The Government have recently made £350 million available to make accessibility improvements at a further 209 stations through the Access for All programme. We also require the industry to comply with current accessibility standards whenever it installs, replaces or renews station infrastructure.

I know, from when I met the hon. Lady virtually during lockdown, how she aspires to a wider redevelopment of Luton station. At that meeting, I promised to get Network Rail to continue its work with Luton Borough Council to finalise a solution to deliver an accessible step-free route at the station by 2024. Since then, Network Rail has presented a number of options to the council which are currently being considered.

That is slightly beyond my brief and slightly stretching the accessibility definition to which I operate, so if I may I would like to write to the hon. Lady.

The Government are investing £2 billion in active travel over the next five years. That is the biggest ever boost for cycling and walking and, as we heard in the previous question, it is welcomed widely across the House.

First, may I echo your words, Mr Speaker, and say how good it is to see my hon. Friend? She is one of the few MPs I follow on Instagram, from which I know what a keen cyclist she is—and, indeed, what she looks like in Lycra.

The Government allocated the first tranche of active travel funds to councils earlier in the summer; a bigger second tranche will follow shortly. I am quite sure that my hon. Friend will be able to persuade her county council to make the appropriate investment in Aylesford towpath, and I would be very happy to work with her to try to help that happen.

I happily agree with my hon. Friend; he is absolutely right. The canal towpath network across the country, a huge chunk of which runs through my constituency, is a wonderful place for walking and cycling. He is right to identify that we have committed a £2 billion package to active travel. We have started to get money out the door, and I very much hope that we will see schemes such as the one he mentions benefit from it so that we can all enjoy the countryside—and, indeed, other cycle routes through our cities and towns—more in the future.

The Government’s view is that the commissioning and provision of bus services should be kept separate, particularly as new partnership and franchising powers in the Bus Services Act 2017 are likely to lead to more local authority control and better influence of local bus services.

To be fair, the right hon. Gentleman’s question was, “What plans he has to enable public transport authorities to operate their own bus services,” and I gave the appropriate answer. However, as he will know, I am quite keen, as a localist, to try to do some of this, but the Government are committed to implementing the UK’s first ever long-term bus strategy, which will be accompanied by long-term funding. That strategy will focus on passenger needs and set out how the Government will work with local authorities and the private sector.

I am the Minister for active travel, and these steps I am getting now are quite productive for my step count.

The Department works closely with the bus and coach sectors to assess the ongoing impact of covid-19 on their industries.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. My Department has been in regular contact with the representatives of the coach industry, and we have been working very closely together. Officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport also engage with the Coach Tourism Association via the Tourism Industry Emergency Response Group. My Department has helped to put together the package for home to school transport—a £40 million package that is benefiting the sector. We have regular conversations with the Treasury, and it is clear that the £330 billion of Government support through loans and guarantees can reach parts of this sector, too.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for securing this important and timely debate. Indeed, I think it was through him that I was first informed about the issues addressed in his speech. It is fair to say that ever since, he has been fairly persistent in his contact with me and, indeed, Northern trains and others to build a coalition to try to get services reinstated on the line.

I will honourably take up the hon. Lady’s offer, because what is going on in Portishead is a very positive piece of news. I look forward to having conversations with her to move that forward.

We are, though, talking about Rose Hill and Hazel Grove. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove has been building a coalition to reinstate his and his constituents’ much-loved services. He has done a very good job. We know him in this place as a hard-working chairman of a Select Committee and a great parliamentarian, but now we also know that he is a hard-working, caring and great constituency MP. He has demonstrated how he is willing to work with others from other political parties to get a result for his, and their, constituents. I put on the record the work that I know has been done on these issues by the hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Stockport (Navendu Mishra). I was pleased that we all had an opportunity to discuss this matter with the managing director of Northern trains last Friday.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove knows, I was concerned to hear that the Rose Hill service had been temporarily removed until December 2020. Let me be clear that Northern took this unwelcome decision itself, to maintain operational performance by increasing services overall while it managed its recovery from covid-19. Alas, prior to the pandemic Northern already had an intensive driver-training-programme backlog, but extra delays caused by the epidemic, combined with staff self-shielding at home, have meant that Northern has had to take steps to prioritise its available-and-competent driver resource to where it is most needed.

Northern made the decision to temporarily suspend services from Rose Hill because it believed that, given the availability of other train routes, stations and public transport options for Rose Hill passengers, that would have less impact for local customers than for those of other stations and routes. Northern says that it did not take the decision lightly. It anticipated and hoped that the provision of a replacement bus service and the availability of train-travel options from other stations close by would enable Rose Hill passengers to return to work and school with minimal disruption. None the less, Northern recognises that the decision, although made with the best interests of its customers network-wide in mind, caused significant concern and frustration among passengers, local-friends groups and Members of Parliament.

As we have been slowly exiting from lockdown and seeing Britons get back to work, the railway has rightly been increasing services to meet passenger demand and expectations. This Monday, on 14 September, there will be an additional service uplift for many passengers across Northern’s network. Train operators overall have been asked to restore a timetable that maximises the opportunities for passenger travel while maintaining the excellent performance levels we see at this point in time. I assure all Members that the rapid return of a good, regular, resilient timetable on the line is our priority.

