Rail Strikes

David Mundell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

I want to bring the debate back to passengers and rail users, because my constituents do not just face the strikes next week; they have faced months of industrial action by the RMT affecting the TransPennine network.

We have seen weekend services completely and utterly disrupted. We have seen regular cancellations of weekday services because of the issues around rest day working and working to rule on that issue. We have the conductor dispute, which means that there is essentially no reliable Sunday service. As someone who has worked for 20 years to improve services at Lockerbie station and to encourage people to get on the railways, I can say that these issues undermine confidence in the railways. Lockerbie station is the hub for the rural south of Scotland. There are, particularly for journeys to Edinburgh—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

No, I will not, because the hon. Gentleman would be well advised to learn about the south of Scotland and services that connect Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom.

We have faced the undermining of confidence in rail travel, but we have also seen—this has not been touched on enough in this debate—disruption to individuals. Constituents of mine travel to hospital appointments on these services. They sometimes have to travel 40 miles to get to the station, only to find that the train has been cancelled at the last minute and they cannot get to a cancer appointment in Edinburgh. They cannot carry out the normal activities that people would want in terms of shopping and leisure, and they cannot carry out their work, and it is totally and utterly unacceptable, and it has gone on for months. The strike and the industrial action have not brought the issue to a resolution; they have simply affected adversely all those people who want to use rail services, and it is not acceptable.

I am not saying that TransPennine and others are not without blame in this. One of my constituents’ complaints, which I have raised with the Rail Minister, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), is that through something like Traveline, people can actually buy a ticket for a train that has been cancelled, and that cannot be right. It cannot benefit anyone to undermine confidence in rail services. I have worked hard to ensure that my constituents have a full and comprehensive timetable that allows travel not only from Edinburgh and Glasgow, but importantly into the rest of the United Kingdom, and that is being completely and utterly disrupted and undermined.

I travelled to London by train last Monday, because something important was happening in Parliament, only to find that two cancelled trains had to be combined with the Avanti service that was coming to London. The guard threatened to cancel that train too, because there were too many people on it for health and safety. Passengers who wanted to get on the service at Penrith were refused. That is not the way that our rail services should be operating, and it is not the way that the unions, which should clearly want our rail services to not just continue but expand and grow, should support those services.

To conclude, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) did not mention it, but ScotRail does not run all rail services in Scotland; there are other services that connect Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom. Let us not have such a blinkered approach from the Scottish Government that merely focuses on rail services within Scotland. People in Scotland want to travel across the whole United Kingdom.

[Several hon. Members rose—]