Southern Railway (Performance)
Debate between Lord Herbert of South Downs and Crispin Blunt(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on securing the debate. I am not sure congratulations are in order simply for winning the ballot, though, because I understand he was competing against my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon South (Chris Philp), for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani), for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) and me. We were all competing for this subject today.
Crispin Blunt
As my right hon. Friend says, he won. Given the number of hon. Friends who wish to contribute, I will try to restrain my remarks, despite the immense pain felt by my constituents because of Southern’s service. I have been president of the Redhill, Reigate and District Rail Users Association since my election in 1997, and I have never known anything like the situation that we face today. I do not say that Southern has been a beacon of excellence throughout that period, and my commentary on the performance of the company overall is that it seems focused on the interests of its shareholders rather than its customers. When service improvements such as increased train lengths during out-of-peak services are put forward, there is then an issue of cash and cost, and it appears that service levels for customers are a secondary consideration.
We face a company that has managed itself extremely tightly. The disaster over the introduction of the London Bridge upgrade scheme has seen company performance levels totally collapse, to the cost of the people we serve. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs has already illustrated some of the highlights: the five-hour delay on 30 April and the 230 cancellations and significant delays as recently as last week, on 1 July. Southern’s performance in the heat was worse than any other company’s.
The daily commute has become a wholly unpredictable experience, with the consequences that the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) mentioned. Too often it is a nightmare for the people we represent, so Southern’s levels of satisfaction being at the bottom of the league table are not remotely surprising.
I want to turn to issues specific to Reigate and Redhill, given where my constituents sit on the line.