Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line

Giles Watling Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Work-life balance is very important. We recognise that commercial activity underpins the funding of public services—that is key—but life balance is also really important. My hon. Friend is the father of two lovely little girls, and I know that he is very proud of them. All of us want to be able to make a commitment to our families, but that is detrimentally affected when services are cancelled and delayed.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

We suffer in Clacton, too, as we are at the end of the line, as my hon. Friend knows. I have a very large number of letters in my mailbox about cancellations and delays. That also happens at weekends—some of my constituents work at weekends—and we have many replacement bus services. That must be dealt with, too. We must have a good weekend service for people who travel not only for work but for leisure activities.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester rightly focused on Delay Repay, and I echo his calls. I will not repeat the requests he made of the Minister—from where I am standing, I can see the copious notes that the Minister has written, so I know he has made a note of that point. There are other things that I would like him to consider. I wrote to him recently about this issue, and he assured me that I will have a reply in good time. I will not chase him on that, because I know that mine is not the only correspondence he has received about this issue.

On encouraging people to use more environmentally friendly modes of transport, I find it difficult to have a meaningful conversation with my constituents about leaving their cars behind. It is very difficult for me to persuade even people who live in Braintree, who have the best opportunity to step away from the internal combustion engine, because their immediate response is, “Well, James, I have to rely on my car because I cannot rely on the trains.” The lack of reliability therefore has an impact not just on train services, but on more environmentally friendly modes of transport.

One of the issues that I brought up with Greater Anglia and that is linked to Delay Repay is the importance of speedy and accurate communications when things go wrong. Everybody is frustrated if a train is delayed or cancelled, but there is perhaps nothing more frustrating than waiting at the station not knowing whether the train is delayed and not having enough facts to make choices about credible alternative methods of transport.

When trains are delayed, my constituents must decide whether to walk back to their house to get their car to drive to another station and to park there, or whether to make alternative arrangements and change their childcare. If they decide to get in their car and move, there is little more frustrating than seeing the train that they could have been on pull out. Communication is therefore key.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The final point that I want to make is that my commuters—I am sure this is true of all commuters across the region—are not unreasonable people. They are pragmatic. They understand that the rolling stock is old and is in the process of being replaced. They recognise that the route into London is going through a refurbishment and upgrade programme, which causes disruptions. Even though they pay the same amount of money for their season ticket as people on the main line, they recognise that they are on a branch line, which has certain disadvantages. They are sensible, pragmatic, reasonable people. That said, their patience is not an ever-filling well. When I hosted a public meeting last spring, the passion—I will put it no stronger than that—of my commuters and their desire to see the service and the communication improved and to see Delay Repay introduced in a timely manner cannot be overstated.

I have no doubt that the Minister has heard the concerns of colleagues representing this area, and he knows what we want first and foremost, but I hope that, if he can get a resolution on Delay Repay, he will then turn his mind to other enduring challenges, such as improving communication and wi-fi.

[Giles Watling]

On communication, it is all very well having Delay Repay—it is good to have it being communicated to passengers—but when Delay Repay 15 is introduced, it must be splashed widely so that everybody knows how to use it and that it is there. Surely that is the point.

[James Cleverly]

Yes, indeed; it would be good news, and I would strongly urge both the Department and the train operating company to be very vocal if we get it introduced in a timely manner, because it would be welcomed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

That is an important point well made. Up and down the country, we see TOCs partner with either public bodies or, as in this case, successful and important charities. The British Transport Police and the secure station scheme work with the Railway Children and the Samaritans, for example, and such partnerships can make and are making a difference.

I mentioned that performance has been mixed over the autumn period, but it is starting to improve. Looking at the public performance measures, Greater Anglia’s PPM for the period ending 5 January was 89.7%, which should be compared with the target in the franchise agreement of 88.7%. However, we want to go even further. We want all passengers on our network to receive the best possible service.

[Giles Watling]

We are at the end of the line down in Clacton and Walton-on-the-Naze, and it feels like the further away a place is, the more it gets ignored. Will the Minister please give some reassurance to my commuters that their train times will improve?

[Andrew Jones]

I can absolutely confirm to my hon. Friend that trains cannot go beyond the end of the line, because it then gets very wet. However, there is no way that different parts of the network are being treated disproportionately. There is an even approach, and everybody is entitled to a good service. That is what we are working towards. The Department’s work with the train operating company looks at performance as a whole, not individual parts, so I assure my hon. Friend that his concerns are being addressed.

I was talking about how we want to go further. The target is to have over 92% of trains arriving on time by the end of the franchise. Together with Network Rail, the train operating company needs to manage day-to-day performance and ensure that passengers see performance improve. It is my priority to see our trains provide an excellent service that delivers a network upon which commuters and passengers can rely every day.

Many colleagues have mentioned new trains. Greater Anglia has a great initiative, but it is part of a bigger scheme right across the country. Some 7,000 new carriages will be entering service on our network over the next two years, and the change is comparable to the UK’s move from diesel to steam. It is that kind of scale of development. The new trains will deliver significant improvements for passengers. In Greater Anglia’s case, the entire fleet of trains will be replaced, with over 1,000 new carriages on order. They are being built by Stadler and Bombardier, with manufacturing and construction well underway. The first five of the new Stadler trains have been delivered to Norwich Crown Point depot, where they are undergoing testing and acceptance processes.

We expect that the new trains will start to be rolled out across the network from the middle of this year, with the full roll-out completed by the end of 2020. These state-of-the-art trains will provide many more seats for busy services, which relates to points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) and the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). The new trains will be more efficient, accelerate faster and have much better customer information. They will also provide a much-improved on-board environment with wi-fi, air conditioning and power sockets, which goes back to the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree .

I want to inform the House that Greater Anglia has a franchise commitment to deliver two direct trains each weekday between Liverpool Street and Norwich in 90 minutes and two direct trains each weekday between Liverpool Street and Ipswich in 60 minutes. Those new services follow long-standing campaigns from both sides of the House, and they will commence in May. Since the start of the franchise, Greater Anglia has invested over £100 million at stations and depots and in ticketing initiatives. Major station upgrades have been completed at Norwich, Ipswich, Cambridge and Chelmsford, but I will have to take away the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford about the second railway station there. I will need to do a bit of research to provide the exact up-to-date position, but I will write to her with that information. I recognise the point about two for one and the passing loop, which has improved resilience across the entire network.