Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

That is not accurate and I will tell the right hon. Gentleman why. If it were not for the stitch-up with Serco and Abellio taking £17 million out of the deal and £5 million that we could use to have a guard on every train, we would not have the problem. So, yet again, he just serves this up to his mates. He does his deals with these people, extracting the value from our railway system. [Interruption.] Absolutely not. It is important to point out that the Gibb report makes no assessment of the merits and de-merits of driver-only operation. However, despite a lack of assessment, Chris Gibb makes it clear that he supports DOO and thinks that any industrial action is wrong.

I would like the Secretary of State to reflect on the following passage from appendix 1 of the Gibb report. It says:

“We have undertaken this project for CLGR Limited, a consultancy company owned and operated by my family and I, and CLGR Limited has been contracted to Govia Thameslink Railway, as facilitated by the DfT. Discussions have been held under the terms of a confidentiality agreement between CLGR Limited and GTR.”

There we have it—Chris Gibb is contracted to Govia, the very company he is supposed to be reporting on. It is more than just “he who pays the piper”. Surely even this Secretary of State can see this latest blatant conflict of interest. Where is the independence in this report? It is just another stitch-up.

What is it with the DFT? Its senior civil servant, who previously told the world he wanted unions out of his industry, has his own consultancy company—First Class Partnerships, I believe—to advise the parent company of Govia, the very company that was then handed the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern concession on a £1.2 billion-a-year gold plate. This Government would refuse to recognise a conflict of interest if it got up and bit them on the gluteus maximus.

Labour, like the staff who understand and operate our rail network, the passenger groups who have been protesting and have been motivated to take legal action, and disability charities, simply do not agree with the assumption that destaffing and deskilling our railways is a positive step. Despite being first introduced more than 30 years ago, DOO is only in use on a third of the national rail network. It was originally introduced on three or four-car trains at a time of declining passenger numbers. Passenger numbers having increased hugely in recent years, it is now proposed to introduce DOO on trains with as many as 12 cars. In the past 15 years, passenger numbers on Southern have increased by 64%, from 116 million to 191 million a year. That enormous rise in numbers means that at the platform-train interface there are inevitably increased risks to passenger safety, as anyone who travels on Southern services can see.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain why the same union has agreed to 12-car-train driver-controlled operation on Thameslink, with the same company, and on the same lines?

[Andy McDonald]

It is somewhat curious, is it not, that people are being criticised for adhering to a previously achieved agreement, whereas, looking at the situation as it is now, they quite rightly want to look at it properly.

Labour believes that passengers are more at risk if they no longer have the guarantee of a safety-critical member of staff on the train to prevent something from going wrong or assist when something does go wrong. The view of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of railways, Ian Prosser, has been laid out in the Office of Rail and Road’s report, “GTR-Southern Railways—Driver Only Operation”, published earlier this year. Mr Prosser is clear that there are obvious caveats to safe operation of DOO, namely legal levels of lighting—that would be a good start—suitable equipment, suitable procedures and the competence of the relevant staff. None has been adequately satisfied, even by his assessment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on taking your place.

When I was first elected two years ago, I was campaigning to bring a number of extra train services to Sutton, including by extending the London Overground, but I was rightly told by many passengers—mainly Thameslink passengers, at that time—that they just wanted the trains that were already there to run on time. If we fast forward to today, the complaints about Thameslink in my postbag and my inbox have been clearly overtaken by complaints about Southern. One thing that I knew I was going to hate about being elected as an MP was the return to commuting, which I had not done for a little while. I have been furiously tweeting about the complaints I have received and about my own experience. I even missed a “meet the manager” event at London Victoria station, because I could not get there on one of its trains.

It is predominantly the Brighton main line that causes a lot of the problems in terms of infrastructure and poor linkages. A lot of the problems start when Sutton services link at Selhurst. That is where we need investment. All the trains that go through Sutton at the moment are driver-only operated, and they all work reasonably well until they get to that point.

In the short time I have to speak, I would like to make four points on how we need to sort this out. No one component, institution or organisation in this dispute has come out of it particularly well. The Department has to my mind built up a very unwieldy agreement that takes up 22% or 23% of the entire rail network within its structure. I would like that to be addressed when the franchise is up for renewal.

I would like the Mayor of London to have a greater say in the management of the suburban lines. Now, that is not the Kent line or the Sussex line.

[Henry Smith]

I am glad my hon. Friend is clarifying the fact that he does not include in that the Sussex, Surrey or Kent lines, because of course we do not have a chance to vote for the Mayor of London.

[Paul Scully]

I totally agree and I was very specific about that. The Mayor of London did himself no favours by overstepping that mark.

We need, with the congestion on the lines and the poor quality of the rail, to invest in the lines. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked about the time it takes to get to Mitcham Eastfields. That is great in theory, but sometimes the trains go so slowly. Today, I was going to London Bridge and I might as well have been on a milk float, frankly, with the speed we were going—and then I might have even got a seat, which would have been a bonus.

Southern has been very abrasive in its approach to union matters, especially at the beginning. There are clearly too few carriages so we often have breakdowns, and there are too few drivers, hence the staff shortages, but we must come back to the unions. That is for no other reason than that they are the pressing issue. Chris Gibb said:

“The fact that nobody is being made redundant or losing pay against their wishes, that there will be more GTR trains operating with two people on board, and that safe Driver Only Operation is already extensive in GTR, the UK and Europe, just serves to make this dispute more difficult to comprehend, especially for passengers.”

Let us work backwards and get the unions around the table. Let us sort out this dispute and get a terrible service back to being just an incredibly poor service. From there, we can then make it to the next stage and get it to be a good service. As we have heard, the punctuality figures are starting to come up at the end of the dispute as drivers and new carriages are starting to come on stream. Let us get the £300 million investment in and, when the franchise comes up for renewal, let us look at it in the round and break it up so that it will be more manageable.