmed:

“In mid-March 2015, Network Rail informed the Department for Transport that decisions may need to be made in the coming months about the deferral of certain schemes.”

However, Ministers in the Department are still refusing to say whether they were informed before the election of the plans to defer major schemes. It is now clear that the agreed work could never have been delivered within the agreed budget and timeframe. Yet Network Rail, the Department for Transport and the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, signed up to the plans anyway, resulting in a great deal of unnecessary uncertainty and confusion. It is passengers and the public who pay the price for such failures, and serious questions must be asked of the Government about how such a shambles was allowed to occur on their watch.

It will be a great relief to passengers reliant on the Great Western that track upgrades will arrive late rather than never. We on the Labour Benches encourage the Government properly to examine their adequacy and the adequacy of Network Rail in budgeting, planning and delivering such programmes in future. It is those issues that should be focused on, so it is an issue of concern that Nicola Shaw, who is heading the Department’s review of the future of Network Rail, has said that privatisation of Network Rail is an option that is on the table. The Government should be asking how better to deliver major projects such as rail electrification in the future, not looking to devote time to managing yet further privatisation and fragmentation of our national rail infrastructure.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Is my hon. Friend aware that, according to the Financial Times, Great Western also raised objections to the possibility of privatising Network Rail, saying it would fragment the system and remove the advantage Network Rail has currently in being able to buy in bulk—and therefore cheaply—on behalf of the taxpayer?

[Andy McDonald]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a matter of huge concern that the critical mass of Network Rail is now under threat from this review. It makes no sense whatever to break up a national network. We all remember the days of the private enterprise adventure into our country’s rail infrastructure—and the consequences that flowed therefrom. I would therefore encourage Members strenuously to resist the proposals for the privatisation of Network Rail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry]

I am sorry, but I do not have that completion date. As the plans proceed and the work accelerates on the electrification to Cardiff, I will be happy to make sure that the hon. Gentleman is one of the first people to know, in whatever the capacity. I was invited earlier to choose glory, but my job is to serve—that is it.

Let us talk a little about the direct investment, as well as this Great Western line, because some people, including the hon. Gentleman, might legitimately say, “That is fine, but it just goes to Bristol and the south-west is much more than just Bristol.” Indeed, it is much more than just Cardiff, if we are talking about south Wales. What is actually happening for the south-western peninsula? Hon. Members were right to say that the south-west has sat and watched other regions pull ahead and wondered why that was happening. The south-west has vital extractive industries and some brilliant talent, but we are, in effect, cut off. Whether it was what happened at Dawlish or other transport network issues that had to prove that, the events at Dawlish were a wake-up call for so many of us. The work done on restoring that line showed that where there was a will and funding, there was a way to deliver. That is why in this Parliament the Government are investing more than £400 million directly in the rail system for this region. We are providing the class AT300 trains—the bimodal trains—which go through my constituency, too. I put my hands up: this is a great thing for my constituents, too. Those trains will provide fast, reliable journey times down to the south-west.

We have opened a new station at Newcourt, with others to come at Marsh Barton and at Edginswell, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay in the next 18 months. We are re-signalling the main line from Totnes to Penzance, which is vital. The right hon. Member for Exeter mentioned Reading station, where this Government are making a £700 million investment in untangling freight and passenger lines, so cutting a key source of delay on that line. We have overhauled the Night Riviera sleeper trains, and I am told that the new launch will be before the vital tourist season this year. We are expanding the Long Rock train maintenance site at Penzance to maintain those trains, and of course we spent £35 million at Dawlish at the time of the works, and money has continued to go into that project since, because it is not enough just to stabilise the track for now.

As we have heard over and again tonight, the challenge will be in future-proofing these lines, which are in some of the most exposed parts of the railway network. That is why £3.5 million has been spent by Network Rail on the geological analysis—on the cliff resilience analysis—to make sure that what is proposed for Dawlish works for the future. An additional £31 million is also being spent at 10 sites across the south-west, including the works at Cowley bridge, and the installation of rainfall and other monitoring. We are trying to make sure that the flooding problems we saw in 2014 do not happen again.

We have a plan for the south-west and we are determined to improve the resilience for the south-west. We also have a plan for Wales, and although the hon. Member for Ogmore may not be entirely happy with it, this Government are delivering for Wales, too. I was pleased to hear an almost universal series of comments about Great Western Railway today, which is delivering its highest ever score for overall passenger satisfaction. As has been said time and again today, it has really delivered at a time of tough service disruption. It is delivering 3% year-on-year increases in customer scores and it is determined to do more.

There is a No.1 question today. People have said, “Okay Minister, you have told us that this matters and clearly there is a long-term plan, but what about the resilience study?” I am delighted to assure the House that we have indeed negotiated a package that will make sure that those relatively small but important studies do go ahead, to form part of the plan that we are expecting to get from the great Peninsula Rail Task Force. I wanted to keep everyone in suspense until the last possible moment. Therefore, the GRIP 2 study—governance for railway investment projects—into line speed improvements between London and Devon and Cornwall can go ahead to establish what more can be done to bring about track and signalling improvements. That is an important but not the only part of the study. I am really excited that the Peninsula Rail Task Force will report in June with a vision for the next 20 years. That work will include the resilience questions at Dawlish and the journey time improvements we need. That is no easy task, so we should all thank the relevant parties, led ably by the chair of Devon County Council, for putting that work together.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I think what the Minister just said is welcome, but she used the expression, “We have negotiated a package.” How much are the Government putting on the table compared with the local authorities, which have already put quite a lot on the table?

[Claire Perry]

We have not been asked to put in a penny. Great Western Railway has funded the study, as part of our negotiations with it. No Government money was ever being put into these studies. We stood by to make sure the studies happened—