Rail Timetabling

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I never took that decision in the first place. It is my view that services running outside London should not be controlled by an elected representative inside London. The approach that we have taken in the north, the west midlands and elsewhere, and have offered in London, is one of partnership so that we get involvement from both sides. That is the right way to do it. With regard to handing over services to the Mayor, London Overground is a franchise run by Arriva, the same company that runs Northern, so I am at a loss as to why people think that that is a magic solution for the future.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Do we really need a review before action is taken? People who commute from Lewes, Polegate, Seaford, Newhaven and many more stations have had to endure not just the timetable changes, but 18 months of strike action and 18 months of misery while the London Bridge works were happening, and we now have fewer trains than ever before. When trains do run, they sometimes do not stop, as happened in Lewes and Polegate today, and when they do stop, passengers cannot get on because of short formations, with trains going down from 12 carriages to four today. The only question my constituents have is, “When is Southern Rail going to lose its franchise?” If I can be helpful to the Secretary of State, the answer should be “Now.”

[Chris Grayling]

The important thing to do is to make sure that these problems are sorted out. It may be that at the end of this there is a franchise change, but I want to do anything like that in the right way, in the right timeframe, and in a way that is justifiable. I have to fulfil contractual commitments. I have to look at where culpability lies. We need to go through that process first. In the meantime, having short-formation trains on Southern, which otherwise is performing pretty well, is completely unacceptable, and it needs to fix that straight away.