Govia Thameslink Franchise

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The important questions that the hon. Lady raises will be answered by the Glaister review and the departmental hard review. We need to establish what responsibility GTR had for the disruption that passengers have experienced, while recognising that other actors are involved that also have a share in what has happened, including Network Rail.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

As the Opposition spokesman implied, Mr Speaker, you probably could have granted this urgent question on any day in the past four years, since the London Bridge investment work began and the timetable fell over after new year 2015. Will my hon. Friend the Minister warn the Opposition, who focus simply on the GTR franchise, that there is a complex set of overlapping responsibilities in this area that mean that a simple solution is almost certainly the wrong one? Will he and his team address the complexity of the structure that started with the privatisation of this service back in 1993? Will he do what is within his power and address the grotesque unfairnesses in some of the fare structures and significantly improve the compensation deal, so that people who access the Thameslink service get compensation as well as those who are lucky enough to go on to a Thameslink train straight away?

[Joseph Johnson]

My hon. Friend raised the issue of the fare structure. He has been a tireless campaigner on this question on behalf of his constituents in Reigate and Redhill, and we take his concerns extremely seriously. He also made the important point that we should not leap to simplistic solutions, as the Labour party has done by thinking that there is a quick-fix answer to this in nationalisation. We have to remember that there are many actors in what has gone wrong, including Network Rail, which is, of course, in the public sector.