Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) on securing the debate, which I have found fascinating—I must confess that I did not think I would. I am pleased to be here to sum up for the third party in the House.

The hon. Lady was encyclopaedic in her knowledge and wonderful in explaining the key issues. I will not repeat each and every one, but she talked about ticketing—as did the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), to whom I will come in a moment—and that rings all sorts of bells. We need a method across the entire rail network for getting the best deal for customers.

At this point, I should declare an interest: I frequently use the Virgin Trains West Coast, and with my senior railcard I manage to get some good discounts. However, because of the nature of how we work in this place, I cannot always book a ticket when that would be cheapest, which makes it very expensive.

I totally understand overcrowding on trains. I am fortunate in that I do not have to commute around London; even though my claustrophobia is now much better, I do not know whether I could do it. Sometimes, when I see how bad the tube is, I am able to step back and wait for 20 minutes until things calm down, but that cannot be done on a train. I feel very sorry for people who have to go through that on a daily basis.

The biggest issue seems to be how the franchises are handed out. We hear that some franchises were given to operators who did not have enough drivers—that is a complete disgrace. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside said, passengers should be entitled to a full service, but, if I picked it up correctly, 58,500 cancellations took place in a week—not in a year?

[Mrs Ellman]

That was in one year—in 2016, to be specific.

[Marion Fellows]

I stand corrected. However, in anyone’s book that number of cancellations is not acceptable. The management fee basis on which the Southern franchise was put out seems to be quite a drain on the public purse and something that the Government should look at as quickly as possible.

[Clive Efford]

Did the Scottish National party Government in Scotland learn anything from the franchising process we have undergone in England? The passenger survey shows that, since the Scottish Government privatised the service to Abellio, satisfaction in the service has declined, and the service has declined since then. I wonder whether any lessons—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not think we need to start debating Scottish railways—unless you really want to, Marion Fellows—because I am not sure they are germane.

[Marion Fellows]

Perhaps we should. It is important that the Minister hears how we dealt with these things in Scotland so that he can take on board some of the things the Government there have done.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes gave us an interesting and humorous list of journeys from Cleethorpes to Haverfordwest. I really enjoyed that. I could introduce him to someone I know well who regularly journeys from here in London to north of Dundee. She is an expert on how to get the best deal with split ticketing. However, the whole point is that people should not have to become experts in that area. There should be a way of simply going on to a website and finding the cheapest journey as easily as possible.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to his time on the Select Committee in a former Parliament and was disturbed to find that we are still dealing with the same issues. I know you do not want me to go on for too long, Sir Edward, so I will not do a full summing up of what everyone else said, but, for the Minister’s benefit, yes, there were issues in Scotland over the franchise given to Abellio, but after much consternation among passengers, the Scottish Government brought in an improvement plan and since then things have moved forward. The score for ScotRail on the passenger satisfaction survey was at 83%, which was lower than the previous year, but in the last month or so it has gone back up to about 90%—a number that many companies and commuters in the south-east of England would be delighted to have.

The Scottish Government have put more than £5 billion in an investment programme for the five-year period to 2019. We will open new stations and build new lines. We see that as a way to get a greener Scotland and to increase Scotland’s economic base.

I commend to the House the ten-minute rule Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry)—I myself have to read his constituency because it is so vast—introduced in the Chamber only this week. What we really need in Scotland is Network Rail to be devolved. The Scottish Government can take forward many programmes, but ultimately Network Rail is not devolved, which means it does not have full control over the rail network in Scotland.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I know the hon. Lady will want to speak to the report.

[Marion Fellows]

Yes, I shall do—I apologise, Sir Edward. It is important for the Minister to understand that it is possible to improve things and move them forward. As part of the process of making things better on the English railways, if I can put it that way, he may also want to look at taking powers to nationalise them again, as we did in Scotland, so that Government organisations and national organisations could bid for franchises. That happened on the east coast main line, and it ran very well.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I want to come back to the hon. Lady’s point on further fragmentation of the rail network. How does she feel the passenger experience of travelling on the railways would improve if the management of the infrastructure were further fragmented by having part of it devolved to Scotland, even though many franchises operate in both Scotland and the rest of the UK?

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I could speak of a personal constituency issue: there were real difficulties with the electrification of the Glasgow to Edinburgh line. Transport Scotland was responsible for part of it, but some of the issues were being dealt with down here with Network Rail. That made it difficult to get real accountability. The Scottish Government wanted to be accountable for everything, but they could not be because Network Rail is not devolved. That is why we ask for it to be devolved.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Lady is being generous with her time in giving way. When we consider some of the services that operate on the west coast main line and the east coast main line that cross the border, does she not accept that it would be even more difficult to operate a seamless passenger experience if those operators had to deal with both Network Rail in England and a separate network rail in Scotland?

[Marion Fellows]

I see where the hon. Lady is coming from, but no, I would not agree with that; at the moment it is working well. I see no reason why the Scottish Government would make life difficult for Network Rail in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I am sorry, but I cannot agree with her on this occasion.

I will end there, Sir Edward; thank you for the opportunity.