Train Operating Companies: Yorkshire

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of train operating companies in Yorkshire.

It is truly an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) and the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for co-sponsoring this important debate.

Back in June, I stood in the Commons Chamber in a rail debate and my opening words were, “What a mess”. Six months on, I have to repeat that statement: what a mess.

Seven months ago, I had a meeting with Northern rail just ahead of the implementation of the revised timetables. I was unequivocally assured that services would improve and that that would be the answer to a lot of the issues that my constituents were experiencing. I was told that the new timetables had been stress-tested and that everything would be fine. Instead, what we got was absolute, total and utter chaos—and I do not use that word lightly. Trains were delayed and cancelled day after day after day. People were late for work, school and college. Vital medical appointments and even funerals were missed, all because of a half-baked plan that was obviously unworkable from day one. In August, I met TransPennine Express and was given yet more warm words and platitudes, but once again there was very little action.

In my constituency, in the six-month aftermath of the May timetable, Dewsbury and Ravensthorpe stations were in the bottom 10 of all smaller stations in the UK for performance: the eighth and third worst respectively. My neighbouring constituency, Huddersfield, was in same bottom 10 of the league table for larger stations. Minister, I will not allow my constituents to receive such treatment from your Government. Things have to get better.

The picture across the whole of Yorkshire has been bleak, hence the title of the debate. Not a single station in Yorkshire was in the top 100 best performers. I am sure the Minister knows that, given that he also represents a Yorkshire constituency. According to The Yorkshire Post and On Time Trains, only 29% of services had been on time at York and Huddersfield stations since the May timetables were introduced. If we look at the 100 busiest stations in the UK, eight out of the top 10 worst stations for on-time performance in the past six months are within the so-called northern powerhouse, with York and Huddersfield being the two worst in the whole country. If we look at all stations in the UK, Slaithwaite, in the neighbouring constituency of Colne Valley—my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley will talk a little more about this later—has the worst service performance of any station. Again, eight of the 10 worst performing stations in the UK are within the northern powerhouse. In contrast, nine of the top 10 best performing stations in the country are in London. This country does not revolve around the capital city of London; there is much more beyond the M25.

Neither is the picture over recent months greatly improved. Using data from trains.im, the monthly performance figures show the region’s two biggest providers, Northern and TransPennine, offered an abysmal service in November, with only 67% and 65% of trains on time respectively—easily as bad as at the height of the timetable crisis and among the worst in recent years. Apart from Brexit and the NHS, this is the biggest item that comes into my mailbox. I do not know how many times I have seen pictures of timetable boards in various stations with lists of cancelled or delayed trains. It really is not good enough.

I must commend The Yorkshire Post—not always the biggest fan of my party—on the work it has done on this issue, which has been absolutely fantastic and is very much appreciated by the many beleaguered commuters who experience the chaos. Earlier this month, it reported that almost 80 trains a day were being cancelled, with overcrowded services frequently running with reduced numbers of carriages. A new timetable, implemented from last week, thankfully offers some small hope of improvement. The first week went better than the first week of the previous timetable, but that would not be hard to beat. When compared to figures over recent months, significant improvement is yet to be seen. From the available data this month, some 77.7% of Northern’s trains have been running on time, up a feeble 0.1% from May’s mayhem. TransPennine has achieved only 73.4% of trains on time this month, down on the 75.5% achieved in May, but up marginally on figures from June and July.

Passengers are understandably weary of promised improvements, and the Rail Minister’s assurance that the situation has stabilised will undoubtedly be met with a degree of cynicism. For six months, my constituents have been given nothing but empty promises and false assurances. It was bad enough through the summer, but we can add to their misery the recent dark, freezing cold mornings on station platforms that are less than adequate, many with little shelter from the elements, and barely fit for purpose. Compensation was promised, but for many it was never received. Hours were spent filling in forms to no avail. I have heard of rail users who purchase their tickets through corporate reduction schemes being refused compensation. Apparently, because they get a discount on their travel, they should not be entitled to refunds, despite the fact that many pay more than £1,000 a year and the level of inconvenience and lost work hours were the same for them as for everybody else.

