Southern Rail

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Friday 20th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Today, the world is watching political speeches of historic significance, and I hope my Adjournment debate does not disappoint.

I thank the House for once again allowing the issue of Southern rail to be debated in the Chamber. While many of my constituents—in fact, many people in the south-east region—were pleased to hear that next week’s strikes by the ASLEF union have been halted and that a normal Southern rail service should start again on Tuesday, the fear of a “normal” Southern experience is filling some people with trepidation.

The normal service in the Southern region for the last 18 months to two years has been extremely poor. At times, performance has gone down to a level where fewer than 40% of trains have turned up on time, and the average is around 66%. That compares with over 90% for other operators, so we in the Southern region certainly suffer more than most. It is not just late trains and cancellations. Trains are often short-formed, going from 12 carriages down to 10 or eight. There is also poor customer service, and we have even had our trolley service removed from our trains, to add insult to injury.

Many constituents have been to see me, whether that is individuals who have shared their experience of getting to work late, getting home late and being at risk of losing their jobs, or businesses, and I recently attended the local chamber of commerce breakfast meeting in Seaford, where businesses told me that trade was down because no one could get to them to use their services. In my four towns of Lewes, Seaford, Polegate and Newhaven, the experience is exactly the same.

My constituency has suffered more than most. We are a Southern-only constituency, and we do not have Thameslink or Gatwick Express. We are a very rural constituency, so there are few other forms of transport available. Not all our little villages have a GP, a post office or a school, so people use the trains to get to the main towns or the neighbouring villages to use the services there. When there is no train, people are literally cut off from the rest of the world.

When people come to see me, I say that there are three reasons why the rail service has not been great in our Southern region. The first, of course, is the dispute. As I said at the beginning, that is hopefully on the way to being resolved. We are glad about that, and we praise all those involved in getting people back round the table.

The second issue is Network Rail. Over 50% of delays on the Southern rail network have been down to rail infrastructure issues. We have an old line in the constituency and across Surrey and London. It has lacked investment for 10 to 20 years, leading to recurring signal problems, point failures and track failures. I was pleased that one of the first tasks the Secretary of State undertook when he came into post was to outline some of the initial investment in the track.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a typically powerful case, as a diligent constituency MP. Does she agree that, while passengers understand that there will be service outages, what frustrates them is the lack of information? What we need is proper co-ordination between the train operating companies and Network Rail in real time so that people can make alternative arrangements.

[Maria Caulfield]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is as if he is psychic, because that was going to be my very next point. As well as the investment, the Secretary of State has asked the Rail Delivery Group to bring together Network Rail and the rail operator so that when there are problems on the tracks, passengers have a better experience through better customer service and information about alternative routes. We have all felt frustrated on a Monday morning when engineering works have overrun and trains have been cancelled because of poor communication between Network Rail and the rail operator. Those two points, however, do not take away from Southern rail’s poor performance. As we move from the dispute to a normal rail service, my constituency wants a good rail service.

Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not.

The question has to be, where is the Labour party’s policy? Where is the coherence? Where is the comprehensive costing? Where is the alternative? It is not there. And this from the party that voted against every single welfare change that we made in the last Parliament. What would it have done? It allowed housing benefit claims to reach £104,000 for a single year. They are the people who saw a 46% rise in the housing benefit bill. They are the people who consigned millions of families to welfare dependency, with a record number of children in workless households. This Government are doing something about that.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that Labour Members recently voted against the pay-to-stay policy in the Housing and Planning Bill, under which higher earners in social rented accommodation will pay more and housing associations will keep the revenue to invest in supported housing?

[Mr Jackson]

Exactly; that is a fairness issue. How can it be fair that working families effectively give a direct payment to other people in social housing, who are often not working? That cannot be fair. We have to deal with the issue of welfare dependency.

Housing and Planning Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman cannot very well pray in aid the autonomy, authority and independence of housing associations in what is a voluntary scheme and then say, “Well, actually, you can’t trust them to check their own tenants, so let’s hand it all over to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.” He cannot have it both ways. If they want to be independent and focus their scarce resources—we all agree on that, so there is a consensus—on the most needy of their tenants who require that assistance, then, frankly, and this is a wider issue, they have to raise their game.

However, if we look at amendment 200, we see that it refers to

“people aged over 65…people on zero hours contracts”.

How can we possibly police people on zero-hours contracts? Things change in respect of people’s working circumstances —each week, each month—and policing that will be very difficult.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

If we do not bring in a pay-to-stay scheme, what message does that send out to low-paid workers? A nurse starts on a salary of £21,000 and in the private rented sector often pays nearly £1,800 a month for market rent. With all the best will in the world, they would never qualify for social housing allocations policy. Is it fair that low-paid workers have to pay private market rents and yet if someone earns more than £30,000 in the social housing sector, they get away with discounted rents?

[Mr Jackson]

I absolutely agree—hon. Friend puts it in her normal eloquent and astute way. The fact of the matter is that the Labour party is letting itself down.