Old Oak Common Station

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford; thank you for chairing this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) for securing the debate. We can see by the level of activity and the number of people who have wanted to speak and intervene how important this is for the region, and how enlightening the debate has been. There has been a huge amount of unanimity about the criticisms and suggested solutions for the upcoming interruptions to the service to the south-west and Wales.

The hon. Member identified three different areas: mitigation, improving services for the west in the long run, and how to make Old Oak Common useful for passengers travelling on GWR. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) also focused on the mitigation sum, and wondered whether the £30 million identified by the Government would be enough adequately to compensate and mitigate those users who will have their travel disrupted for the next five years as a minimum. The hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) noticed that the Welsh rail network has only 7% electrification, and she was essentially demanding Barnett consequentials for the HS2 project. The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) was one of a number of Members who highlighted that all trains were due to stop at Old Oak Common, and that that would add between four and seven minutes, depending on the estimates, to everyone’s journey. He also highlighted the need to spend a portion of mitigation sums on the Dawlish works.

The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) highlighted what he described as under-investment in Welsh railways, largely because of the designation of HS2 as an England and Wales project, rather than just an English project, and the consequential lack of additional payments under the Barnett consequentials.

My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) focused on the need to reassess the use of the £30 million compensation payment scheme. Since the debate on this subject in this place last week that she and I participated in, the Government have provided further information on how they intend to use that £30 million. She believes that the money is being focused on the wrong areas. As if it made the point for her, she also highlighted the need for better communication of delays and other changes. She made a very interesting point when she put a question to the Minister, and I hope that the Minister will reply to it in her response to the debate. My hon. Friend also asked who will pay for the delay repay scheme—will it be the taxpayer, or is there another mechanism for funding those compensatory payments?

The hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) again focused on better mitigation. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) did too, and he made an interesting point—that it is no longer correct to say that Sunday is an exceptional day of transport; it is actually part of the general use of the railways. Finally, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) questioned the need for every train to stop at Old Oak Common.

I will return to the issue of Sundays. The Christmas period is coming up and we know that there will be a very significant impact on GWR trains. They will terminate at Ealing Broadway and then the passengers are supposed to use the Central line or District line. There will be no Elizabeth line and there will be a reduced service between Ealing Broadway, Reading and Heathrow. All of that will happen only if everything goes according to plan, because the assumption is that GWR will be able to run a full service, as planned, during the Christmas period, but that relies on ASLEF train drivers volunteering to work overtime. I assume that the Government have plans to make sure that happens, because this is now a Government problem; it is not a GWR problem. It is a Government problem because it was the Government who intervened in the pay negotiations with ASLEF and awarded train drivers a pay increase of £9,000 with no conditions attached. In addition, because that pay award was backdated, I understand—from social media, at least—that train drivers have received a payment of £16,000.

One would have thought that when the Government awarded that very significant pay increase, they would have made sure that holiday services were secured in return, but that is not the case. Nothing was secured in return. In fact, the Government intervention has made the situation worse, because if media reports are to be believed, there has been a reduction in the number of train drivers agreeing to volunteer to man Christmas and overtime services. So, because this is a problem created by the Government, I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us what the Government’s solution to it is over Christmas, new year, and indeed every Sunday in future.

That is in the short term, but there is also a need for long-term mitigation. Speaker after speaker today has focused on the inadequacy of the £30 million that has been identified for mitigation payments and questioned how the Government intend to spend that money. Therefore, my message to the Minister is this: listen to local representatives. They know their area, they know what is important to their constituents and they know much better than departmental officials how mitigation funding can be spent. If anything is to be taken away from this debate, it is that the local representatives who have stood up for their constituents in this debate have repeatedly highlighted the areas that need to be focused on to mitigate some of the worst impacts on their constituents and the rest of the travelling public.

That brings me, finally, to communication. We know that delays are inevitable. This is a huge infrastructure project and everyone—at least everyone who has participated in this debate—recognises that some delay is inevitable. What is important is that changes to services are well communicated so that passengers are informed well in advance, alternative services are run effectively—they run on time and have sufficient capacity to take the number of passengers who will be using them—and the Government supply adequate compensation for poor and reduced services, not just for a day or two, but for years.

Compensation can come in a number of different ways. As some hon. Members have suggested, fares could be reduced over that period to take account of increased journey times and unpredictability. Alternatively, increase the mitigation payments significantly above the current £30 million that the Government have identified, not as an additional cost but as a recognition that the quality of service to the travelling public in the south-west and Wales will be adversely affected. We need to do as much as we can to prevent that, but what plans does the Minister have to reduce prices or to increase the bucket of compensation to reflect the reduced services?

The key takeaway for the Minister is to listen to local Members of Parliament, hear their concerns about the impact of the reduced service on their constituents, and take very seriously their recommendations for mitigation.