Helen Hayes
Main Page: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)Department Debates - View all Helen Hayes's debates with the Department for Transport
Railway Ticket Offices
Helen Hayes Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on securing this important debate.
I wish to make a few points the short amount of time available. First, my constituency, which is in south London, has only one tube station, so we are overwhelmingly reliant on services from the 11 railway stations in my constituency to be able to get to work, visit friends and family, get to school, and for shopping and leisure activities. Those commuter rail services are vital for London’s economy as well as for the convenience of my constituents. Only one of the stations in my constituency currently has step-free access.
Secondly, we have seen the erosion of our rail services in recent years. Timetables have been cut, services have become progressively less reliable, and the use of short trains has increased, with consequent overcrowding. My residents are thoroughly fed up at the quality of the rail services they receive week by week, while the costs of those services have continued to spiral.
Thirdly, cuts to ticket offices will have a disproportionate impact on disabled or visually impaired constituents. I am listening to my constituents. My constituent who is a wheelchair user explained to me that when he arrives at a station and needs assistance, he will visit the ticket office, where help can be easily called. How is he to find somebody to help when there is not that single anchor within the station?
Fourthly, the proposed model is set up to fail. We saw this with police stations. When the police closed all their front counters in my constituency and popped up in supermarkets once a week, residents could never find them, so the service was never used and it declined. I put out a survey to my constituents, and 96% are opposed to these measures. I implore the Government to listen to residents up and down the country, scrap these measures and keep our ticket offices open.