Having listened to Members’ concerns, I can inform them that Northern has reviewed its timetable and outlined improvements. But I have challenged the operator to do more—immediately—for the passengers in the Rose Hill area. Moving resource around has enabled Northern to provide some glimmer of light for passengers on this line. Northern has prioritised the running of services for its customers that will be both resilient and reliable, rather than ramping up its services quickly. That is something I insist on: we need a reliable railway if we are to have a railway at all. It is focusing its efforts on the morning and evening peak times, using customer feedback to get essential workers to where they need to be. Literally moments before this debate commenced, Northern informed me that it intends to introduce two trains in the morning, Monday to Friday, for Rose Hill Marple from 14 September. They will arrive at 8.11 am and 8.36 am respectively to ensure that Northern can meet key school demand. There will also be an afternoon service to meet school demand, arriving at Rose Hill Marple at 3.14 pm and getting to Manchester Piccadilly half an hour later.

I would like to think that the coalition my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove brought together—the voices of his residents and the voices of Members of Parliament, hopefully amplified by me as the Minister—has been listened to by Northern in the conversations we have all had with the operator.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He has played a great part in this, as have other hon. Members who have contributed today.

The impact of coronavirus means that the safety of passengers and staff must be paramount. That means the focus right now is on reliability and increased capacity to enable safer travel, with enough space for social distancing where possible. Northern runs a highly complex network and serves an enormous section of the United Kingdom. In fact, about one in five of all United Kingdom stations is a Northern station. It shares the network with nine other train operators, so the decisions it takes, such as moving trains around to run different services, affect the journeys people make all around the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove knows from our last meeting on Friday, Northern apologised for the removal of this service and committed to an internal review to learn the lessons from this issue. Northern is also reviewing options again to see how it can support affected communities until we get to the point where a full reliable service is restored.

More generally, the public sector operator will continue to work with Network Rail to make sure the railway delivers as one, with a single-minded focus on the interests of the passenger. As a part of that, the newly created cross-industry Manchester recovery task- force, co-ordinated by Network Rail, will deliver on recommendations on how best to boost capacity and performance in the short, medium and longer term.

Northern has already begun to deliver many improvements for customers, including the recruitment of more staff, a full train cleaning programme and improvements to many stations. However, there remains much more to do to provide the modern, reliable service that its passengers deserve. Northern really does hope shortly to update everybody further on its plans to transform the service, but until then it will continue to focus on getting the basics right: restoring reliability, increasing capacity and rebuilding trust in the organisation by providing services that all passengers can truly rely on.

As my hon. Friend will recognise from my announcement, which was given to me only moments before I entered the Chamber, Northern is working particularly hard to ensure the restoration of service. I will continue to put pressure on it to continue to do that in the lead-up to 14 December, when the next timetable change comes in. I think we have already proved that, working together, we can get some change on our railways, and if we continue to do so, I am sure that will continue to be the case.

I recognise that the decision by Northern has caused serious concern among passengers and the constituents of my hon. Friend and others. The coronavirus outbreak has affected the way we work and go about our daily lives, and that is no different in the rail industry. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate. I should say that, in doing my research for the debate, I came across some interesting claims by another local political party. Interestingly, considering its supposed level of concern, it is not represented here today. It claims to be running a campaign to get the service reinstated, so, thinking I might have missed something, I asked my officials to check whether any representations had been made to my Department by the local councillor concerned about reinstating the services. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no, not a thing. Not a sausage. As per usual, the Lib Dems are very good at moaning about something and happy to make a gripe fester, but in this case they were not interested enough to make representations to the Department that might have been able to help. Perhaps the collection of data in a campaign was more important to them than getting a result.

Fortunately, the people of Hazel Grove have my hon. Friend representing them, and from the very moment he heard about this issue, he made contact with me. Indeed, he did so before I found out about it formally. He has been forcefully and proactively asking the right questions of the right people to get the right results for the people he represents. He is a Member of a party in a Government who are going to level up the economic opportunities across our great nation. The Government understand the importance that communities across the country place on regular train services and the social and economic benefits that these can unlock for local economies.

I hope that the measures being introduced by Northern that I have announced will go some way to assure passengers relying on the Rose Hill Marple services as we come out of the coronavirus outbreak that we are looking to improve that service greatly. Hopefully they will also be pleased with the massive multi-million pound investment in new rolling stock, which I very much hope will be serving this route in the coming months. I hope that that goes some way towards answering my hon. Friend’s question. There is more work to do, but a lot of work has been done by the hon. Members present in the House today to restore some services on the line, and I thank my hon. Friend for all his help in doing that.

Question put and agreed to.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I would like to start by thanking everyone who has contributed and by extending further congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) on securing this debate on the economic benefits of a southern rail link to Heathrow airport. I also congratulate all others who have contributed, including my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), who is unrelenting in her passion for her town and its core industry, as I think she will find we are in the rail industry, too.

The question my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford asked about the economics of a southern Heathrow rail link is, as she outlined, one that my Department has been considering for some time. Our Heathrow rail access programme was established in December 2016, with the aim of providing a step change in the accessibility of Britain’s busiest airport.

Unless travelling from central London, the current public transport offering to Heathrow is poor. Many people choose to use their own cars instead, leading to the traffic congestion that my hon. Friend outlined. Improving transport links to the airport would open up access for many regions of the United Kingdom, and a southern access scheme would open up new markets across the south-west of London and, indeed, the south-east of the United Kingdom, providing an attractive alternative to the heavily congested road network.

Although demand for air travel has fallen dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic, we are supporting and want to see the recovery of the aviation industry. Thus we recognise the importance of major schemes such as this in encouraging people back to air travel, as well as in supporting passengers as they return.

The scheme my hon. Friend mentions would be part of the Government’s plan to build back better, build back greener and build back faster. We want to rebuild Britain and fuel the economic recovery across the United Kingdom. As she knows, this Government have committed to building a Britain with world-class infrastructure and have established Project Speed, ensuring that we are building the right things better and faster than before. Project Speed is an ideal method of dealing with some of the delays with the southern link.

