Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right; nobody should be standing on a train for this length of time. Nobody should be standing to get to London Liverpool Street from average commuter towns like Chelmsford or Colchester, or even as far as Norwich. The journey from Chelmsford is about 40 minutes, from Colchester it is about 55 minutes and from Norwich it is one hour and 45 minutes or even two hours; we hope to get that down to one hour and 45 minutes with the new trains. Increased capacity will come with the new trains, but there is a massive issue with standing. It is not uncommon to see people—indeed, I have done it myself—standing between Colchester and London. That is not acceptable.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The west coast main line is not as bad, but we often have cancellations, and people stand at Euston waiting but are not told the reason for the cancellation. There is an argument for new rolling stock, whether on the hon. Gentleman’s line or the west coast main line. I agree with his point about fares. The public have got so used to fares being increased that they feel helpless to do anything about it. Fares are far too high now.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Fares are an interesting point. Of course everyone would like to see rail fares come down, but most people say that they want their fare to represent better value for money. We are fortunate that we are getting a brand new fleet of trains, at a cost of some £1.4 billion, but to set that in context, we have waited in some cases 40 years for it. Some of our rolling stock is decades old—in fact, I think some of it even breaches standards in 2019, so it needs to be replaced in any event.

I think the public are clear about what they want: punctual services. In the unfortunate event that that is not possible, adequate compensation for the delay must be available. I would be the first to argue that we should focus our efforts on improving the reliability of the service. Rail users would rather not face delays than receive compensation.

I have raised this issue numerous times with Greater Anglia, which has assured me and colleagues that it is investing more than £20 million in improving the performance of its existing trains. As I mentioned, it is also engaged in a £1.4 billion investment programme over the next two years to replace its current models with new trains, the first of which are due to enter service on the line this year. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), that will increase capacity on our line, with 1,043 carriages available compared with 937 at the moment. That is good news. It is long overdue—sadly, like some of the trains leaving Colchester—but I welcome these announcements.

We must not forget Network Rail, as most of the delays on our line fall under its remit. Members of Parliament from across our region, ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), have called for repair and renewal work on our line as part of the great eastern main line taskforce. We have helped to secure £2 billion as a funding settlement for our line, and we will start to see the benefits of these works in reduced delays and disruption.

I wish to touch on the sensitive and incredibly sad issue of suicide, as I know that fatalities on the line are often the cause of the longest delays. I want to reassure rail users that Members of Parliament from across this House on our line have been working closely with Greater Anglia, Network Rail and the Department to do all we can to put measures in place to try to reduce and minimise the number of people who are, tragically, taking their own lives on our lines.

I hope I have set out why there are good reasons for optimism. I appreciate that I was relatively disparaging about our rail service to start with, but a lot of constituents would feel exactly the same.