Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Normally if a Member wishes to intervene, they arrive in time for the beginning of the debate. Please continue, Mrs Ellman.

[Mrs Ellman]

Thank you, Sir Edward. The Department is well aware of this long-standing problem. It must identify places where overcrowding has become a persistent serious problem, making journeys uncomfortable. The train companies, through the franchise agreements negotiated with the Department, should be required to identify where there is a serious problem and take action to alleviate overcrowding on specific services. I hope that the Minister will confirm that he is looking at the problem and is proposing action to address it.

Over the past day or two, there has been a lot of discussion about the consultation on the Southeastern franchise, which has rightly raised the big issue of overcrowding. The consultation puts forward certain proposals for dealing with the issue, but it is not a problem just for new franchises; the problem is being experienced now, and it requires the Department’s attention. It relates to the train operating companies and the provision of rolling stock.

I repeat the question that I have asked a succession of Ministers numerous times in a succession of meetings: who is responsible for the long-term planning and delivery of rolling stock? That might sound like a pretty basic, simple, fundamental question, but I have never received a straightforward answer; the nearest I have got is something about “the Department”. I then ask, “Who is it in the Department? The Minister? The Secretary of State?” Then the clarity disappears.

When we come across specific issues and problems—there was one a couple of years ago when a carriage was moved from an important service in the north to go to the then Prime Minister’s constituency—Ministers appear to be powerless. I was told by the then Secretary of State, “It will get resolved.” It did get resolved, in the end and after a great deal of fuss, but I still had no answer to the question of who was actually responsible. The Minister is very diligent about these matters, so I hope he will be able to give a clearer answer. Who is responsible for the long-term planning and delivery of rolling stock, including new rolling stock and refurbishment?

People are facing a whole range of problems in undertaking their journeys on rail. Perhaps one constant feature, which overrides other rail issues, is the constant challenge of the rail system’s fragmentation. Time and again we come back to the issue of how the sector will work together more cohesively to give the best possible service to the passenger.

The Rail Delivery Group was set up to bring the rail sector together. Yes, it has made some improvements, but it has not addressed the basic issues. How will it change the way it operates? Does it need more powers? Do franchises need to be different? Should the Department and Ministers act in a different way? How can the rail regulator be more effective in taking action? That is not clear. Does the regulator need more powers? If so, what are they? What action does the Minister propose to take to make that a reality? The most disappointing thing about the challenges that the Committee and I have identified is that most of them are not new: they are long standing. Despite the best efforts of a succession of Ministers and the Department, not a great deal has changed, and we simply cannot go on like that.

As our inquiry was under way, a major crisis was developing on Southern rail, which is part of the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise. It is run by the parent company, Govia Thameslink Railway —known as GTR—but I will refer to it as Southern, because that is the area in which the bulk of the problems have arisen and where the bulk of the difficulties are for passengers.

As we were conducting our inquiry, passengers on the route were becoming increasingly exasperated and angry that their rail service, for which many pay several thousand pounds a year, was inadequate and utterly unreliable. Whether passengers are paying several thousand pounds a year for a season ticket or simply paying their fare, they are equally entitled to have a proper service, but that was not happening. The situation remains virtually the same, with passengers suffering mass cancellations and inordinate delays. People’s jobs have been put at risk, simply because they cannot get to work on time. Some people reported that they have moved house because of the problem.

Life has been disrupted. Why? It is a sorry combination of a too-large franchise, poor management, misjudgment and disastrous industrial relations, which have conspired to create an appalling situation for passengers. The ongoing strikes have compounded a series of errors and incompetence. Passengers are right to be angry, but the Department does not seem to be doing much about the situation except to accept that there is a big problem.

It cannot be acceptable for those responsible for the problem—not just one party is responsible; responsibility must be shared by a multiplicity of organisations and individuals—to fail so comprehensively and for so long and to appear not to be acting. In 2016 alone, 58,983 train journeys were partly or wholly cancelled. That is a tremendous figure. I do not think the travelling public want to hear all the arguments about who is responsible. They just know that it is a fact that their lives are still being disrupted and that nothing much is changing, and they want something done about it.

