Rail Services (West Kent)

Debate between John Stanley and Roger Gale

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Stanley]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. The communication failures by both Southeastern and Southern during that period were abysmal.

My final point is that the penalties regime is wholly unsatisfactory, because it impacts solely on lateness. One important question for the Minister on a specific issue: is she satisfied with the accuracy and independence of Southeastern’s calculation? By the most wafer-thin of wafer-thin margins—0.04%—it has managed to escape financial penalties for lateness in its latest figures.

I come to the wider issue of the gross failure of the penalties regime—this was a failure by the previous Government—which applies to lateness but fails to apply to cancellations. As I said in a letter to the Secretary of State, that produces a perverse financial incentive for train operating companies to cancel services willy-nilly to avoid lateness, but the reality on the ground is that our long-suffering constituents and rail travellers would much rather travel on a train that arrives late than stand at the station from which they want to depart, waiting for a train that has not come.

[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

As an aside, I am totally taken aback by the Minister’s assertion that the 12.8% fare increase experienced in east Kent does not include a contribution towards High Speed 1, because that is certainly not the impression that we have been given in the past.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling has just given the figures used by Southeastern to make the case for not paying compensation, but have the figures not been massaged by including the High Speed 1 service, which is normally fairly reliable? Were that taken out, the case for compensation would be overwhelming. Is it not a greater irony that if compensation were finally paid, the travellers on High Speed 1 would benefit from it?

[Sir John Stanley]

I am grateful for that intervention. We shall look forward to the Minister’s reply in respect of Southeastern’s figures. I hope that she and the Secretary of State will look fundamentally at the penalty regime for train operating companies, because it is clearly grossly inadequate and is actually working to the disadvantage of the rail-travelling public.

In conclusion, rail travellers in west Kent are, without doubt, getting a raw deal: they are getting inadequate services at excessive cost. What rail travellers and our constituents in west Kent want are satisfactory services that are accessible from a station reasonably close to their home, at a cost that they can afford. I look to the Secretary of State and the Minister to deliver just that.