Northern Rail Services: Greater Manchester

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Lord Johnson of Marylebone

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Lord Johnson of Marylebone

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The Government’s productivity plan set out their agenda for even greater collaboration between universities and business, and we are supporting degree apprenticeships, the first of which were in STEM occupations, such as aerospace and automotive engineering. Small businesses are essential to this agenda. In 2015, the National Centre for Universities and Business reported that 60% of work placements for students on STEM courses were in small businesses.

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

Not content with cutting social security support for disabled people, including those in work, the Government have moved on to cuts to the disabled student’s allowance. What is the estimate of the reduction in the number of disabled students doing STEM subjects and the impact on the disability employment gap as a result of that?

[Joseph Johnson]

The disabled student’s allowance continues to exist, and is available to all students who need it. Universities must step up to their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 to make their learning environments fit for disabled students, and that will continue to be the case.