An expanded compensation scheme has been announced this week for Northern’s customers, starting with 25% for 15 to 30 minutes’ delay. That is reportedly funded by the Government, not the privately owned operator. Sadly, it is far too little far too late. Why was the money not invested in our rail services to prevent the need for such an enhanced compensation scheme? Even as Northern warns that passengers will not see an improvement in services until May 2019, unbelievably its fares are set to rise by 3.2% in the new year. It is clear that regulated fares should be frozen into the new year. I call on the Minister to back the Transport Committee’s suggestion of discounts for those renewing their season tickets for 2019, meaning no price increase.

My constituent, Sophie, has been commuting from Mirfield in my constituency to Leeds every weekday for the past three years. Sophie is partially sighted and has to rely on public transport to get to work. She wrote to me last week to express her many grave concerns. She spoke about the issues at Mirfield station, which I have been raising for more than three years, and how the platforms lack basic facilities, with one being completely inaccessible to people with disabilities. Indeed, the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability points out that across Yorkshire and the Humber, 33% of train stations are not step-free, making them inaccessible for many disabled people.

Sophie also reports a lack of appropriate shelter against the cold winter elements and how nearly every morning she has to queue to buy a ticket when she arrives in Leeds because the train is so overcrowded that the conductor has not been able to pass through the train, and the one new ticket machine at Mirfield is on the opposite platform and is often out of order. Sophie feels incredibly grateful that she is still in employment. She says that it is solely down to her having an understanding boss who has afforded her the flexibility to work around the many train delays that she has had to endure. The past six months have been hell for Sophie and many people like her.

I also want to mention my constituent, Alex, who works near Manchester. He gets the train every morning from Dewsbury. He has had to take nearly two thirds of next year’s annual leave allocation because of the trains’ lack of punctuality. He feels he is getting to the point where he has to consider whether it is worth making that journey to work every day.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Alex’s case exemplifies the bigger point that if we are to rebalance our economy successfully, we need to get the rail infrastructure right between the great northern cities of Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester. Does she agree that that requires investment in the long term, and, in the short term, making the best of what we have? Does she also agree that it is an outrage that one in four of the rail services scheduled from Sheffield to Leeds last Monday, for example, failed to arrive on time?

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that interventions are supposed to be brief, particularly when so many would like to speak.

[Paula Sherriff]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I absolutely agree. A very similar level of service is being delivered to my constituents, so I fully sympathise with his constituents.

Late or cancelled trains have a wide impact. Many of us consider a train to be something that gets us from A to B. Of course that is true, but the disruption is also having a significant impact on people’s mental health. They have no idea whether they will be able to get to work, and can get into quite serious trouble when they are late for the fourth day running. People might rely on them, such as clients or customers. They do not know whether they will get home in time to put their children to bed or see their partner. That is having a massive effect on family life and on social mobility, as not everybody drives. It is also affecting employment opportunities. I have spoken to a number of people who now say that they cannot get to work. They do not drive, so using the train is the only option, and it is not worth the stress.

Our region’s railways are among the least reliable in the country. Ironically, this week Northern rail unveiled a new advertising campaign, designed with safety in mind, to prevent passengers from boarding the trains as the doors are closing. The advert states that the train will depart the station “to the second”. If only! As I see it, there are two major issues with that. First, someone in the advertising department either has a very strange sense of humour or has severely misjudged the situation, given that so many trains have not departed on time during the last six months. Secondly, the campaign is in preparation for when Northern rail removes guards from trains, thus compromising customer safety and further eroding the service on offer to rail users in the north.

As a result of the chaos, many of those who drive, as I alluded to earlier, are turning back to their cars as a means of transport. Falling passenger numbers require action to boost confidence in and accessibility to the rail network. That has sadly not been forthcoming. Rail in the north is still very much the poor relation of services across the country. Recent research from the Institute for Public Policy Research North revealed that spending on transport in Yorkshire and the Humber fell by more per head from 2016-17 to 2017-18 than anywhere else in the country. It reported that, last year, spending per head on transport in our region was £315, which is more than three times less than the £1,019 spent in London. It is simply unacceptable that promised investment has been scrapped, downgraded or delayed, while money is funnelled into London and the south-east.

