Northern Rail Services: Greater Manchester

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Sir David Crausby) on his comprehensive and historical analysis of the failings of the transport network, and particularly of Northern rail in its delivery of services to so many of our constituents.

I will focus specifically on the recent timetable changes and how they came about, and what I think the Government should have done to address these problems before they actually happened. I also have some specific questions about compensation and contingency arrangements. I was promised by the Secretary of State that things would improve by today, but I am afraid that the information I have so far is that there has been no improvement at all.

As colleagues have mentioned, there have been many issues with the new timetable, including a shortage of properly trained and available drivers who are qualified to run the new services, as described in last year’s Gibb report, and, as my hon. Friend mentioned, the overrunning of engineering works—specifically, the electrification of the Manchester-Bolton-Preston line. Those issues meant that the proposed new timetable had to be overwritten, delaying its launch and the driver training for the new routes. Network Rail’s planners were unable to confirm routes and times until a matter of weeks before the revamp, rather than the normal three to six months for a routine change. Will the Minister explain why the timetable changes were not deferred once these multiple problems became clear?

We have heard words of remorse from the Transport Secretary, Network Rail and others, but in addition to many constituents asking me to raise the matter with the Transport Secretary last November, many rail experts also raised these issues. They have been proven right. Why were they not listened to? How could this have gone so horribly wrong, and why was there no delay in implementing the new timetable?

The Transport Secretary said in the Chamber on Monday that

“both Northern and GTR were not sufficiently prepared to manage a timetable change of this scale… Neither Northern nor GTR had a clear fall-back plan.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 50.]

If that was the case, why were Ministers and officials within the Department not aware of it beforehand? Surely, given the sheer scale of the changes being introduced, they should have been closely monitoring this.

In Oldham East and Saddleworth there has been deep concern from passengers at Greenfield station for many months about the proposed new timetable, with a reduced service and capacity at peak hours, destinations changing from Manchester Victoria to Manchester Piccadilly and poor connection times via Stalybridge, as well as ongoing accessibility issues at Greenfield. I wrote to the Secretary of State about these issues last November, and in response the then Transport Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), said the new timetable would deliver “significant reliability benefits”. The evidence has shown that response to be completely wrong. Given that “significant reliability benefits” have not been delivered, will the Minister ensure that future timetable planning now underway for the December changes will actively involve rail users and not ignore their concerns?

The impact of the timetable changes on people’s lives cannot be underestimated, particularly on those with caring responsibilities. Parents who were previously able to drop their children off at school before getting their morning train into Manchester now struggle to do so if they are to get into Manchester for 9 am. The changes to the timetable mean that there is a 44-minute gap between 7.45 am and 8.30 am, which is the time that they are able to do so after dropping their children off. Their return journeys are equally fraught, with not just too few trains between 5 pm and 6 pm, but the timings of these trains being at 5.17 pm and 6 pm.

We realised that the new timetable was going to play havoc with the lives of working people using Greenfield station in particular, but the chaos since 20 May has been far worse than we feared. Both Northern and TransPennine Express trains have frequently been cancelled and have too often been late as well. The TPE delays significantly impact on constituents interchanging at Stalybridge and have a knock-on effect on their arrival at work

As I told the Transport Secretary following his statement in the Commons, on Monday there were five cancellations at Greenfield station alone, and that was before the evening peak. That was under the new emergency timetable that was meant to address these issues, but made things worse. Such a level of incompetence from TPE and Northern is unacceptable and my constituents deserve much better.

The Government must ensure that appropriate compensation is paid to season ticket holders and that there is a reduction in general ticket prices. The announcement that there will be a special compensation scheme for passengers on affected routes on Northern is to be welcomed, but passengers affected by disruption to TPE services must also be included. The Government also need to look at wider compensation for people who may have had their wages docked or even worse. We have heard of cases where people are on final warnings and have been threatened with losing their jobs.

What details can the Minister provide on how passengers will receive appropriate redress for the disruption and other hardship that they have experienced since 20 May? My constituent’s children were under intolerable stress on their way to exams and experienced delays, which adds to their stress.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the situation faced by constituents trying to travel to exams. I know of exactly the same situation. Even more shockingly, when a taxi had to be used and the cost was claimed back from Northern rail, it said that such expense would not be covered by the compensation system.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Clearly that is absolutely unacceptable. I hope the Minister will reassure us that that will not be the case and that he will take that up with Northern.

