South Western Railway Franchise

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is something of a relief to speak on a subject that is not Brexit, and is not even vaguely Brexit-related, though if there were a people’s vote, South Western Railway would not survive in its franchise very long.

Let me relay a little history. The south western region, which is the Wessex part of the south of England and the south-western suburbs, which I represent, had a little over two decades of South West Trains, which was owned by the company Stagecoach. I do not think that they were regarded with enormous affection, but they provided a workmanlike service, and certainly nothing that could be described as disastrous. Since the change in the franchise, which was announced in August last year, there has been a rapid deterioration. That is the matter on which I wish to speak.

SWR, or South Western Railway, has joined Southern, Northern and Thameslink at the bottom of the league tables on almost every measure of performance. That is of concern to the people who use the eight stations in the area that I represent in Parliament. But it is not just me; many other MPs in south-west London are concerned. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) has established an all-party group that is doing detailed work on the problem and will, I hope, produce a report to enliven this discussion. The concern goes much wider than my constituency.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It has been brought to my attention that the disabled access points on this line are not up to the standard expected by disabled charities and organisations. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that the Minister should address the need for modern disabled access points that are technically updated and correct for those who are disabled?

[Sir Vince Cable]

That was not on my list of complaints, but I am sure we can add it.

The central concerns that people have are the following. First, there has been a marked deterioration in punctuality and reliability. The consumer group Transport Focus measures satisfaction with punctuality and reliability and it has sunk to 65%, which represents a 12% deterioration in the past year.

The second problem is the ability of the rail company to deal with major disruption. When there is somebody on the line or a points problem, we have been used to recovery within a reasonably short space of time. Now, the whole network is disabled for prolonged periods, due to the apparent inability of either Network Rail or South Western to deal with the problem.

The third problem is a strategy that I would call the concentration of misery. Whenever there is a serious disruption, the rail company has the choice of whether to spread it widely or concentrate it on one or two neglected branch lines. What is happening in practice is that some of the branch lines, including the so-called Shepperton line that runs through Fulwell and Hampton in my constituency, are particularly badly affected. The justification given to me by the company is that that affects fewer people, but the effect is that an already poor service becomes impossible. People are not able to get to work or to school and large numbers of cancellations take place. I had a message yesterday from a constituent who boarded a train and it was then announced that it would not stop at any of the announced stops, but would go straight to Waterloo. That kind of experience is commonplace.

There is then the issue of industrial action. I am reluctant to ascribe blame and I am sure that the rail unions have their share of responsibility, but for almost a quarter of a century we had virtually no industrial action in this part of London. It is now frequent and we have had eight major strikes since the change of franchise. Clearly there is a complete breakdown of communication between the employees and the employers.

Then there is the issue of the new timetable that we were promised. It is probably a source of relief that the company has not tried to put it into practice. We are still offered the old timetable, which the company finds extremely difficult to operate.

Last but not least, there is the promise of a 3% fare increase. That has led to probably the most serious and general complaint about the service: that it simply is not value for money. The surveys recently carried out by Transport Focus suggest that only 36% of passengers judge the service to be value for money, and I am sure that is deteriorating by the day.