The Department has already accepted that the franchise that was drawn up was much too large. It is the largest in the country. It is uniquely large; it contains more than a fifth of all the passenger journeys across Britain’s entire network. It is too large a franchise, and the Department has said that that was its mistake.

Add to that the situation on the ground and the complexity of major infrastructure works planned during the course of the franchise agreement, including the huge and logistically challenging Thameslink programme, and there was a recipe for calamitous passenger experience. The impact of the Thameslink programme on passenger services was substantially underestimated. The estimated number of delay minutes was forecast to be 10,000 per year; the reality has been 10,000 per week. I ask the Minister how that estimate could be so disastrously wrong. It has contributed substantially to the problem.

If we add to those things—too large a franchise and a major infrastructure challenge, the impact of which was grossly underestimated—inadequate levels of staffing, the situation becomes even worse. The industrial action on top of that has escalated the situation to an unacceptable level.

I mention one other factor; I suspect hon. Members will find it difficult to believe if they are not already aware of it. At the very beginning of the franchise, the company did not have enough drivers to operate the trains. That part has been rectified—except for the fact that we are now in a dispute about driver-only operation—but having insufficient drivers at the beginning of the franchise does not suggest great competence.

The question for the Department and the Minister to answer is: what is being done? The franchise was constructed on a management fee basis, which is currently unique, because of the anticipated risk. The revenues go directly to the Government and a fee is paid to the train operator, so there is no risk in that sense. I have described the nature of the services and the problems. The train operator receives an annual management fee of around £1 billion; probably around £3 billion has been paid out to date. Under that system, the public purse foots the bill for losses that occur from lost sales, disruption and passenger compensation.

I do not have an up-to-date figure of exactly how much has been lost and how much the public purse will have to pay out, but the latest figure I have is £38 million and rising. That was supplied by the Minister in a letter to me some time ago. Compensation schemes have been announced since then, and we do not know how they are operating or how much money is involved. The bill could be increasing substantially.

To add to the complexity and difficulty, there is the issue of force majeure, which concerns the dispute—ongoing and unresolved, as far as I am aware—between the train operating company and the Department for Transport about who is responsible for all those cancelled services. Who is responsible for those 58,983 and more train journeys that were wholly or partly cancelled? There is an unresolved dispute between the Department and the train company, with no end date in sight. That cannot be acceptable. All this is continuing—passengers are getting more and more angry, and there is no end date. I hope the Minister can tell us what is happening and when it will be resolved. The public also have a right to know what the Department’s plans are to deal with the situation.

The franchise is due to run until September 2021. I would not like to anticipate the extent or the level of anger that passengers are going to be feeling by then if nothing changes. What is the Department doing? Is it considering restructuring the franchise—perhaps dividing it up and allocating different parts to different operators? There is silence. We simply do not know what is happening. Doing nothing is simply not enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is incredibly timely, because I was about to go on to describe my attempts to get to Stoke-on-Trent on Virgin Trains on 23 February. I was fortunate that I did not take the 10.30 am train as my colleagues had. It had left, but perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who is present, only got to Stafford at 8 o’clock in the evening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) did. He texted me from there; he had been travelling for more than 10 hours. My train did not leave at all. I sat there for 45 minutes and finally it was cancelled, although that turned out to be fortunate, because I did not end up trapped half way up the country, nowhere near where I wanted to go.

I then tried to claim my ticket back. I know we are going to do an inquiry into this, but it too is part of the passenger experience. As instructed, I went on to the Virgin website to claim my ticket back, but there was no facility to say that my train had been cancelled. I was allowed to say that my train had been delayed, but I was unable to say that it had been cancelled. Every time I pressed the button, I was sent back to the beginning, so I took to Twitter and asked, “Is anyone else having this problem with Virgin rail?” I am sure because I am a Member of Parliament and on the Select Committee, I then got Rolls-Royce treatment—[Interruption.] It was absolutely Rolls-Royce, because Virgin wrote back to me saying, “Dear Joseph”, and that they were sorry about my customer experience. They also sent me half the money and we finally resolved the matter. The point, however, is that the experience should not be like that.