We need timescales, eligibility requirements, details of how passengers can claim, and confirmation that entitlements will be similar to those conferred by last year’s Southern passenger compensation scheme, as mentioned by the Transport Secretary on Monday. Will the Minister confirm that compensation for poor service will be measured against the original timetable proposed, not the slimmed-down one now on offer? Will Northern tickets be able to be used on other operators and modes of transport, as called for by my colleague, the Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham?

Northern’s action to set a unilateral timetable should not go unchallenged. I repeat my earlier point: passengers must be engaged with and consulted on the timetable. What discussions has the Minister had with Northern on customer consultation on the timetable? The Transport Secretary assured me and my hon. Friends the Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) on Monday evening that the emergency timetable will deliver significant improvements by today. I have mentioned what we have found out so far, but I will hold the Secretary of State to that.

What contingency arrangements are in place to remove the franchise from Northern if services do not rapidly improve for passengers across Greater Manchester? I would expect the contingency arrangements to be in place already. Finally, will the Department look to give Transport for the North the necessary policy and financial powers to ensure oversight of all suburban and regional services and work in tandem with Network Rail?

It is clear from this fiasco that our railways cannot be cared for properly from London, and the failure to fairly fund transport in the north exacerbates the problems we face, with deferred electrification and poor-quality, ageing rolling stock. The Minister will be aware that local and regional newspapers yesterday joined together under the banner #onenorth to fight for the north and called on the Government to prove their commitment to our region. I hope that his response will show that commitment.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Sir David Crausby) on securing this important debate and giving us another opportunity to discuss the disruption on Northern rail services.

The Department is focused on ensuring, as rapidly as possible, that the industry restores reliability for passengers to acceptable levels. I assure passengers who have been affected that I share their frustration, and we have heard from hon. Members across the House about how their constituents have been affected in a number of completely unacceptable ways. I echo my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s words of sympathy on Monday, as well as the apology that he gave to the House. That mirrored the apologies from the chief executives of Northern rail and Network Rail, as well as from train operators in other parts of the country, for everything that has gone wrong and for all the difficulties that have been caused to people in the north of England and other parts of the country.

The new timetable was introduced on 20 May, and as a number of Members have acknowledged, this episode has overshadowed what should have been a positive story for our railways and the economy as a whole. The May 2018 timetable change was planned to deliver more services up and down the country as part of the biggest modernisation of the railway since Victorian times, taking into account the great growth in passenger numbers in recent years. As we have heard, for Northern rail, which is co-managed through the Rail North Partnership on behalf of Transport for the North and the Department for Transport, that timetable change unfortunately resulted in significant disruption and inconvenience for passengers and the travelling public as a whole.

Northern’s new timetable was planned to improve services for passengers across the north, and it was intended to increase services by 1,300 a week. It was designed to give passengers the benefits of the unprecedented investment that we are making, including an expanded train fleet. It was also intended to take advantage of big infrastructure projects such as the Ordsall Chord, which has linked Manchester’s three main train stations for the first time, as well as the upgrade of Liverpool Lime Street and of tracks between Manchester and Liverpool. Further investment will deliver faster and more frequent services, with more seats, by 2020. That includes upgrading the route between Manchester and Blackpool via Bolton and upgrades to the Calder Valley routes, ahead of significant improvements to the transpennine route from next year. By 2020, all Northern and TransPennine Express trains will be new or refurbished, with—finally—the Pacer trains entirely gone.

A number of hon. Members mentioned the regional disparity in funding, which they indicated was part of an underlying problem. Going forward, we want to ensure that any disparity that there may have been in the past gets comprehensively addressed. I hope hon. Members will find it comforting that the Infrastructure and Projects Authority analysis of planned central Government transport investment shows that, over the next four years, the north will receive more investment on a per-person basis, at £1,039, than the south, at £1,029.

I want to go into more detail about what went wrong and answer the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) about who knew what, when, and about why there was not adequate intervention if that was indeed the case. I will need to backtrack on the sequence of events. After the decision was taken in the summer of 2017 to de-risk the potential delay of infrastructure from the major timetable change in December 2017, Northern planned to introduce changes in two phases, in December 2017 and in May 2018, with the May 2018 change, recasting services around Manchester, being most significant. The planned changes for May were underpinned by planned line speed improvements and electrification of the route between Manchester and Preston via Bolton. As hon. Members have noted, that would enable Northern to operate electric rolling stock, freeing up diesel units to provide additional capacity on other parts of Northern’s route.