The Heathrow rail access programme comprises two major schemes: the western rail link to Heathrow, serving Reading to London Paddington via a new tunnel to Heathrow, is the other one. I, too, am pleased to see the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) in his place. Not only does he give proper scrutiny to everything I try to do in the Department; he is also passionate about making sure that the western rail link to Heathrow actually comes about and does what it says on the tin for his constituents and others. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, I am pleased to see him in this debate.

The southern access link is at a much earlier stage of development than the western rail link project. It is intended to link terminal 5 directly to the south-west of London, potentially as far out as Surrey and Hampshire. I know that that is welcomed not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Guilford but by a whole host of people across Surrey.

As I hope I will outline, this project is moving forward at a decent pace, but, on extra scrutiny from this place, there will be barriers. There will be people who rightly want to scrutinise any decisions made on this and I think that would be a valuable suggestion to take forward, as the project moves forward.

It is an important project. It is currently led by my Department. It is a pathfinder project, as my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford said, seeking to harness all innovative forms of delivery and technology from the private sector to deliver a better service for passengers and ensure better value for money for the taxpayer.

As my hon. Friend said, only about 21% of all passengers travelling to Heathrow airport from the south use public transport instead of private road vehicles, and for areas such as Surrey and Hampshire, and Guildford especially, I am told that the figure is lower still, so we know that a market exists for this. In contrast, almost half of passengers and airport staff travelling to Heathrow airport from London and to the east of the airport do so by public transport.

Good progress is being made. Following the publication of the strategic objectives in November last year, my officials are currently finalising the pre-instituting outline business case—my Department loves a bit of jargon—to outline the case for change and the need for a scheme such as this, and to set out practically how the scheme could and should be taken forward. They continue to work closely with commercial advisers to develop commercial and financial models, with the intention of working alongside the private sector to fund, finance and deliver this scheme.

The scheme is in its infancy and as yet no route or mode has been selected, and there is also the possibility of more than one type of intervention to boost transport options. It can, however, be assumed that heavy rail will play a major part in the southern access to Heathrow.

It is clear that there is a strong case for improving transport links in the region, as I have described, and not just for airport passengers and employees, but for those who live in the wider area and would benefit from the roads being freer around Heathrow and, indeed, the extra public transport options this would bring. So while there are many different options for the scheme, we know the potential benefits are clear. First and foremost, it encourages people from their vehicles on to public transport, reducing congestion. We know this can be achieved through the creation of new and accessible high-frequency, reliable transport links with the interchanges and step-free access this scheme would bring. It also helps us to reduce the environmental impact of aviation and the associated carbon emissions, an important step on the path to net zero, and not only by providing new environmentally friendly journey options but also by utilising sustainable construction methods and materials. It will take into account any key environmental undertakings in that area being developed in collaboration with the relevant local authorities and local enterprise partnerships.

Obviously, this should—this could—help to connect communities, boost economic growth and encourage regeneration. It could provide—it would provide—greater connectivity and journey choices in south-west London, Surrey, and Hampshire to central London and help us with capacity across the south-west rail network as well. It would seek to employ the local workforce and source its apprentices locally, and look to improve trade links locally, nationally and internationally. And not just through passenger trains, because freight is also an important part of this equation, providing a much-needed boost and connection for the local and national economies.

As I said, this scheme is very much in its infancy and there is still much to be developed, but the work carried out to date and the work under way demonstrate that, if we get this right, it will be a really positive step towards the development of transport in the south of the UK and alleviating many of the pressures outlined in this debate, working to meet the needs of so many passengers and to improve the prospects of so many locally and nationally, across the whole of the UK, who travel around that part of our country.

A scheme such as this does not come without challenges. To ensure the safety of passengers, road users and pedestrians, we will not want to increase the usage of level crossings; level crossings are a bind for any rail Minister who has ever stood at this Dispatch Box. The new platforms at terminal 5 are underground, so it will be necessary to excavate tunnels, and the scheme will be required to integrate with new and existing infrastructure, both at terminal 5 and on the south-west main line—to name but a couple of the challenges.

There is, however, already strong market interest from the private sector. Several of the groups interested have developed scheme proposals to varying degrees. The Government tested market appetite in late 2018 and, although many organisations showed interest in developing and delivering a southern scheme, none was able to progress without some form of Government support. So my officials continue to work closely with these scheme promoters, operators, construction companies and capital investors, along with the wider private sector, to harvest the innovation and insight that they can provide, and that we can learn from to build a process for securing the best, and the very best value, scheme possible. The Department will continue to develop the southern access to Heathrow scheme, working alongside Network Rail and Heathrow Airport to integrate it with the western rail link and other major transport projects, ensuring the most efficient design and delivery of the whole scheme.

I am very aware of the strong benefits a southern access to Heathrow scheme will provide, not only to the passengers and employees of Heathrow airport, but to the people living in the surroundings of south-west London, Surrey, Hampshire and beyond. I look forward to working with all who are interested in developing this scheme and I am keen to move forward at pace.

I thank everybody who has taken part in this debate for emphasising the importance of this scheme and of aviation to our country. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford on securing the debate on the economic benefits of the scheme. I wish her, you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all who work in the House a peaceful and healthy summer recess.

Question put and agreed to.

What do you say after that? I did two years of Latin at secondary school and I hated every second of it—I am sorry Mr Patterson. I just feel sorry for the Hansard transcribers at this point.

