Rail Cancellations and Service Levels

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

My hon. Friend is right. Of course, Northern is in the control of the operator of last resort, which is what would occur in the event that we took away a contract from one of the private train operators. Perhaps his point on Northern demonstrates that we can talk of stripping contracts away, but ultimately how the entire system operates needs to change; just changing the contracts does not change the passenger experience for the better. I am sorry to hear of his constituent Steve’s experiences. Such experiences have been relayed to me by many colleagues on the Government side who have just had enough. With Northern, we see that, while it has a 6% cancellation rate, the knock-on from TPE is causing many of its challenges. That is another example of how one part of the system can knock over another part.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

Another month, another urgent question to discuss how companies such as Avanti are taking not only our constituents, but all of us, for mugs. As I have mentioned to the Minister before, we keep on getting claims of progress and improvement, but we continue to reward failure. Just last week, the last direct train from Manchester to Euston was at 2.15 pm. The Beveridge report was released 80 years ago, and one of the five giant evils it identified was idleness; we are certainly seeing that with Avanti, and I would argue we saw it from the Government prior to this mess as well. When will the Department stop idling and sort out this mess?

[Huw Merriman]

The Department is certainly not idling: our officials work incredibly hard, and we hold train operators to account to ensure they do everything they can. As I mentioned, the Secretary of State was up in Leeds yesterday meeting the Mayors of Manchester, Leeds, and the other great northern cities. We are focused on not just putting the reforms in place, but seeking the agreement of all those who we require to do their part to ensure we get agreement—as I have said, it is not a unilateral process, but one that requires parties to come together. Tomorrow, I will be sitting down with the employers, trade union representatives and Network Rail to see what more we can do. There is certainly no idleness on our part.