In line with normal industry deadlines, Northern submitted its proposed timetable for May 2018 to Network Rail in August 2017, and Network Rail agreed it in November 2017. Network Rail had expected to complete the work that would facilitate that timetable change before May 2018, but faced significant complexities based on the interconnectivity of the network and the planning by all operators, and in January 2018 it acknowledged that it was unable to complete the work as expected. Those delays were further exacerbated by the disruption caused by Storm Emma and the severe cold spell—the beast from the east.

After it became apparent that the Manchester to Preston electrification was not going to be completed for May 2018, Northern took on the task of wholesale replanning of rolling stock, staff rostering and driver training to accommodate the lack of wiring on that route. As hon. Members will know, that is because drivers have to undergo essential safety-related route training before trains can operate on new lines. For Blackpool, that meant retraining 400-plus drivers from all the depots that operate that route.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Were not some of the delays, and the causes of the delays, predictable? Surely there should have been contingencies in the upgrading process and plans that would have accounted for that. If that was not the case, what is the Minister doing on, for example, penalties in relation to the franchise so that he is able to claw back from the providers?

[Joseph Johnson]

That is a good question, and one of the things that Stephen Glaister’s review will be looking at very carefully. It will look at all the processes that went into the creation of the May timetable and all the planning and preparation around it, to answer those kinds of questions and to see what lessons can be learned for future timetable changes, including the December timetable change. I will come on to compensation, if the hon. Lady hangs on for a second; I want to ensure that I complete the account of how we got to the May timetable change and what lessons we can learn from that.

I was talking about the training of drivers. Some drivers have been unavailable for their normal train-driving duties while they were and are undergoing that training. To make a difficult situation worse, Northern was unable to ask its drivers to work on their rest days for the last three months of this period, because, as hon. Members will know, ASLEF declined to extend the rest day working agreement that ended in February. That meant that Northern has not been able to absorb those exceptional or last-minute training needs and provide the additional flexibility for the train driver rosters that it needed to.

Let me turn to the questions about who knew what, when, and about where the DFT was in all this. In January, Network Rail informed the Department that it would not complete its upgrade of the Manchester to Preston route in time for the May timetable change. In response, Northern developed a new timetable in a compressed period and briefed stakeholders on the reasons why that was required. Following that, the late completion of the Blackpool to Preston blockade in mid-April meant that Northern had less time to complete those plans and its driver training. Northern then did not finalise its plan for the timetable until three days prior to its introduction. Industry readiness boards assured the Department and the Secretary of State that the timetable was ready for introduction, and the Department was not made aware of any expectations of high levels of cancellations.

Hon. Members have asked about compensation to reflect the significant inconvenience experienced by passengers. There is no doubt, and the Department accepts, that Northern passengers have faced totally unsatisfactory levels of service. I have met with many colleagues in the House, and I have also heard directly many stories from the travelling public of how the disruptions have impacted the lives of all those constituents.

It is entirely right for all those affected by the disruption to be properly compensated. I encourage passengers, in the first instance, to continue to use Northern’s Delay Repay compensation mechanism for affected journeys. Northern operates the Delay Repay compensation system for all its passengers. Under that scheme, as hon. Members will know, passengers are entitled to claim compensation for each delay of 30 minutes or more that they experience, whatever the cause of the delay. There are no exclusions for weather or other delays outside the control of the rail industry.

The Office of Rail and Road guidelines require train operators to respond to claims within 20 days of their receipt. Northern has assured the Department that it is working hard to respond to all claims within industry standards. I acknowledge the complaints that the hon. Member for Bolton North East has made about various aspects of the Delay Repay scheme. The Department is discussing with Northern ways in which we expect it to reduce its processing time for Delay Repay claims.

In his statement on Monday, the Secretary of State announced that, in addition to the standard Delay Repay compensation mechanisms, there would be a special compensation scheme for Northern passengers, subject to agreement by the board of Transport for the North. It is to be funded by the rail industry and will ensure that regular rail customers receive appropriate redress for the disruption that they have experienced. The industry will imminently set out more detail of the eligibility requirements and how season ticket holders can claim. However, the Secretary of State has already indicated, at a high level, that he expects that the scheme should offer Northern passengers who have experienced protracted disruption of this kind similar entitlements to those under Southern’s passenger compensation scheme last year.