Railway Services: The Pennines

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on the improvement and enhancement of railway services across the Pennines.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, the TransPennine Express franchise will see brand new trains introduced on the route this year to improve and enhance the service. We also plan to invest £2.9 billion in the trans-Pennine route upgrade to deliver faster, more frequent and more reliable journeys between Manchester, Leeds and York, with work beginning this spring. This is our biggest planned investment project on the existing railway.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, the problem is that services in the Pennine area, where I live, and in the north as a whole have got worse. One reason for this is the continuing industrial action between Northern, Arriva and the RMT union. There was another strike on Saturday, which I believe is the 45th strike in the past year. Do the Government understand that they specified the services to be provided in the north and that the Northern franchise is a contract between the Government and Arriva? Is it not time that the Government stepped in to assist in sorting out this present shambles?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we want to see further significant improvements in reliability for Northern passengers. The problems we have seen have been caused by a number of factors. We are working closely with Transport for the North, which co-manages the franchise, to drive this, and we have seen significant improvements in reliability, especially since the December timetable changes were successfully introduced. But there have been, as the noble Lord points out, more than 40 days of strikes on Northern and ending these strikes would of course significantly improve reliability. Although the disputes are between the union and the train operators, the Government are doing all they can to help resolve the issue.