Jason McCartney
Main Page: Jason McCartney (Conservative - Colne Valley)Department Debates - View all Jason McCartney's debates with the Department for Transport
East Coast Main Line
Jason McCartney Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on securing such an important debate.
Every franchise is operationally different. East Coast runs 155 services per day, with six trains per hour from London in the peak. It essentially serves two main destinations from London: Leeds and Edinburgh. The west coast operator runs 321 services per day, with 11 trains per hour from London in the peak. It serves five main destinations: Birmingham, Manchester, Chester, Glasgow and Liverpool. I have used both services; I use East Coast and First Capital Connect daily, and both work quite well.
It is impossible to argue that the private is sector is bad and the public sector is good. Many speakers so far have focused on an ideological debate, but I want to focus on what will lead to improvements in passenger satisfaction. The east coast operator could remain public, it could become a mutual-type organisation run by its own staff and members or it could be moved into the private sector, but passenger satisfaction should be the main reason for any change and the main driver of any innovation.
Stevenage is on the east coast main line. It is a category C station, with more than 4 million passenger movements a year. It is an important hub for Hertfordshire, with Stansted on one side and Luton airport on the other. That will be the subject for a separate debate between me and the Minister, because there is a proposal to expand Luton airport, with the result that a plane would fly over Stevenage every minute or so.
East Coast is used by many commuters—20,000 to 30,000—to go from Stevenage into London every day. It is a different type of service for us than it is for many Members in this room, who want it to be a long-distance operator. One of our concerns is that as it opens up more services in the north and more direct lines, it will shave minutes off the journey to London by cutting services to places such as Stevenage.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to pass through my hon. Friend’s constituency on my way up and down to Yorkshire every week. Will he join me in congratulating the Government on their record of investment in our railways? In my patch, there is the northern hub rail investment and the electrification of the trans-Pennine route. Does he agree that franchising is about where our railways—our east coast main line—will be in five, 10 or 15 years, not the adequacy of the service at the moment?