In the report one of the online ticketing companies, Trainline, said that people were uncertain whether they had bought the cheapest ticket, which was a barrier to some people choosing to use rail at all. Which companies make the cost of their product so opaque that it might put customers off, other than one that has a trapped market and people who have no choice but to use that service, no matter how bad it is? We really need to deal with that customer experience.

My last point is about overcrowding and capacity. I go back to Southeastern. The figures in the report show that Southeastern operates an appalling service. It is one of the worst, and it should be thankful for Southern which stops it from being bottom of the customer satisfaction rankings. When we consider that every day so many people in south-east London rely on that surface rail service to get to work, and that there is no alternative but road, we realise what an appalling service it is and what an appalling and disproportionate impact it has on the lives of people from that part of London.

Many people think that the whole of London is served by the underground, but my part of London is well outside the orbit of the underground, and buses from outer south-east London take a devil of a time to get into central London. We rely almost entirely on that commuter rail service, and it is not acceptable that it is such an appalling performer. When we do get on trains, they are overcrowded at peak times because they are not long enough and there are so few alternatives to that rail service.

We have lengthened the platforms, so let us now lengthen the trains. We need to ensure that we have the capacity on Southeastern rail services so that people can get on the trains at peak time. We need 12-car trains serving the metro services in south-east London so that constituents from north Kent and my constituency can get to work comfortably and on time every day. Thank you, Sir Edward, for allowing me to make that contribution.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Quince, I was a bit hard on you. If you wish to make a comment now, you may.

[Will Quince]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

Did the Scottish National party Government in Scotland learn anything from the franchising process we have undergone in England? The passenger survey shows that, since the Scottish Government privatised the service to Abellio, satisfaction in the service has declined, and the service has declined since then. I wonder whether any lessons—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not think we need to start debating Scottish railways—unless you really want to, Marion Fellows—because I am not sure they are germane.

[Marion Fellows]

Perhaps we should. It is important that the Minister hears how we dealt with these things in Scotland so that he can take on board some of the things the Government there have done.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes gave us an interesting and humorous list of journeys from Cleethorpes to Haverfordwest. I really enjoyed that. I could introduce him to someone I know well who regularly journeys from here in London to north of Dundee. She is an expert on how to get the best deal with split ticketing. However, the whole point is that people should not have to become experts in that area. There should be a way of simply going on to a website and finding the cheapest journey as easily as possible.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to his time on the Select Committee in a former Parliament and was disturbed to find that we are still dealing with the same issues. I know you do not want me to go on for too long, Sir Edward, so I will not do a full summing up of what everyone else said, but, for the Minister’s benefit, yes, there were issues in Scotland over the franchise given to Abellio, but after much consternation among passengers, the Scottish Government brought in an improvement plan and since then things have moved forward. The score for ScotRail on the passenger satisfaction survey was at 83%, which was lower than the previous year, but in the last month or so it has gone back up to about 90%—a number that many companies and commuters in the south-east of England would be delighted to have.

The Scottish Government have put more than £5 billion in an investment programme for the five-year period to 2019. We will open new stations and build new lines. We see that as a way to get a greener Scotland and to increase Scotland’s economic base.

I commend to the House the ten-minute rule Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry)—I myself have to read his constituency because it is so vast—introduced in the Chamber only this week. What we really need in Scotland is Network Rail to be devolved. The Scottish Government can take forward many programmes, but ultimately Network Rail is not devolved, which means it does not have full control over the rail network in Scotland.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I know the hon. Lady will want to speak to the report.

[Marion Fellows]

Yes, I shall do—I apologise, Sir Edward. It is important for the Minister to understand that it is possible to improve things and move them forward. As part of the process of making things better on the English railways, if I can put it that way, he may also want to look at taking powers to nationalise them again, as we did in Scotland, so that Government organisations and national organisations could bid for franchises. That happened on the east coast main line, and it ran very well.