Govia Thameslink and Network Rail

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Quin]

It is always a pleasure to be pre-empted by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). He raises a valuable point that I hope the Minister will respond to, particularly in the context of delay repay. There must be a simpler way in this modern age for people to get their money back for journeys for which they bought a service but did not receive it. I am sure my hon. Friend is well ahead of me with the technical means for dealing with such things. There must be better ways of delivering that service.

I speak for a number of hon. Members here when asking those responsible for ticket offices to think again long and hard before proceeding with these closures, which I believe should not take place. In particular, I ask them, in the current environment of huge uncertainty faced by passengers and a poor service, how on earth reducing customer interface can possibly be in the interests of either passengers or the companies.

I will mention another sense of wonderment shared by my constituents. They look at the performance of our operators and Network Rail. They experience at first hand the chaos of what is the first step in a number of improvements that need to be made to the lines. They all too often stand cheek by jowl with other passengers on trains going through the deepest cutting anywhere in western Europe on their way to London. And they ask themselves in what parallel universe anyone could believe that the public infrastructure laid out in the 19th century to serve rural towns and commuters could possibly support Gatwick airport were it to double in size with a new runway to take the same number of passengers as Heathrow and were a far greater number of workers forced to commute from far afield to service the new facility. In fairness, I do not expect the Minister to respond to that point today, but I raise it to share with the Government the frustrations felt by my constituents. If anyone imagines that the existing infrastructure could cope with a minimum of an extra 90,000 passenger journeys a day, that shows a complete failure to understand the sheer inadequacy of the current service.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. With regard to Gatwick airport, he is absolutely right that the existing rail infrastructure can barely cope as it is, let alone were there to be an additional runway. Although I welcome the more than £50 million-worth of investment in upgrading the Gatwick station, in terms of line capacity Gatwick has not offered any assistance, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that that means Gatwick is absolutely the wrong choice for runway expansion in London and the south-east.

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. He is absolutely right. If one looks at a possible alternative to Gatwick, one sees four or five main railway lines, Crossrail coming in and a potential spur to High Speed 2, as well as the tube network, faster journey times into London and a large number of would-be employees who are looking for employment absolutely on their doorstep, but we will not dwell on that; we will dwell on the subject at hand. I raised it purely because of the frustration that many of our constituents feel that their problems cannot be being taken seriously if people are seriously considering that they can throw all these extra passengers on to the same line.

I know that the Minister has put a huge personal investment of time and energy into sorting out the problems in this area. She has referred in the past to the massive productivity gain that could be gleaned were the problem to be solved, and she is absolutely right. We heard more in the Budget speech today about the productivity gains that could be had from transport. This is the basic work that needs to be put together to get real productivity gains for our economy. I know that the Minister is aware of that and of the human misery that entails from the problems on this line. May I offer three comments by way of conclusion?

First, we are all far too familiar with long and complex lists of the factors that need to be got right to improve the service. I have no doubt that those are provided in genuine good faith by committed managers, but they are simply inadequate for either solving the issues or reassuring passengers. Can we please hear less about the inputs and more about committed outputs that are deliverable and can be delivered on time? As part of that, I would like to see Network Rail, which seems a very distant organisation—according to the statistics, it is probably responsible for 57% of the delays on my line—far more customer-focused in the way it approaches its problems, and anything that the Minister can do to bring it closer to the reality of what its service entails would be welcome.

Secondly, I know that the Minister is a great advocate of more efficient, simpler and more generous refunds through delay repay, as so eloquently said by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling. I would very much like to hear anything more that she can share with us on that. It is a way of concentrating the minds of the train companies, as well as providing what are only the just deserts for passengers who have been affected.

My last comment relates to the structure of the service. I do not believe that nationalisation or stripping commercial firms of franchises is a panacea. However, this is by far the largest and most complex task to get right in the network. I hope that if the Minister decides that its sheer scale and complexity requires the attention of smaller and more nimble spheres of operation, she will not be afraid to start that process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am in complete agreement with all the hon. and right hon. Friends and Members who have spoken so far.

I want to start by mentioning some positives. In the previous Parliament, I was very grateful when Three Bridges station received £26 million in upgrade funding. I am proud of the fact that the new Southern area control centre, a state-of-the-art facility, is based at Three Bridges rail yard. In this Parliament, I have been grateful for the fact that the new Thameslink train care facility is located also at Three Bridges rail yard. It was good to see the Transport Secretary there last year for its opening. It is a very impressive facility indeed and will go a long way to helping to service the longer and more state-of-the-art Thameslink trains that are coming along, we hope, later this year and I am sure will improve the customer experience.

As smart ticketing has been mentioned, I want to welcome the extension of the Oyster zone to Gatwick airport. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) and for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), I would like to see smart metering throughout the network. It is a much more efficient way of running services and also an aid in terms of refunds. The issue of refunds, as hon. and right hon. Friends have mentioned, needs to be better addressed.

However, I also recognise what the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said about the importance of there still being a human presence at ticket offices. It is extremely important. He is a very distinguished chair of the all-party group on dyslexia, and what he said about disability access was absolutely right as well. My constituents have been telling me about what they believe is the folly of ticket office closures. Of course we can have a more efficient system, and there will be some stations where ticket offices, perhaps with new technology, are a thing of the past, but at the moment it is not appropriate to go forward with such a programme.

A lot of investment has benefited my constituency in recent years, but the experience, as the hon. Member for Luton North said, has been unacceptable. I commute daily to Westminster. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have now allowed myself an extra hour to get into this place, which is ridiculous. I should be able to rely on the train timetable with a degree of certainty. When I stand, all too often at peak times, with my fellow commuter constituents from Three Bridges, the level of service and the slowness of the services is simply not acceptable. Little things might seem quite minor, such as a train coming in from Brighton on the way into London and the announcement on the train or at the station that the train is going in the opposite direction, which occurs too often. The vast majority of people who get on that train every morning know that yet again a mistake has been made, but for a visitor to this country coming into Gatwick airport, for example, that could be a major problem. Also, it does huge reputational damage to the railways. People can be seen rolling their eyes and saying, “They’ve messed up again.” Indeed they have. Such a poor level of service really cannot be tolerated.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham on securing this debate. I very much hope that it will be another effort that will encourage better service delivery as we go forward. I add my voice in thanking the rail Minister for all the effort she has put in over recent months.