When it comes to the causes of the poor service, leaves on the line can be blamed for only so much. Indeed, when discussing compensation for rail passengers on BBC News this week, the Minister admitted that the infrastructure is not there to cope. Work to electrify key lines in the north-west was supposed to be finished two years ago, yet delays to that have had a knock-on effect across the north and have been blamed by Northern rail for its postponement of planned service improvements in Yorkshire.

The Minister blames decades of decline for the infrastructure’s inability to cope with network growth, yet it seems likely that the Transport Secretary is set to back a deeply flawed plan for the trans-Pennine route. If the plans that have been mooted go ahead, the tunnels will not be big enough to carry modern freight trains, and insufficient track is planned to allow faster trains to overtake slow ones.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend and neighbour is making a great speech. I must apologise—I have just sat on a broken-down train for half an hour, so she has even more sympathy than usual. She is right: what happened to the northern powerhouse? What happened to those promises of investment in our region?

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[Paula Sherriff]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for that intervention, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to that question.

Frankly, what we have heard from our Transport Secretary, who recently said that he does not “do trains”, shows an appalling lack of ambition for the north. It will do nothing to address the problems of reliability, as both passenger and freight demand on the lines increase. Ministers need to get to grips with much-needed rail improvements. The system is clearly broken, and local rail users know that more than a mediocre compensation scheme is needed to fix it. Passengers need to know that when there is a delay or cancellation they will receive proper compensation, and Northern rail’s expanded delay repay scheme announced this week is welcome. However, the scheme is reportedly funded by the Government. Going forward, it is not acceptable that the taxpayer foots the bill for the failing system, while shareholders continue to be put first.

What people really need is to know is that, rare exceptions aside, their trains will be reliable and punctual. The Transport Secretary has overseen review after review of the rail network, but it is still clear that the franchise system and the separation of infrastructure and operations simply do not work. Resources are not being targeted to where they are most needed, and there is an overarching lack of accountability. The Transport Secretary has cancelled massive projects such as Crossrail for the north, but has still been able to dig up money for London and the south-east—all while Yorkshire saw the biggest fare increase in the country.

We need clarity over responsibility within our rail network to ensure that services put the interests of passengers first, not the financial priorities of shareholders or the political priorities of Ministers. What assurances can the Minister give me that there will be real improvements to Yorkshire’s rail network, and on what timeframe? Beyond an optimism that operators will adopt more passenger-focused services, what sanctions will be imposed where that is not delivered? Also, where rail operators fail, as they have persistently over the last year, what moves will be taken to renationalise those services, and how low is the bar for that to be a real consideration?

Enough is enough. My constituents and I are sick of hearing warm words and platitudes from the Government. I say to the Minister, from one Yorkshire MP to another, I implore you to give commuters in the north proper consideration and to commit to an improvement of services that will see an end to their daily misery.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who spoke thoughtfully and forensically about the rail issues across Yorkshire, and my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), who spoke with great passion and vigour. I will just make a few remarks very quickly.

There are two main lines throughout the Keighley constituency, the Airedale and Wharfedale lines, which were electrified in 1994. Many people built their lives—their journeys into work and their children’s journeys to school, and so on—around those lines. Traditionally, they have been high performing, which makes it even more frustrating for so many people that over the last year the performance levels have sunk abysmally low. I will not rehearse the statistics we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury, but there is a frustration among Members of Parliament about what we can do to change the situation. We plead with Ministers. We plead with Northern and TransPennine. To be fair to the ordinary middle managers there, they try to get back to us, but they seem powerless to effect change.

[Paula Sherriff]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in order to achieve improvements, we will work in a cross-party way with the Minister and with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, and that we will do anything in our capability to try to make things better for our constituents?

[John Grogan]

That was very well put, and I was going to make that point. I am genuinely pleased that we have the Minister and the shadow Minister in their places. There is now some Yorkshire influence on the issue and, I hope, some Yorkshire common sense.

