Govia Thameslink and Network Rail

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It is also a pleasure to address the railways Minister, who I know is genuinely committed to our railways and is a railway enthusiast. With her in place, I hope we will solve some problems.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) on securing the debate, but I should say something first about my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am chair of the ASLEF group of MPs. ASLEF, as hon. Members know, is the union for train drivers. In their defence, in my experience, drivers are unfailing in their politeness and very helpful in keeping passengers informed when things go wrong. Things go wrong quite often, but that is not their fault.

I have travelled on the Luton to London line every day of my working life since 1969—some 47 years—so I have quite a bit of experience. Govia, despite having newer and longer trains available, is probably the worst operator during all my years of travelling. It does not appear to appreciate the number of staff it needs to operate a train service effectively, and I receive regular complaints from my constituents, especially those using Leagrave station in my constituency. The current customer satisfaction rating shows that fewer than three out of four passengers are satisfied with the service, and that is among the lowest of all the franchises.

Govia is currently proposing to close ticket offices, which is just the latest attempt to cut costs and drive up profits. In my view, a public service should reinvest surpluses and not simply distribute them to shareholders. I am grateful to one of my constituents for making some helpful comments on the changes proposed to Leagrave station. She said that the proposals are “clearly cost-cutting” and will be “detrimental to passenger service.” Some 947,000 passengers use Leagrave every year, which is slightly under 1 million, but there are not enough ticket machines for the current demand and there are no proposals to increase the number. Some are out of date and do not accept current credit or debit cards. Not all types of tickets are available and sometimes faults say that even some basic tickets are “not available.”

I detest machines and much prefer purchasing my ticket from a person. I am very fortunate that I use Luton station, which has a well-staffed booking office with some helpful and charming booking staff. I am not alone in buying my ticket every day—30% of people buy tickets from ticket offices every day and they should be available to all. Not all passengers can use a machine because of disabilities or medical reasons. Govia has a legal duty to ensure equality of access, particularly for people with visual impairments, dyslexia or learning difficulties—I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, so I am aware of those problems—and mental health difficulties.

When the ticket office is open at Leagrave, my constituent says that there are nearly always queues, presumably because people prefer not to use a machine, or because they have a query or their ticket is not available from the machines, and they get a better service from a person. I do not know the responsibilities of the hosts proposed by Govia but, presumably, they will also be staffing barriers and dealing with other issues for passengers, or even issuing penalties, which is time consuming in itself.

There are two entrances to Leagrave station so Leagrave will have two “hosts”. How does Govia intend to comply with health and safety requirements if only one person is on duty and not behind a glass screen? What passed for a waiting room at Leagrave, at one entrance only, was recently converted for barriers only, so I am not sure where the hosts are supposed to operate from. Shelter on the platforms is also minimal.

I use the internet infrequently, but my constituent tells me that the Govia Thameslink website is “totally inadequate” for obtaining accurate information or booking tickets reliably. I am told that not all types of ticket are available on the website and that railcard options are not integrated into ordinary purchases. Govia has not supplied sufficient information to enable people to respond meaningfully to the consultation. Govia says that

“some ticket offices issue less than 12 tickets per hour”,

but there is no way of comparing that figure with other stations or other times of the day. I have tabled an early-day motion on the subject and urge the Minister to review Govia’s franchise with the view to taking it within her Department.

Finally, on punctuality, if I have to get to a meeting in Westminster on time, I go for an earlier train than normal just in case the train is late, as the trains so often are—not missing meetings, and indeed votes, at Westminster is important to Members of Parliament. There are other things that are not Govia’s fault, one of which is sometimes the state of the track. Between St Pancras and the Elstree and Borehamwood tunnel, the track in some places is not good. Almost every day one hears the stops being hit as we go over rough bits of track. Network Rail has something to answer for, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is indeed an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) on securing this important debate, and I also congratulate hon. Members from all parties on articulating their case so well. This railway line has been described as the “misery line” and “the line from hell”, and given hon. Members’ accounts of it one can readily understand why.

The question of railway performance and effective working relationships between railway operators and Network Rail is very much the order of the day. Indeed, this very day we will digest the long-awaited Shaw report into the future of Network Rail. I must confess that my journeys into London from 250 miles away sound a lot more efficient and comfortable than the journeys endured by hon. Members from all parties in the House. It has been said that what Network Rail needs are the right people with the right plan. Hopefully they will start to emerge, but then it is about the delivery of what passengers want, as opposed to ripping things up and starting again. We await the recommendations of the Shaw report with great interest.

Today, however, we are dealing with the current very sorry state of affairs on the biggest franchise that has ever been let, which is the combined Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern, or TSGN, franchise. It covers an enormous territory, centring as it does on our ever-growing capital city, and ranging from King’s Lynn in the far north-east—it is all relative, if that is the “far north-east” for this franchise—to Milton Keynes in the north-west, to Southampton and Portsmouth in the south-west, through to Horsham and to Hastings and Maidstone in the south-east. It takes in the connections to Gatwick airport and, ultimately, converges on central London and some of our very busiest mainline stations, including London Bridge, which has been the focus of such significant complaints in recent times.