It has been a pleasure to listen to this debate on plans to build a railway station at Gamesley, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) for securing it. I also thank the other Members who have made contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) never misses an opportunity to remind me that other bids for Government spending on railways are available. My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) is an expert in rail matters. I am not sure whether he managed eventually to get Gamesley into his contribution, but he proved that he knows what he is talking about. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) has confused me no end with what he said, but he made the point that my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak does bang on about Gamesley station a lot. Before he was elected the proposal for a station at Gamesley had not been mentioned in Parliament since 1968, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton said, since he came here only a few months ago it has been mentioned in eight debates. Gamesley is definitely on the levelling up agenda, at least for contributions in the Chamber and, we hope, for development economically as well.

Hon. Members may be aware that I was an MEP for 10 years—this is like Alcoholics Anonymous and we can admit to things in this Chamber—and I represented High Peak, in the glorious region of the East Midlands, and I have been to Gamesley. So not only does the rail Minister know what he is talking about when it comes to stations, but I know exactly the location that my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak is talking about. As Members will be aware, this Government are investing record levels in rail funding to deliver the biggest rail modernisation programme for more than a century. We are spending £48 billion over what in the industry lingo we call “control period 6”, which runs from 2019 to 2024, to improve rail services for passengers and freight customers, while maintaining current high levels of safety and reliability.

I was pleased to hear that my hon. Friend had supported a bid to the new stations fund to build a station at Gamesley. As I understand it, and as he has mentioned to me on a number of occasions, the people of Gamesley have waited a long time to have a train station. As Members will know, we launched another—£20 million—round of funding for the new stations fund, to open new train stations across the country, in a fresh boost for towns that lost their rail lines in the Beeching closures. Applications for the fund closed on 5 June, and we hope to announce the successful applications in the autumn. The fund was very over-subscribed because, as Members can tell from the contributions in tonight’s debate, there are lots of places that need to be connected to our rail network, having lost their connections in the past.

My hon. Friend will recall that earlier this year the Secretary of State invited Members, local authorities and community groups from across England and Wales to come forward with proposals on how they could use funding to reinstate axed local services, in an initiative called “Restoring Your Railway”, reversing the Beeching cuts. Thanks to the Government’s £500 million fund, long isolated communities across the country will benefit from better rail connections that will level up regional economies, boost access to jobs and education, and kick-start the restoration of lines closed more than 50 years ago. A sum of £300,000 has been committed to an ideas fund to kick-start the process and encourage innovative ideas that would then be considered for future funding. I suggest to my hon. Friend that this agenda fits very nicely with what he is trying to achieve for his constituents.

I have taken note of the fact that the Transport for Greater Manchester strategy delivery plan for 2020 to 2025 outlines Gamesley as a potential location for a new station. The Transport for Greater Manchester new rail and Metrolink study in 2018, which was commissioned in conjunction with authorities including Derbyshire County Council, identified that further work, including a strategic outline business case, should be produced with regard to Gamesley station. I really do think that we are getting on the right track in terms of my hon. Friend’s plans.

Northern trains has written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to provide assurances that it will provide full support to all further work commissioned by Transport for Greater Manchester and Derbyshire County Council and to the development of the business case. With my hon. Friend’s cajoling, a number of key factors have been lined up to get Gamesley station firmly in front of planners.

I would therefore like to reassure my hon. Friend and other Members who took part in the debate that the Government are committed to investing billions of pounds to improve rail services for passengers and freight customers, while maintaining the current high levels of safety and reliability. We are committed to levelling up the country and to build, build, build. That is why we launched the new stations fund to open up new train stations across the country, providing a fresh boost for towns that lost their rail lines in the Beeching closures. I really do hope that the people of Gamesley will be able to benefit from this initiative.

There is some way to go down this route before winners are selected, but the Government are genuinely committed to levelling up opportunity across the United Kingdom, and my hon. Friend has made an extremely powerful case for Gamesley in his constituency.

Question put and agreed to.

The rail industry will deliver an uplift in services on Monday 6 July to respond to an increase in post-4 July demand. Service levels will be close to 85% of pre-covid levels.

I had already noted that my hon. Friend has a passion for rail as she has sponsored a bid to reinstate a railways fund for the “Stourbridge Dasher,” which I look forward to examining shortly. Yes, the Government are investing £48 billion in our railways in the period 2019 to 2024—that figure does not include HS2—with the intention to use that money to deliver a reliable rail service that helps to level up our country.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench. We have had a conversation already and I look forward to working with him. Our railways are a very important part of bringing our nation’s economy back. It is quite straightforward: we will have a reliable train service that will be one of the cleanest on the planet. We want to get customers back when they are able to travel, given the appropriate guidance. Working together, I think we can do that.

The Government remain committed to delivering inclusive transport for all passengers. My officials and I meet regularly with transport providers and make it clear that they must consider the needs of all passengers as transport restarts. My most recent meeting involving a sight loss charity was last Friday.

I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent question. She is absolutely right in everything she says. I have been working with a whole range of accessibility groups and disability charities to try to make sure that we get our messaging right, because we want to welcome everyone back to our rail system eventually and we want it to be the most accessible in the world. We have a long way to go, but we are working with those groups to deliver that service as best we can.

The Government have simplified their cycle to work scheme guidance to help employers to access e-bikes at a discount.

My hon. Friend is right to say that we need to capitalise on the unprecedented growth in active travel that we have seen recently, especially on bicycles and e-bicycles. He is completely correct about e-scooters; these trials will only include rental scooters. This will allow them to take place in a controlled manner while we assess the safety and other impacts. A wide range of e-scooters are available, building to different standards. I would like to think that the trials will demonstrate how useful they are in the mix for active travel.

