Tyne and Wear Metro

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of the Tyne and Wear Metro.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I secured the debate because my constituents are quickly losing patience with the Metro service, which is unreliable and overdue for investment. Barely a week goes by without me being contacted by people who are fed up with delayed or cancelled services making them late for work, preventing them from getting their kids to school, or keeping them from important appointments. A quick glance at Metro’s Twitter feed shows why. On most days, some sort of delay or cancellation is reported, not to mention the numerous other faults that disrupt passengers’ journeys, such as broken ticket machines—that happened again today—and information boards that give out misleading or incorrect information. Last winter, the service was so poor that only 64.5% of trains arrived on time, which means that more than one in three trains was late.

These problems occur so frequently that commuters have created a Facebook group called “Sort out the Metro”, which attracted hundreds of members in only a couple of weeks. Nearly 3,000 people have signed a petition calling for the Department for Transport to begin an independent review of our Metro services. These are not just annoyances; people rely on public transport to get them to where they need to be, and there are real consequences when the network fails them. One woman from my constituency wrote to me to explain the effect that delayed services have on her family. She explained that her husband uses the Metro to travel to his job in Gateshead, but failed trains mean that he can never guarantee that he will arrive on time. When he is three minutes late for work, he is docked 15 minutes’ wages. When he is 15 minutes late, he loses half an hour’s pay. Those may seem like relatively small sums of money individually, but when multiple journeys are delayed each week, the amounts soon add up.

The problems do not end there for my constituent. She explained that she works evening shifts, so if her husband’s train home is delayed, there is no one to take care of their young child. Either she has to be late for work, or she has to find a last-minute babysitter. Public transport is supposed to make people’s lives more convenient, but for her family it is doing just the opposite.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on the excellent points that she is making about the importance of the Tyne and Wear Metro. I am probably showing my age by saying that I remember the Tyne and Wear Metro launching. I remember how proud we were that it was the first light rail system in the country to be entirely disabled-accessible. Looking back, can we not see that the current problems are testament to a failure of investment, which we need right now in the Tyne and Wear Metro?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come to later. When the investment is there and our Metro is working properly, it is brilliant and it serves our area well. At the moment, however, the lack of investment really shows, and it has an impact on all our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), my constituency neighbour, on securing this important debate, which centres on the performance of the Tyne and Wear Metro service, but I will also address the service’s future, to which she alluded.

In the past nine months for which figures are available, 42,749 excess minutes were recorded, which is more than double the Metro’s target. Causes include power failures, leaves on the line and train malfunctions. The majority of complaints received were due to train service performance. I live near a Metro station, so my family and I understand the Metro’s benefits all too well. The Metro is and has been a great service, and I remember when it first started. [Interruption.] We are all showing our age this afternoon.

The Metro has not been reliable over the past few years. If I turn up in the morning to catch the Metro to Newcastle to get a train down here—when I am not getting a Sunderland train—a delay can make the difference between catching my train and not catching my train. The Metro runs to the airport, so it has to be reliable. People have to be at the airport a certain amount of time in advance, and people have complained to me that they have missed flights because of problems with the Metro. Part of the issue is that there are not many public transport alternatives. It is not like London, where if the buses go off, the tube is there; or if the tube goes off, there are lots of buses. In the north-east, people who live within travelling distance of the Tyne and Wear Metro rely on that service and, historically, it was very reliable. The benefits of living near the Metro are great, but the problem is that it needs to be reliable.

People are not just being penalised for losing minutes at work; they can lose their job if they are consistently late for work. Employers are not interested in why people are late for work, but in whether they are there on time to do the job they are paid to do, and I totally understand that. It is a very serious problem. Of the 502 complaints in April and May this year, most were to do with train service performance. It is a real issue across the piece.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the impact of train delays. Does she agree that productivity is one of the key challenges that we face, as the acting leader of the Labour party, our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said this morning? We are 30% behind other countries when it comes to productivity. Excellent transport links are important for productivity, but my hon. Friend has given various examples that show how it is being undermined by bad transport.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is absolutely true that productivity is essential. Economically, the north-east is one of the most productive regions in the country. We are still the only region that has a positive balance of trade. We export enormously, which is something to be proud of, but people have to get to their jobs to be able to create that productivity.

It is clear that Nexus will have to procure a new fleet of trains to meet identified customer demand. The number of people travelling on public transport goes up all the time. From an environmental point of view, that is important. As has been said, the fleet started carrying passengers in 1980. The refurbishment going on at the moment will take it to around 2025, but further refurbishment is not cost-effective. The trains are cranky and noisy, and there is a limit to what can be done with old stock. By the middle of the next decade, the trains will represent 50-year-old technology, with all the problems that go with that, including low levels of reliability, poor energy efficiency and poor compliance with accessibility legislation. When they were introduced, they were trailblazing, but they are now old hat. As someone over 50, I understand the problems that getting older creates: you are not quite as good as you were a few years ago. New trains are critical. They will improve reliability and punctuality for the more than 38 million passengers who use the service every year.

