Flexible Rail Ticketing

Debate between Greg Clark and Jo Gideon

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point that it is not only workers who commute. Many students commute into the capital and, indeed, other cities around the country—and, I dare say, in Northern Ireland—so I am grateful for his point.

To turn to the economics of the situation, a standard class season ticket from Tunbridge Wells costs £4,928 a year, which is a large amount of money. The price of a daily standard peak return ticket is £39.90. That means that someone travelling three days a week to London for 47 weeks of the year must pay £5,626. In other words, it costs over £700 more to travel three days a week than five or even seven days a week. It is a ludicrous anachronism and an outrageous injustice that we have the same fare structure for workers in 2020 as we did in 1950.

There are many reasons why that is no longer tolerable. First, even before covid, the pattern of working life had changed since the 1950s. Many people work fewer than five days a week from a workplace in a city centre. Either they work part time or they do not need to travel every day. How can our railways not have noticed a change that has been happening for decades?

Secondly, people who work part time usually earn less money than people who work full time. To penalise the poorest workers is a regressive policy that adds to poverty and is a barrier to work.

Thirdly, more women than men work, or wish to work, part time. The standard fare policy means that it costs them more to do so. As pay is still not equal, a further obstacle to accessing good jobs and careers is thrown up in front of women by a fare system that can make it too costly to take up opportunities. The same is true, but worse, for disabled people and people as they get older.

Fourthly, the fare structure flies in the face of the advice that the Government are currently giving to curb the spread of covid, which says, “Work from home if you can”. For many people, that means going into the office less, perhaps for important meetings or to train newer and younger colleagues, and working from home more. That pattern is not supported if it is cheaper to travel five days a week than three days.

Fifthly, the fare system hampers our recovery from the economic consequences of covid. Our businesses and their staff need to be flexible and adaptive. Instead, working patterns will be formed not by what is ideal for the business and the worker, but to conform to an antiquated fare system.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that rail operators must act responsibly during the pandemic to ensure that passengers do not have to choose between a journey on an overcrowded train and paying the top rates for anytime travel tickets? On the west coast line, for example, travel between London and Stoke-on-Trent rises from £53 to £129 after 3 pm, and only returns to £53 at 7 pm, when the trains are packed. Surely a temporary suspension of peak fares while the country is in a national health emergency is the right thing to do to protect rail travellers.

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a time in which we must display the same flexibility, innovation and responsiveness that we have—and have had to—in so many other areas of life, and that we should not be bound by the structures that we inherited.

It is time now to make this change. It does not have to be this way. If we can bring in a job retention scheme within days of the need being identified, if we can invent a scheme in July to help thousands of restaurants attract back millions of customers in August, and if businesses can switch to conducting meetings online virtually overnight, surely we are more than capable of introducing without further procrastination a train ticket to meet the needs of part-time and flexible workers. There is no shortage of models available: a ticket that allows any three days in seven, for example; a ticket that permits travel only 12 days in a month; or, at the most basic, a carnet system that gives a discount on the purchase of multiple peak-time tickets to be used within a limited period.

At the end of July, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) wrote, along with all Kent MPs, to the managing director of Southeastern, Mr Statham. He replied that Southeastern has submitted proposals for flexible ticketing to the Department for Transport and is waiting for the Department’s authorisation under the emergency measures agreement. I say to the Minister: please act now. As the Transport Secretary said last week, we are in a different era. The Government are—which is to say, we are—paying for the railway. With these covid-changed circumstances, very few people are going to be paying for an annual seven-day-a-week ticket at any time soon. That money is simply not coming in.