Channel Tunnel Infrastructure: Reliability

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Snape]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with Getlink about the reliability of the Channel Tunnel infrastructure given the recent failure of the electrical supply and the subsequent cancellation of train services between London, Paris and Brussels.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, it is important that there is a full investigation into the three separate incidents which disrupted tens of thousands of passengers’ journeys on 30 and 31 December last and saw some passengers stranded throughout the night, which is clearly unacceptable. I am therefore commissioning the relevant authorities—the binational Intergovernmental Commission, the IGC, which oversees the Channel Tunnel, and the Office of Rail and Road—to review last week’s incidents and also the implementation of recommendations from previous reviews of similar incidents, to ensure that urgent lessons are learned for good.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response. Am I correct in thinking that, when these occurrences happen in and around the Channel Tunnel, it seems to take twice as long to restore services on that part of the line which is the responsibility of HS1 or Getlink as it does on the other side of the channel, where the infrastructure is the responsibility of the French and Belgian railways? Does he agree with me that the latest outage ruined the new year holiday for thousands of people? Could he assure the House that the Government will do what they can to ensure that proper compensation is paid to them for having their holiday ruined? Finally, could he assure me and those of us who are interested in these matters that companies such as Eurostar and Getlink have proper resources, not only to own the infrastructure for which they are responsible but to repair it when things go wrong—something that obviously did not occur promptly on this occasion?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I share my noble friend’s concern about the disruption caused to travellers, in particular those whose holidays were spoiled or at least delayed. There is appropriate compensation made by Eurostar and Getlink, which are private companies, for that.

I take a particular interest in the noble Lord’s last point about ownership and proper maintenance, because there have previously been similar incidents and they do seem to take a long time. I am not sure that I can distinguish between incidents that take five hours on our side of the tunnel and, for instance, one last summer that took seven hours on the French side—but all that time is too long. My concern in this review, which is why I specifically mentioned the review of previous recommendations, is that it is not currently clear to me that all the previous recommendations for better maintenance, fewer incidents and for dealing with incidents when they occur have been followed through to completion by any of the parties that the noble Lord mentioned.