In my frustration, I have been considering who we can write to, so I am writing today to Deutsche Bahn, which ultimately owns Northern rail. We are told that we cannot possibly have nationalisation, but we have a nationalised rail company in Northern rail—it just happens to be German. The whole reputation of Deutsche Bahn is under threat here. I hope that, in the new year, a very senior executive of Deutsche Bahn will come to this House and talk to hon. Members from Yorkshire.

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[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

It is always a delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (John Grogan), and I particularly agree with his comments about Northern, which were very well made. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on securing this timely debate. She set out very clearly the appalling statistics of what has been happening over the past six to nine months in Yorkshire and the suffering that passengers have had to endure.

I want to talk specifically about TransPennine and First Hull Trains. Both companies are part of FirstGroup, which made millions in profit in the last financial year. I will give some experiences of passengers. The first reads:

“Happy Bank Holiday weekend, TransPennine Express. I’m sure we’ll have a good one too when my husband eventually gets on your train service from Leeds to Hull. He’s still sat on the platform. It’s the fifth night in a row, and he has missed his son’s bedtime.”

I have also had constituents write to me to say that they are moving away from Hull because of the unreliability of the service when they want to commute to Leeds. On overcrowding, which has become an issue over the past year:

“If you want intimacy but you’re too scared to seek it out, take a TransPennine Express train instead, and press yourself against four strangers for two hours.”

TransPennine Express decided earlier this year as part of its timetabling changes that it would increase the length of the journey from Hull across to Manchester by adding four additional stops. When questioned about this by the Hull and Humber chamber of commerce, TransPennine apparently said that the

“timetable development will enhance connectivity to and from Hull.”

It actually adds about 15 additional minutes to the journey. There was no consultation or discussion—TransPennine just decided to do this themselves. This does not fit with the northern powerhouse—connectivity between the great cities of the north. It should be reducing journey times, not increasing them.

When we three Hull MPs asked to meet Leo Goodwin, the head of TransPennine Express who has a pay package of £360,000, he would not. In fact, when we had the meeting with the chamber of commerce, we empty-chaired him: we had a chair with his name on, because he would not come and talk to us. We shamed him into coming to explain to us why TransPennine had taken that action. It is clear that there are cancellations and there is late running, and people are being squashed in like sardines on the service from Leeds.

In Hull, we feel like we are the end of the line and often forgotten. We are not getting new trains; we are getting refurbished trains as part of the TransPennine refurbishment stock. The city of Hull does not have a direct train to Manchester airport, but Scarborough—a small and important town—does. We now have longer journeys across the Pennines due to the changes that TransPennine made, and we do not have a direct service from Hull to Liverpool—the area that we know is the spine of the northern powerhouse.

I would like the Minister to respond to our requests. We think that we should have a half-hourly additional express service from Hull and a direct link to Manchester airport. I also want to mention TransPennine Express, because it runs Hull station on behalf of Network Rail. We have been voted the ninth-worst station in the UK by Passenger Focus. We had £1.4 million spent to improve facilities that were supposed to be for city of culture in 2017, but which did not finish until 2018. We have smaller waiting rooms, smelly toilets and gaffer tape over the signage in the station. We have a Christmas tree that was put up and then surrounded with bollards and hazard tape. The lack of pride that TransPennine has in our station just beggars belief. We have had no station manager for months; we have had remote management from Huddersfield.

[Paula Sherriff]

I have a similar problem at Dewsbury. We do not have any toilets in our stations, and TransPennine Express have suggested that my constituents and passengers using the station should use the pub nearby. For cultural and other reasons, many people are not comfortable going into the pub to use the bathrooms. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a disgrace that a very busy station should not have any toilet facilities in this day and age?

[Diana Johnson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are real questions for the Department for Transport about whether TransPennine is meeting its franchise specification.