The Government have provided guidance to transport operators and the public so that they can travel safely. We have made it mandatory for passengers to wear face coverings on public transport in England and, pleasingly, compliance is growing every day.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but I think he is mixing up the reaction to the obvious pressures we have had because of the pandemic with our plans for the future. Some of the plans that he outlined are delayed, yes, but that is because people were not able to work safely during the pandemic. The train line that he mentioned is no longer serving Bletchley because nobody was using it. These services will all return and they will be reliable and cleaner than ever before.

We have devolved significant power and funding to metro mayors, including to the metro mayor of Manchester, to ensure that he can deliver the transport schemes needed to unlock housing and growth, so that Greater Manchester’s economy can thrive as the heart of the northern powerhouse. The bypass is one scheme for the Mayor to consider prioritising and thereby, we hope, deliver. We will happily work with him to ensure that conversation continues at pace.

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Actually, £504,000 has been provided to Sheffield City Region Combined Authority to date through the covid-19 bus service support grant. In addition, we are spending a huge amount of money—£3 billion—on a bus strategy going forward. I would like to think we can work together to deliver the service that her constituents require.

The Government recognise the impact on many local authorities that the hon. Gentleman has outlined. We have announced a vast package of support for local authorities, and we are consulting across government on the issues that he has raised today.

The Government have a massive agenda of levelling up this country and providing transport infrastructure that is fit for years to come. We are doing that, and we are investing in it. We look forward to supporting my hon. Friend in filling potholes in her constituency, too.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) for securing this fantastic debate on Dronfield station to recognise and commemorate its 150th anniversary. His speech was a beautiful historical recital of Dronfield’s intermittent relationship with our railways. I hope that it will have a very strong relationship with our railways going forward.

I am slightly concerned because this is the fourth Adjournment debate that I have done without the presence of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am not sure whether even having an Adjournment debate without his presence is in order.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have just received a text from him, actually; he has got a strong relationship with Dronfield station and wishes it a happy birthday.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire knows, I am a former Member of the European Parliament, and I represented his constituency in the east midlands for a decade, so I know the town pretty well. I have canvassed there—possibly not quite as successfully as he did in recent elections, but I do know it pretty well. I was going through my diaries to see whether I ever did catch a train from the station. I cannot say I ever have, but I very much look forward to having the opportunity of doing so at some point in the future.

My hon. Friend knows that this is a huge milestone for the town of Dronfield. I should start by congratulating him on his support of the Friends of Dronfield Station, and asking him to thank them on behalf of the Department for Transport for everything they do to improve and love their station and its services. I am sure that those who visit the medieval St John’s parish church or Dronfield Hall Barn appreciate the stunning flowers and hanging baskets that adorn the station and how clean it is kept. Until the outbreak of this terrible virus, it was quite possibly one of the cleanest stations on our rail network.

My hon. Friend will know that the Government are investing record levels in rail funding to deliver the biggest rail modernisation programme for over a century. In fact, we are spending £48 billion over what we call control period 6—that is the slightly Soviet terminology for a five-year period of rail spending—which runs from last year to 2024, to improve rail services for passengers and freight customers while maintaining current high levels of safety and reliability.

I was extremely pleased that my hon. Friend mentioned that he had supported a bid to the Restoring your Railway fund to reopen the Sheffield to Chesterfield via Barrow Hill line, which includes Dronfield station. As hon. Members on both sides of the House will know, earlier this year the Secretary of State for Transport invited Members, local authorities and community groups across England to come forward with proposals for how they could reinstate axed local services. Thanks to the Government’s £500 million fund, long-isolated communities across the country will benefit from better rail connections that will level up regional economies, boost access to jobs and education, and kick-start the restoration of lines closed more than 50 years ago. So far, we have committed a sum of £300,000 to an ideas fund to kick-start the process to encourage innovative ideas that will be considered for future funding. We are now working with successful bidders, as my hon. Friend said, to agree the scope of the work. We will provide guidance to help each scheme to get to a point where they can develop a full business case to become part of what we nattily call the rail network enhancements portfolio—the big chunk of money that I mentioned earlier.

I know that my hon. Friend is interested in what goes on around his area to help to connect the town of Dronfield and others, and that he is well aware of what is going on in the Hope Valley capacity scheme. That scheme is an important part of the Great North Rail project to transform journeys between the northern powerhouse cities of Manchester and Sheffield by removing a bottleneck in the Hope Valley line. I am pretty sure that he will be pleased to know that we are continuing to look at ways to speed up this work, and I am quite sure that, actually, we might hear quite a lot from the Prime Minister tomorrow about how we are going to speed up all sorts of things when it comes to big chunks of infrastructure in our country.

For example, on this particular line, Network Rail is currently undertaking early signalling design in parallel to the tendering process. This element of the design is very time-consuming and is therefore a significant driver of overall timescales, and we are trying to speed it up. I am pleased to say that this is proceeding to programme, despite challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic. It is also liaising with train and freight operating companies to secure possessions, where we take control of the whole track and close it down for a period of time, so we can do proper work and agree any changes to the network that may be required during construction. These activities are normally decided once the contract to deliver the scheme has been let, so we are beginning to work out how to improve the network.

I shall turn now to the midland main line upgrade. As Members know, we are investing huge sums of money in the midland main line, which was completed in 1870. It will enable improved long-distance passenger services between Sheffield, Nottingham and London, as well as improved services between Corby, Kettering and London. There will be more seats, faster inter-city journeys, and new fast and efficient inter-city and express trains. For long-distance journeys, we will reduce journey times by up to 20 minutes in the peak and a brand new fleet of bi-mode trains will be introduced. For journeys from Corby through Luton into London, including from Wellingborough, passengers will benefit from a new and dedicated electric service. From 2021, the trains will be fast—like today, but longer and with more seats. This means more comfortable journeys for long-distance and commuting passengers at the busiest times of the day. These measures will provide over 50% more seats into London in the peak, once the upgrade is complete.