I want to move on to the disparity in funding between the regions. According to recent research undertaken by the Equality Trust, if we combine bus and rail, the average amount of money in Government subsidy spent on transport for each household in the north-east is £139 a year. For those in the south-east it is £204. The figures speak for themselves. If the northern powerhouse is to amount to anything more than a vanity project for the Chancellor, he needs to put his money where his mouth is, and he needs to use the Budget next week to direct extra money into public transport in our region. A new fleet is central to securing a better, more punctual and energy-efficient Metro service. Given the costs involved, Government financing will be crucial. These things inevitably take time, so I urge the Minister to begin talks now to ensure that passengers in Sunderland, who rely on the Metro to go to work, attend hospital appointments and visit family and friends, get the service they need and deserve.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on securing this important debate.

The Tyne and Wear Metro is a critical part of the north-east’s transport infrastructure. For decades it has provided high levels of service, punctuality and customer satisfaction, running millions of journeys every year to ensure that the people of the north-east could get around quickly and efficiently. I am concerned to hear so many of the points raised by my hon. Friends today regarding the drop in operating performance. Valid concerns have been raised. Journeys are being affected by the age and need for upkeep of the rolling stock in use. Punctuality performance during the period of DB Regio’s operation has declined significantly: it is on average 8% lower than this time last year. Many travellers have also complained that when things go wrong, there is no information about what is happening and few viable alternative means of completing their journey.

I hope that as a result of today’s debate progress can be made to ensure that the Metro provides a reliable and affordable service. However, the Government have a role to play in ensuring that the Metro can meet its targets. One way to ensure that Nexus meets the plans it published last year in its “Metro Strategy 2030” document is for the Government to provide the funding necessary to secure a new fleet. This would reduce the number of technical issues that have arisen as a result of the 40-year-old rolling stock. We need upgrades to be carried out.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) about the need to extend the Metro to Washington. That is certainly something that my constituents would support. The re-opening of the Leamside line would benefit many people across Sunderland. Another proposed extension is the new line that would run from Doxford International business park in my constituency. This would transform transport links in my area, giving local people rapid access to other parts of the city and the wider region, and it would allow local businesses to grow and create jobs through improved transport links.

The people in Houghton and Sunderland South deserve to see real improvements. The north-east continues to get a raw deal on public transport investment compared with other parts of the country. In London, when things go wrong, commuters have a wealth of options available, but when we have a problem on one part of the network in Tyne and Wear, there is a knock-on effect. In the north-east, when there is a problem with the Metro or when local buses do not run, passengers can be left stranded.

If the Government are serious about creating a so-called northern powerhouse in the north-east to drive economic growth, they must match their rhetoric with action and invest to create a truly integrated transport network. Joining up the Metro, local buses and other transport options will give passengers genuine choice as to how they travel, and options when things go wrong. It will also help commuters get to work, improve transport links for businesses and spur job creation.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes very important points about increased investment, the extension of the Tyne and Wear Metro and integrated transport. This morning I headed off to an event outside Westminster. I used the new Tottenham Court Road station, which is part of the Crossrail investment. It is a beautiful station; I think it is excellent. Crossrail represents billions of pounds of investment in London. Does my hon. Friend agree that the north-east needs a suitably ambitious investment programme for its transport infrastructure?

[Bridget Phillipson]

Of course our capital city needs investment in the rail network to ensure it can function properly, so that we can attract jobs and investment, but so does the north-east. Unfortunately, in recent weeks we have had further confirmation that the Government remain lacking in commitment when it comes to investment in transport infrastructure in the north. In my constituency, we do not benefit at all from the Tyne and Wear Metro. Many people use it, but we do not have direct links within the constituency, and for many of my constituents, the only option is bus travel. That is why I have campaigned so much to support what the combined authority has done on introducing a quality contract scheme.

If businesses are to continue to invest in the region and jobs are to be created, we need a more integrated network. We need a joined-up network so that people can be confident of getting to work on time, and so that businesses know that they can invest in an area with excellent transport links. The north-east has many excellent road networks and good links in many respects, but we are let down by public transport. The proposed Metro extension to Doxford is critical, and I hope to see the extension proposals in “Metro Strategy 2030” become a reality.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I want to hear him outline the work that he will do, through the Department, to make sure that the Metro receives the investment it needs in the short term, and how he will work with Nexus and the combined authority to deliver the long-term investment in transport infrastructure that the north-east needs, particularly the investment needed over the next 20 to 30 years to extend the Metro and offer better transport options for the region to support the businesses, job creation and growth that we all want to see.