East Coast Main Line

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on securing this useful debate. We can sing the praises of East Coast—I am happy to do so as someone who uses its services every week; it does not provide a bad service at all—but the idea that this is some way towards being a golden age compared with GNER, which first took over the line and provided an excellent service, is a myth.

As I have said, I am happy to congratulate East Coast, which gets us here every week, usually on time. Passengers want a clean, reliable, safe and reasonably priced service. When they sit back in their seat, they do not care whether the track is operated by Railtrack, Network Rail or a private operator, or whether their seat is in a private coach or a publicly owned one.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

To set the record straight, is it not the case that both GNER and National Express had to hand back the franchise, but this nationalised, directly operated rail service has handed £602 million back to the Treasury?

[Martin Vickers]

The fact that there is one failure—whether in the private sector, the public sector or wherever—does not automatically indicate a flaw in the system. The hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn) said that the change would be privatisation for privatisation’s sake, but the opposite is equally true: do we want nationalisation for nationalisation’s sake? That is certainly what Opposition Members seem to want.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough referred to Northern Rail, but to compare it with East Coast is to compare apples with oranges—a regional operator with an inter-city one. Northern Rail provides a perfectly adequate service in my constituency, between Cleethorpes and Barton-on-Humber, but it does not serve such great metropolises as York, Darlington and Doncaster. The station at Thornton Abbey—in a beautiful, idyllic setting—actually serves two farms and an ancient ruin, and I think it had 13 passengers during 2009. East Coast is fine; it provides a perfectly adequate service, but it does not dash up and down between Newcastle and King’s Cross, so there is no comparison whatever.

I am happy to criticise East Coast when it makes mistakes, which it did when it redesigned its timetable last year.

[Stephen Phillips]

On the timetable, does my hon. Friend agree that although the increased frequency and number of trains is welcome, the lack of joined-up thinking between those trains and local ones has caused constituents real problems that East Coast needs to deal with? If the line is retendered, the Minister must ensure that that factor is included in the tendering process, as I hope my hon. Friend agrees.

[Martin Vickers]

I welcome that intervention by my hon. and learned Friend, who highlights a particular problem. My point is that the station in my home town of Cleethorpes has been removed from the timetable—because there is no through train to it, it is no longer shown as having a connecting service. I think that Middlesbrough was another destination that was removed from the timetable. Regrettably, despite my protests, East Coast did not correct that in its new summer timetable.

The Government show every sign of moving ahead with the new franchise to a good timetable, which I welcome. I hope that the company will put in place services that British Rail removed in 1991, namely the direct services from King’s Cross to Cleethorpes, which I know the Minister is keen to restore in the new timetable.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

Does my hon. Friend agree that spending some money on electrifying the line between Newark and Cleethorpes might well give the east coast an option for diverted trains? The west coast has a multitude of such options whereas the east coast does not.

[Martin Vickers]

My hon. Friend raises a valid point. The important thing for the Cleethorpes constituency in relation to electrifying the line is that 25% of the country’s rail freight, when measured by tonnage, starts or ends at Immingham dock. The line must therefore be a potential candidate for electrification.

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough used, as I suspect all politicians do occasionally, selective statistics, especially ones that were critical of private operations. For example, he omitted the statistic that showed that the west coast main line, in private operation, generates more passenger income than the east coast main line— £820 million in 2011-12 compared with £587 million on the east coast main line.

I hope that the Minister will confirm that we are going ahead with the new franchise, that we are on course to deliver it and that the new franchise will deliver a better service than the existing east coast main line, which is, to be honest, just treading water at the moment. I know that the Minister will also want to ensure that there is a service to Cleethorpes.