My hon. Friend mentioned a concern to me previously about reducing the direct calls at Dronfield in the existing East Midlands rail service to Manchester and Liverpool. I can assure him, having checked, that I do not know of any such proposals and my officials do not either, so I would like to think that they are safe, at least for the time being.

This has been a celebration of a town and its relationship with the railway. My hon. Friend mentioned the successful campaign led by Dr Peter Hayward and Natascha Engel, the former MP for the area. I know how much they worked together to ensure that the reintroduced Nottingham to Leeds service did actually stop in Dronfield.

My hon. Friend also talked about the success of this railway. Railways are very much like “Field of Dreams” moments with Kevin Costner, because when you build it, people do come. They really do use their service, and they fall in love with it. Sometimes it is a love-hate relationship, but they absolutely do love it—because when it disappears, as it had done for a period of time, my word, do we, as politicians, hear about it. As he mentioned, there were just 32,000 people using trains from Dronfield in 2006, going up to a quarter of a million in 2018. It is a fantastic success story.

I am quite sure that with my hon. Friend at the helm and with the amazingly strong campaign by Friends of Dronfield Station, the station has a fantastically bright future in our railways. Dronfield station can feel tremendous pride in this magnificent milestone and has a tremendous amount to look forward to.

Question put and agreed to.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on securing this debate on transport in his constituency, and on his enlightening, constructive and extremely wide-ranging speech this evening. As a new Member of Parliament, he has a long list of things that he wants to achieve for his constituents. I very much hope to spend some time guiding him down the right routes this evening, because I think he can achieve a number of his ambitions over his hopefully very long tenure in the seat.

I listened very carefully to my hon. Friend’s representations about transport services in Carshalton and Wallington and I will try to address most of them. He represents a fantastic constituency in a borough where I spent my formative political years campaigning. I have very fond memories of those campaigns across the constituencies of my hon. Friend and his neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). Some of my earliest political friendships were formed in and around my hon. Friend’s constituency: Richard and Lesley Barber; Peter Geiringer, a former councillor—

A current councillor. He has been around a fair bit in his time, campaigning on these sorts of issues. It is really good to be able to have this joyous trip down memory lane and address the content of my hon. Friend’s excellent speech.

My hon. Friend talked about the tramlink extension that he would like to see—the Sutton link. As he said, transport in London is devolved to the Mayor of London and delivered by Transport for London, so this matter is not actually within my portfolio. However, my hon. Friend has registered the importance of that extension to his constituents and his very, very strong ambitions in this area. He also talked about various bus routes. Some are currently paused because of the covid crisis, but fortunately many are still going. I know that TfL is listening to this debate tonight and I will ensure that they reply directly to the points he made that are within its auspices.

On rail—as the rail Minister, I can actually make some fairly solid suggestions—I can inform my hon. Friend that the Government’s priority is for the country’s trains to run on time and to drive growth across the country by giving local leaders a greater say in the running of their railway. That is why we are investing record levels in rail funding—the biggest rail modernisation programme for over a century. In fact, we are spending £48 billion over what is called, in the jargon, control period 6, which runs from 2019 to 2024, to improve rail services for passengers and freight customers, while maintaining current high levels of safety and improving reliability.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Brighton main line upgrade programme—or, as we like to call it in the trade, the BMUP. My Department and I recognise the need to upgrade reliability, because we need to improve capacity on the line. It faces major performance challenges due to operational bottlenecks that currently prohibit additional capacity. In view of that, we have now committed over £50 million to improve the services on Brighton main line and it is connecting lines, which, if the upgrade scheme goes ahead, will benefit commuters in the region, including my hon. Friend’s constituents. Network Rail is currently working on the development of the Brighton main line upgrade programme, in which the main element would be a rebuild of the main line itself through central Croydon, comprising additional tracks, platforms and flyovers to deconflict train movements. A small number of supporting schemes elsewhere on the route are also included in the programme, one of which, the Wallington 12-car turnback, is very important to my hon. Friend. That element of the programme is to assist with the construction staging of Croydon, to facilitate a more frequent service between West Croydon and Wallington in his constituency, to improve performance by decongesting the constrained West Croydon track layout, and to aid Overground growth.

Network Rail is undertaking design work as well as land acquisition and extensive engagement on the Brighton main line upgrade programme, as my hon. Friend mentioned, and his constituents should absolutely get involved in the ongoing consultations. The outline business case is due with the Department next month, and in the subsequent weeks and months a decision will be made on whether to progress and fund the next stage of the rail network enhancements pipeline to the final business case stage—jargon for a very important gateway to investment.

The Department is currently considering whether Wallington, alongside some smaller Brighton main line upgrade programme schemes, should become independent of the Brighton main line upgrade programme in order to complete enabling work quickly. Should that be funded, the work in Wallington is scheduled to be delivered in the next three years.

My hon. Friend talked about Govia Thameslink Railway. In December 2018, the Department announced that GTR would contribute £15 million towards tangible improvements for passengers in reaction to the service disruption following the May 2018 timetable changes, which many hundreds of his constituents will have written to a former Rail Minister to complain about. GTR managed the engagement of passenger groups and stakeholders to determine what improvement schemes the programme would fund. The three-month stakeholder engagement programme ended on 31 July last year, and more than 4,000 responses were received to the surveys.

