Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Claire Perry

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

T8. I recognise this Government’s enormous investment in our railways, but I am keen to know when we might see some improvements to the London to Portsmouth line. It is still faster to get to Doncaster, which is twice as far.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend will know that the Portsmouth to London line is not only hugely important for her constituents but a vital artery for people who are travelling up and down through the counties. One problem has been the inability to run longer trains into Waterloo station, where the “throat” has effectively been blocked for many years. We are now investing to increase platform lengths there, to unblock some of that complexity. Also, the draft Wessex route study is being undertaken right now to determine how faster trains can be run from my hon. Friend’s constituency.

South West Trains

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Claire Perry

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Westminster Hall

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

Another great train analogy, Dr McCrea. It is a pleasure to work with you in your capacity as Chairman.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on his refreshment of his ongoing assiduous focus on his train services. He certainly brings gusto and gumption to his campaigning on this issue for his constituents. I, like him, feel incredibly strongly about the points he raises, and I am doing my best in this new and enjoyable role, with the help of my superb team, to look at these things on a factual, common-sense basis. I, like him, travel on the train and have to explain to people why we say things are getting better when for some of them they are definitely not.

In one way, my hon. Friend would share with me the view that the huge demand we are seeing, with a doubling of passenger numbers since privatisation—numbers are rising by 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, 9% or 10% in some parts of the country—is perversely a measure of success. We are seeing the most rapid rise in travel of anywhere in Europe. We have the safest and most punctual railways in Europe. We have the most improved railways in Europe, according to passengers. We are seeing an enormous rise in demand for these services. Clapham Junction, which he goes through and which I know well, sees 23 million people changing trains there every year. The South West franchise area is the busiest railway in Europe, and Waterloo is the busiest station in the UK. I was down there this morning, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the young person’s railcard, and it was teeming.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Does the Minister agree that it is not just about capacity? The problem is that if we are to see economic investment in the parts of the country and the parts of the south that really need it for regeneration, we need faster and better train routes. The journey between Portsmouth and London takes the same time as the journey from London to Doncaster, which is two and a half times as far. That is just not good enough for commuters on the south coast.

[Claire Perry]

As always, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I have travelled that route, visiting one of her neighbouring constituencies, and I was struck by the pace at which some of those trains travel.

To return to the particular service mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, the 7.32 train from Woking to Waterloo is, I think, the second most crowded passenger journey in the UK. I have been on that journey. I am in the process of mystery shopping the top 10 most crowded routes to see for myself what they are like. On that particular day, the operating company took four carriages out of the service for operational reasons, because of problems the day before. That meant that we were leaving passengers at the station pretty much all the way along the line.

It is incredibly important that the Government tackle these issues and deliver value for money in the eyes of passengers. My hon. Friends have alluded to that. The good news is that the Government recognise that. For the first time in a generation, we are reinvesting real money in the railways, with £38 billion being spent over this capital period to the end of 2019. That is the biggest investment in rail and rolling stock since Victorian times.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton pointed out, the franchise that we are debating was, like so many others, let under a previous Administration who thought that electrifying nine miles of track in 13 years was good enough. The franchises were let with no provision for growth and investment, which resulted in a huge squeeze for passengers. One of the things I am very proud of is that the Chancellor has for the second year delivered a real-terms freeze on fares, as well as scrapping the flex that enabled companies to put up their prices outside the regulated boundary willy-nilly. This Government understand value for money, unlike the previous Government.

The challenge that my hon. Friend outlined is how to pay for the investment, which gets to his point about subsidy versus premiums across the network. He does the analysis, as I do, so he knows that there are two ways to pay for investment in the railway: general taxation and a contribution from those using the railway. Only about 8% of commuters use the railway to get to work; twice as many take the bus and many more still walk, cycle or take their cars. Taxpayers of course contribute substantially to investment in railways through general taxation. In some cases, passengers contribute as well. Taxpayers and fare payers are often the same people, so they are right to feel aggrieved, particularly when their services are not running.

In general, the challenge as to which franchises are in receipt of subsidy and which are generating premiums is an operational negotiation at the time of letting the franchise and as patterns change as services unfold. Overall, however, the McNulty review found substantial operating costs right across the railways—far more than our European comparators—that need to be driven out, which we are working hard with Network Rail and the operating companies to achieve.

My hon. Friends each hit the nail on the head. Passengers often do not feel that they are getting value for money. They travel on slow, crowded trains and cannot understand why timetables get messed up and why the network’s resilience can fail if there is a fatality or some operational problem. All my hon. Friends will be delighted to hear that part of the £38 billion investment commitment is being spent on the South West Trains network. Just a few weeks ago, I was on the platform at Waterloo with South West Trains and its Network Rail alliance colleagues, Siemens and Angel Trains, to announce that 150 new vehicles are currently being made to be put into use on the franchise by the start of 2018. The introduction of the new trains will lead to the cascading of existing fleets, generating enough seats for 24,000 additional peak-time passengers. That is in addition to the carriages that are starting to arrive now which will also deliver additional seats.

My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton made an interesting comparison with the rules for movement of livestock versus the space available for people. He and I have seen how crowded trains can be. It is not like being on a tube train, with another coming along behind. People are being made late for work if they cannot board their train. Part of calculating overcrowding is based on duration of journey. There is a strong expectation that nobody travelling for more than 20 minutes should be standing beyond that point. It is not always achieved, but that is the sort of standard that we seek.

My hon. Friend mentioned the work at Waterloo station, which is not only about new trains but about new platform capacity. Much of the network’s signalling needs to be renewed, which is happening. It is also important that the four unused platforms at the former Waterloo International Eurostar terminal are brought back into service. A few winters ago, I took my children to see the “The Railway Children”, which was a marvellous production featuring a steam train coming into the station. How strange it was that platforms at the busiest station in Britain were being used for theatre rather than letting people get on and off trains. That vital piece of infrastructure is now being restored for railway use and will be able to accommodate longer trains on platforms 1 to 4, removing a constraint that has bedevilled commuter journeys from my hon. Friends’ constituencies for many years.