Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)
Debate between Marion Fellows and Louise Ellman(7 years, 8 months ago)
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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?
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.