We were really proud in Hull to get the open-access operator Hull Trains in September 2000—we had to fight to do so. It has been a brilliant flagship open operator service since 2000, but it has really deteriorated in the past 12 months. It has only four trains, which are constantly being taken off to be repaired. They are class 180s—people who know about these things have told me that they are not fit for purpose for the route that they travel every day on the east coast main line. Customers are so frustrated at the cancellations and the services that stop at Peterborough or Doncaster. They do not feel that Hull Trains is giving them fair information in good time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who unfortunately cannot be here this morning, has asked me to say that Hull Trains is due to get new trains at the end of 2019, which is very welcome. However, we think that First Group needs to put pressure on to get those trains to us sooner. The past 12 months have been disastrous for Hull Trains’ customer relations. We need those trains in Hull as soon as possible. The managing director told me that she might be able to get an additional train from somewhere else after Christmas. That is welcome, but Hull Trains really needs to sort itself out. I am pleased that the Minister, a Yorkshire MP, is in his place, and I hope we will start to see some real changes over the next few months in rail services in the north.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I thank everybody who has contributed to this passionate debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on securing it.

We all agree on the importance of our region and the critical role that rail plays in helping it reach its full potential. I have listened to representations about rail services on the network in my home county, and I wish to set out a few thoughts about what went wrong, how the Government responded, and our plans for the future. We have heard powerful speeches about how the problems experienced across rail in the north last summer impacted on people’s lives—whether that was people getting home or having access to work, healthcare and so on—and I entirely recognise and agree with that. There is a personal dimension to this, as well as a bigger economic one.

[Paula Sherriff]

If that is the case, and if the Minister recognises the impact that the chaos had on people’s lives, why is he allowing the fare increase from January?

[Andrew Jones]

I will come on to talk about fares and plans for the future, but let me focus on some of the points raised today. A number of colleagues raised a point about disabled access. As we know, our rail transport infrastructure is primarily Victorian. Successive Governments have run an Access for All investment programme, and that has continued, including a £300 million extension in the next control period. We published our inclusive transport strategy last July, which for the first time included work on hidden disabilities. As colleagues may remember, I was in the Department for Transport a couple of years ago, and we had our first ever conference on mental health and transport. That was a significant moment—I was pleased that we went calling as it attracted so much attention. Work on making our transport system more accessible and easier to use for people with disabilities, including hidden disabilities, is central, and I am sure no hon. Member here would disagree with that.

One underlying point has been that the quality of rail performance in the north has been unacceptable. That is correct; it is clearly the case. Following the May timetable change we had a very difficult summer on our railways, but lessons have been learned, especially in regard to future timetable changes, which we have already started to implement. A timetable change on 9 December landed significantly better than the changes in May, and I will expand on that shortly.

The problems in May had a number of causes, including the impact of engineering works. Long delays to the two electrification schemes in the north-west impacted on Northern, which had planned for those schemes to be completed, but they were not. It then had to completely re-plan its timetable in less than half the normal time, together with associated staff training and changes. However, we have made some headway on that. A change on the scale of that in May was, quite frankly, coupled with insufficient time for planning, which of course impacted on passengers. It was a complete failure right across the industry. That is why we set up a full inquiry into those timetable changes, chaired by the independent regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, under Professor Stephen Glaister. He has published interim reports, with a final report published just a few days ago, and the Department are reviewing its recommendations. As I said earlier, lessons from that incident must be learned, and the impact on passengers must be placed at the centre of every planning decision.

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[Paula Sherriff]

I am incredibly disappointed by the Minister’s response. He did not respond to a number of points. Once again it seems that sorry is the hardest word. He can be in no doubt—he must have heard loud and clear—that things need to improve and must improve. [Interruption.] He is chuntering from a sedentary position. I am not sure what he said, but I sincerely hope that we shall not be here again in six months reporting on a lack of progress, or further deterioration. Yorkshire towns and cities will no longer tolerate being second best, and I hope that he has heard that.

I am grateful to all the hon. Members who took part today, including the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). I am sorry to single him out, but there are 17 Tory MPs in Yorkshire. Where are they? One has turned up today—and the hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) has turned up in the past minute. It is not good enough. Does that mean that rail services in the rest of Yorkshire, represented by Conservative MPs, are fantastic? [Interruption.] Well, not all of them—where are the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns)? The Minister has heard the stories of human suffering and misery, social mobility, mental health and life chances. My constituents and others in Yorkshire deserve better.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).