From that, funding for the following shortlisted schemes will be delivered in my hon. Friend’s constituency. At Carshalton Beeches, there will be toilet and waiting room refurbishments and cycle parking facilities—extremely important cycle parking facilities; I am also the Minister with responsibility for cycling. In Carshalton, there will be a new toilet floor, repainting of the waiting rooms, additional platform seating, cycle parking facilities —he might spot a theme—landscaping and new signage. At Hackbridge, there will be additional platform seating, a canopy over the ticket vending machine—that is actually unbelievably important for many of his constituents—and a new platform waiting shelter and signage. At Wallington, there will be a new platform waiting shelter and additional platform seating.

We expect the work on those schemes to commence in the next couple of months. Those are all stations I used when I lived in and around this area of London. I am not sure they have had much of a refresh since I moved out, so I am pleased that they are getting one now.

My hon. Friend will also be pleased to hear that GTR’s operational performance has improved in the past 12 months. Its current public performance measure—the percentage of trains that arrive within five minutes of their scheduled time—has improved by two percentage points to 85.6%, and its on-time performance has also improved. Performance has also improved more specifically in my hon. Friend’s constituency. These figures take into account Southern and Thameslink services. During the rail periods in the current pandemic, PPMs have improved even further; they are running at or around 96%, in delivery of a service that has allowed key workers to get to where they need to be—delivered to those places, actually, by key workers in the rail industry—in the last 12 or 13 weeks.

A further theme of my hon. Friend’s speech was that of accessibility. Delivering a transport system that is truly accessible to all is of huge importance to the Government, and of personal importance to me. An accessible transport network is central to the Government’s wider ambition to build a society that works for all. Many stations date from a time when the needs of disabled customers were simply not considered, and the situation at Carshalton Beeches that my hon. Friend describes is unfortunately far from unique. As he knows, the station was not selected for the last round of access for all funding. That was chiefly because the programme was amazingly heavily oversubscribed and there were many other nominated stations within the London area with higher footfall. I know that that was, and is, disappointing to my hon. Friend, who has actively lobbied me on many occasions about this. I hope he continues to do so in the future, but I would like to assure him that I take improving access seriously.

In 2018, the Government published an inclusive transport strategy setting out what we were doing to improve access across all transport modes, and we will continue to seek further opportunities and funding to make more improvements. Where we can, I am pushing my Department to do more, and more quickly. In addition, wherever infrastructure work is undertaken at a station by the industry, it must also comply with the relevant accessibility standards. My hon. Friend might therefore wish to contact Network Rail—I know that he already has, but it might be worth a further conversation—to see if any work is planned that might trigger these requirements. In the meantime, if a person cannot use the station, they can book alternative transport, which the industry is obliged to provide at no additional cost.

I shall conclude by thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate. As I am sure he appreciates, rail plays a very important part in people’s lives across the country, and especially in his constituency. As I say, I used to commute from stations around there in my time. Today, he has brought up a huge, wide, diverse range of issues. I want to reassure the House that the Government are investing record levels in rail funding, in buses, in cycling and in a whole host of other areas including pothole filling, in order to deliver the best transport infrastructure we possibly can, and the biggest rail modernisation programme for over a century. As I mentioned earlier, we have committed more than £50 million to improving services on the Brighton main line and its connecting lines. That is an upgrade that will absolutely improve the lot of commuters across the region, including those in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

Question put and agreed to.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) for securing the debate. Having recently had a number of meetings with him about his constituents’ concerns about their rail service, I am pleased that this debate is about the roads. I am quite sure that, following his speech, members and officers of Essex County Council will take a much more pragmatic and hands-on approach to the issues he has raised.

I also congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing a private Member’s Bill—it is a lottery that I have won previously—and on the thoughts, views and ideas that he is clearly giving towards how the impact of roadworks on congestion can be reduced. I promise that my Department will work with him constructively on his Bill, and I look forward to seeing a draft in due course.

We all use our highways to travel every day, and how we manage them has a direct impact on everyone’s lives. Congestion, with all its causes, and the condition of our roads are recurring themes that the Government hear about regularly, so it is a clear focus of attention for my colleagues in the Department for Transport. That focus is only going to become more important as, over the coming years, the number of roadworks will increase as a result of new housing developments and in order to deliver the Government’s commitment that full-fibre and gigabit broadband will be available for every home and business across the UK as soon as possible. That will involve digging up a lot of roads.

We all want out road network to be improved, and my right hon. Friend will be pleased to have heard the commitment in Wednesday’s Budget that £2.5 billion will be available to fix potholes and to resurface roads in England over the next five years. We know that there will continue to be roadworks, but that does not mean that they should last any longer than is needed. We all want the services provided by utility companies, and we want them to maintain and improve their infrastructure, but we also know that there are over 2 million roadworks taking place in England each year, and that these result in about £4 billion of congestion costs. That is a nut that it is worth trying to crack.

There is a great deal of scope for works to be planned, managed and co-ordinated more effectively, and for the public to be told about when works are happening and warned about the impact they might have on their journeys. That is why the Government have taken a number of actions in recent years. We have invested over £10 million in the new street manager digital service, which will transform the planning, management and communication of roadworks. This new service will be used by all local authorities and utility companies from 1 April this year. From July we plan to publish open data on live and planned works for technology and sat-nav companies and app developers to develop products for road users so that they, in turn, can plan their journeys more effectively.

Street Manager will deliver many benefits, including data that can be used to monitor performance. It will support greater co-ordination, forward planning and more joint works. All local authorities, utility companies and their contractors will be able to have a single view of the street and visibility of the whole network, to plan and co-ordinate works for the benefit of road users. We also have a commitment to continue improving the service to ensure that it continues to meet users’ needs.

