Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I am more than happy to do that. The franchise in our area is Abellio Greater Anglia. My region is fortunate in at least one sense—I am not sure what the score is in my hon. Friend’s region—because the franchise is up. There are three bids going in for it.

Let me take a few of the key points from my constituents about why we should have part-time tickets and more flexible ticketing. Deborah from Sudbury said:

“It is very old-fashioned to think that workers go to their office every day and we should not be penalised for flexible working”—

I totally agree.

Some years ago, I went to a presentation about voting patterns by a leading American psephologist. He said there are three groups of voters in the country. I cannot remember two of them, but the other was symbolised by a grey cloud. That was not a political point; it was about character and how we appeal to different types of voter. The voters symbolised by the grey cloud had certain features, one of which was that they were moved by newspaper headlines about bad weather, which is quite interesting. However, the most common feature was that they ate their dinner at the same time every day—quite frankly, that describes my late grandad. However, the era of predictability, of nine to five and of everyone doing the same thing all the time is gone; it has been shattered and blown apart by liberalisation and globalisation. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a fact of life that we and our constituents all face, and our rail ticketing system should reflect that.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Would he say that this is also about reflecting families’ changing lifestyles, in that the 1960s model—the father commuting to work five days a week while the wife was at home with the children—is now gone? With men and women rightly sharing parental responsibilities, they may wish to divide up the days of the week that they work, and season tickets need to reflect that.

[James Cartlidge]

That is an excellent point. Recent Office for National Statistics data show that between April and June 2015, just over 7.3 million people had a flexible working pattern. By the way, that is people who are employed; it does not include the army of people such as self-employed contractors who go into London a few days a week. We have a flexible labour market and flexible working, but our rail ticketing system is, in effect, stuck in the same Julian calendar that we have had since 46 BC. If that sounds like a long time, hon. Members should wait until they get stuck on a delayed service out of Liverpool Street.

Russell from Nayland made an important point about bad value for money:

“On the basis of me paying £5520 a year…this means I am really overpaying for 173 days a year”

of travel, which is an extraordinary statistic. That means that he is, in reality, paying £2,615.76 or, depending on his tax bracket—if he is a solicitor, I suspect it is 40%—£4,000 or more for those 173 days. That is a big deal, particularly in our region, because an extensive survey recently undertaken by Transport Focus found that just 21% of the commuters on Abellio Greater Anglia were satisfied that their ticket was value for money, compared with 34% on other lines. I realise that I may end up in a competition with hon. Members in the Chamber about whose line has fewer happy customers, but there is no doubt that value for money is a big concern.

It is fair to say that if there was more satisfaction with value for money in general, the issue of part-time tickets would not actually feature. I get these emails because people feel frustrated that they look hard at what they are getting and think, “Hold on a minute. I’m paying for Saturday, Sunday and Friday.”