I will get straight to it and say that this was undoubtedly an ambitious franchise when it was let in 2014. Although I do not wish to diminish by one jot the considerable concerns that Members have, a very significant amount of disruption was always going to be involved with such a major project. One of the major concerns that have arisen—I hope that the Minister will address it—is the extent to which there has been sufficient honesty with the travelling public about the correctly predicted diminution in the standards of service for the duration of the works, and whether that assessment has been made and properly communicated to passengers. We have heard of people being, on the face of it, deliberately misled.

There has to be a degree of accuracy and honesty about what is achievable. Failing to highlight adequately the difficulties that such major undertakings present, and not communicating all of that to the travelling public, serves only to increase dissatisfaction and dash high hopes and expectations. In addition, given the performance issues that have arisen since the franchise was let, questions arise about whether those performance issues ought to have been better identified before the start of the franchise. I therefore ask the Minister to set out what measures are being taken to address those matters and to say what lessons can be learned, especially in the context of the equally ambitious plans for Waterloo station and Euston, which are a consequence of our decision to proceed with High Speed 2. In short, we do not want to see a repeat of the difficulties encountered at London Bridge at other major rail hubs.

I say the franchise was rightly ambitious, because at its heart was a major infrastructure scheme to vastly improve capacity and performance. To that end, London Bridge is undergoing a major reconstruction and transformation, and I believe that work is expected to be completed by 2018. Among many other things, those works will facilitate 12-car Thameslink trains and a new station concourse to improve passenger circulation, which is currently very badly disrupted.

The network is characterised by increased passenger numbers and overcrowding, and significant safety concerns have been outlined, which should alarm us all. However, the outfall in addressing these issues cannot be underestimated. TSGN’s ability to get trains running to timetable is not good. The percentage of franchise trains arriving at their destination on time stands at 81.7%, compared with the industry average of 89.3%. While that is an improvement from 76% and 79% in the previous two years, it still means that nearly one in every five trains do not arrive on time. Judging from the accounts of hon. Members today, it sounds as if those late trains can be clustered together in much higher ratios.

The “right time performance measure” measures arrival time against trains arriving early or within 59 seconds of schedule. Network Rail says that it is not an entirely reliable measure, but in any event it currently tells the sorry story of a compliance rate of only 52.6%, against the industry average of 64.8%. That means that nearly half of TSGN trains do not arrive within 59 seconds of schedule. Given the experiences that have been outlined today, that proportion of late trains may be significantly more than 59 seconds out of its schedule. Similarly, the record on cancellations and significant lateness is 5.3%, against an industry average of 3%. That is a poor reflection, and that feeds through into customer satisfaction.

It is perhaps no surprise that the common factor in the low passenger satisfaction rates in the three bottom-ranked operators—Thameslink, Southern and Southeastern —is the shared line into London Bridge. It seems that passenger flows in and around London Bridge station may not have been correctly predicted. Does the Minister agree with that observation? Can any lessons be learned on the modelling of such matters? Will she comment on the specific measures that might be taken to improve the flow of passengers, given the establishment of the rail reparation fund for TSGN passengers? That was set up in December 2015 and is worth £4.1 million.

In August 2015 serious weaknesses were found by the regulator in the data used to settle new timetables. Network Rail was found to have overestimated the impact of those timetable changes on performance. It seems that there has been insufficient communication between Network Rail and the operators to accurately identify just what impact the new timetables would have. Will the Minister consider whether and how that process might have been better managed and look into additional mitigating measures that could be taken to ameliorate the adverse impacts? There have been issues surrounding the numbers of train drivers, and we have heard that it is not simply that people are failing to turn up—insufficient numbers have been recruited. There is an issue about platform availability during the major works. Will she comment on that?

Efforts are being made to address to some degree the concerns expressed this afternoon, but I look forward to securing some assurances from the Minister that steps will be taken as a matter of urgency to improve the passenger experience in the franchise ahead of what will, I hope, be an entirely happier story come the completion of the works and the introduction of new services in 2018.

A point was made about the sanctions that might be applied to the operator if it fails to abide by the terms of the franchise. Will the Minister give some assurance that, notwithstanding the change to the structure of Directly Operated Railways, the Department for Transport retains the capability to step in through that office in the event of chronic failure?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Of course, when the east coast main line was returned to the public sector for five years, it made a surplus of something like £1 billion for the Treasury, and during that time it ran a very good service.

[Andy McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. While that was an excellent turnaround from a pretty dire situation, if this particular franchise is, as Members have outlined, so poor that it demands intervention, my concern is that we should still retain the capacity to do that. Given the recent changes to the DOR—it is no longer in the same form—I am concerned that it would not assist at all. Will the Minister address that point?

Will the Minister also address the pertinent issue of electronic ticketing? Members have correctly identified and highlighted the benefits that could be secured from an intelligent roll-out of electronic ticketing. Those benefits relate to access not only to fair fares, but to refunds. I understand that although several tens of millions of pounds was spent trying to progress that agenda, it has come to a shuddering halt and has simply been handed over to the operators.