Street works permit schemes have been available for local authorities to operate since 2007. Those have proved to be a very effective way of managing and co-ordinating works. Authorities that operate schemes have also seen that road user satisfaction is much improved. We have strongly encouraged all authorities to introduce schemes, and almost every authority now has a scheme in place. Essex County Council has operated a scheme since 2015. We will continue to ensure that all authorities have schemes in place, and as a result, there will be greater consistency for the industry and benefits for all road users.

We will shortly publish an updated technical specification for reinstatements, which will improve quality and performance. Reinstatements are needed after works have been completed. That update will be the first since 2010, and it will support and allow greater innovation and improve quality and performance.

We announced in 2019 that local authorities can introduce lane rental schemes, which allow authorities to charge utilities up to £2,500 per day for works on the busiest roads at the busiest times. That is normally around 5% of the authority’s network. Charges encourage companies to move the location of their works, carry them out at less busy times, complete them as soon as possible or carry out joint works, which can attract discounts or charges that can be waived. Any surplus revenue can be spent by the authority on ways of reducing the impact of works on congestion. Two schemes are operating at the moment in Kent and on Transport for London’s network. Authorities that want to set up schemes can bid to the Secretary of State for approval, and we have issued bidding guidance on how they can do that.

We will continue our work and plan to look at other aspects of how to regulate roadworks, to see whether further improvements to those schemes can be made. For example, works start and stop notices at weekends, which are needed to give real-time updates to road users, do not need to be sent until 10 am the following Monday, and overrun charges do not currently apply at weekends. An amendment to legislation following a period of consultation, including within Government, would be needed to resolve that—indeed, my right hon. Friend might choose to look at that in his private Member’s Bill. The Department is amazingly sympathetic to the issue and will consider that, as well as other specific problems.

Private Members’ Bills on a Friday—some people think they are not worth a hoot, but we can achieve some great things.

On the issue of fines and penalties, a range of criminal penalties are already in place, covering, for example, safety and compliance with permits. Local authorities can also issue overrun charges of up to £10,000 per day for works that are not completed in time. I know that Essex County Council is using those powers. In the last year, 513 charges were issued for overrunning works, imposing charges of just under £500,000. We are not convinced of the need to raise those limits any further, but the powers do exist.

I understand that the situation in my right hon. Friend’s constituency mirrors the experience of many others, but I also understand that Essex County Council is using the powers available to it and that it is working with developers and utility companies to co-ordinate works and ensure that they are completed as soon as possible or that work is done during off-peak times or school holidays, to minimise the impact on local road users.

To conclude, I thank my right hon. Friend for the way he has gone about this debate, for his positive contribution —as positive as it can be in the circumstances— and for quite rightly being demanding on behalf of his constituents. I hope and expect that we will all see improvements in the way that works are planned and managed as a result of Street Manager, greater use of permit schemes and the other reforms we are taking forward, and perhaps his private Member’s Bill will add to that.

Question put and agreed to.

Fares are crucial to funding railway operations and our upgrade programme. We have frozen regulated rail fares in line with inflation for the seventh year running.

The hon. Gentleman would probably like to know that 98p of every £1 paid in fares goes back into the railways, which allows investment in all the areas where he would like to see it, including accessibility for his constituents.

I am sure the hon. Lady will look forward, as I do, to the issuing of the Williams review, which answers some of the questions she raised, but she should be careful what she wishes for because, today, using a single fare—£7, I believe it is—to go from London to Coventry, a host of Conservative Members are going to campaign in her hyper-marginal seat, at very good value for money.

It is a fair question. The answer is that Richard George, the head of the operator of last resort, is working closely with the unions and will continue to do so, because the workforce is all important to the delivery of a reliable service for passengers.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his correspondence and the way that he has engaged with my Department over this issue. He has been representing his constituents on this matter very well. As he knows, a request for a proposal has been issued to the south-west franchise owners, FirstGroup and MTR, and to the operator of last resort. Parliament will be kept informed of those developments. It is all about trying to improve the service for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.

I completely get where the hon. Gentleman is coming from, but he should understand that taxpayers already subsidise the rail network by more than £4 billion a year, meaning that 54% of our transport budget is spent on the 2% of journeys that the railways account for. He mentions Germany, which has cut rail fares, but to do that Germany cut the VAT on rail fares from 19% to 7%; he might like to know that we charge no VAT on rail fares in this country.

We are going to change the franchise model—the Williams review is absolutely going to change how our franchise model operates—but my hon. Friend will have to wait a bit longer to see how that is going to happen. We have strong views on the direction of travel and look forward to informing the House shortly.

My hon. Friend wisely highlights a proposal that will be considered among the bids for the Restoring Your Railway fund. I would be delighted to meet him to talk about it.

The Secretary of State and I met the TransPennine leadership not so long ago to put the very points that my right hon. Friend has just made. As he knows, there has been quite a big change at the head of that franchise. We are working with the new management to ensure that the new trains operate correctly and that the service his constituents would like is actually delivered for them.

It is absolutely true that there are huge numbers of delays and cancellations on our railway on a daily basis. That completely disrupts people going to work and kids going to school, and it also affects students and people just socialising. Different plans are being mooted. The Williams review will have a fuller plan, on which I will be able to communicate with my hon. Friend.

Again, the hon. Lady raises valid points on behalf of her constituents. I or perhaps another appropriate member of the ministerial team will be delighted to do that.

Keith Williams has been tasked by the Government with leading a root and branch review into the rail industry, and he has confirmed that he will recommend scrapping the current franchising system. Full details will be set out in the White Paper which, all being well, will be published before summer.