Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities

Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Tim Farron

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a joy to continue serving under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Stuart—I am thoroughly enjoying it, and I hope you are as well.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing a very important debate, which I think would have been even better attended if it had not clashed with the Railways Bill. This issue matters hugely to so many of us, but I am sure it also matters to many Members who are in the main Chamber. He made a really strong case for rural rail services in his beautiful constituency, as did the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), who made a really good speech that highlighted the issues affecting her lovely part of the world.

The major timetable update that we expect on 14 December is a source of significant worry for many of us in rural communities. Although there are some exciting developments that I am sure the Minister will list, we fear that the changes will be overwhelmingly urban and intercity focused, just like those introduced in May. They offer far too little to the rural communities that the Liberal Democrats now represent so comprehensively from Wick to Penzance, with Oxenholme pretty much halfway.

Rural rail routes suffer from limited frequency, infrastructure constraints and, ultimately, a lack of investment in tracks, stations and rolling stock. On the Lakes line, the Furness line and the Cumbrian coastal line, we see hourly services if we are lucky, whereas it is closer to every two hours on the Settle to Carlisle line. This has a negative impact on commuters, on school and college students, and on our vital visitor economy, which serves 20 million people, provides jobs for 60,000 and is worth £4.5 billion to the economy every year.

Connecting to local buses, which hon. Members have mentioned, becomes precarious when even small timetable changes can blow apart entire journey plans. In Grange-over-Sands, buses and trains coincide at exactly the same time on each hour, and predictable lateness on both roads and rail mean that there can be no certainty of interconnectivity. People seeking to get home to Cartmel, Flookburgh, Allithwaite and Lindale live with the daily anxiety of not knowing whether they will make their connection. On the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line, villages in Yorkshire and Cumbria miss out because passenger services to rural communities have been downgraded. The 13.37 service from Carlisle to Leeds, which passes through my constituency, has been converted into a semi-fast service, so it misses out most of the intermediate stations. By working with local campaigners, we have thankfully secured additional stops at Garsdale and Ribblehead, but Armathwaite, Lazonby, Langwathby, Dent and Haughton are still bypassed, leaving those communities with a four-hour gap in southbound services in the afternoon. The Government would never tolerate this sort of thing in an urban community.

An additional example of rural and northern communities being overlooked is the network closures in January during the Clifton bridge work—something that will impact pretty much everybody on the west side of the country. Passengers changing at Oxenholme between the Lakes line and TransPennine Express services to Manchester airport face waits of almost an hour in both directions, but that is not the half of it, because Avanti has chosen not to serve Oxenholme at all. This is hardly a surprise to many of us, because whenever there is a problem with the track in Scotland or Cumbria, Avanti almost always chooses to cancel all services north of Preston anyway. We are used to Avanti treating Cumbria, north Lancashire and Scotland as if we do not exist, but as predictable as this is, it is not acceptable.

If Avanti’s normal London timings had been maintained as far as Oxenholme, the connection with the Lakes line could have continued. Alternatively, TransPennine Express, which is still operating, could have taken over those timings, but it sadly declined. Even if its trains could not continue beyond Preston, a simple Preston to Oxenholme shuttle would have kept a reliable interchange in place and still provided four trains per hour to Manchester.

With years of west coast main line upgrade work still to come, the lack of planning for rural connectivity cannot be allowed to continue, and the upgrades do not promise enough for the main line in the rural far north-west of England. I think it would be fair to conclude that we saw that most acutely with the derailment on the southbound track at Shap on 3 November. It was not a laughing matter, and we were very grateful that no one was seriously injured, but that derailment has surely got to be a wake-up call for Network Rail.

[Rachel Gilmour]

I have three nuclear facilities in my constituency: Hinkley A, B and C. David Peattie, the chief executive officer of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has referred to the horrible incident at Shap, because the NDA runs nuclear waste on trains on that rail line. Does my hon. Friend agree that if there had been nuclear waste on that train, the situation would have been even worse?

[Tim Farron]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The horror was even closer to happening than that: nobody was hurt and the train remained upright between the tracks, but it was about eight minutes off being hit by the northbound train going in the opposite direction, which would undoubtedly have led to catastrophic loss of life. I do not want to pre-empt the ongoing investigation by the rail accident investigation branch, but we cannot help wondering whether the failure of this Government and the previous Government to fund the upgrades necessary to ensure the resilience both of the line and of the embankment between Warrington and Lockerbie could have played a part in that terrifying near miss.

There is much to welcome—the Liberal Democrats welcome the expansion of contactless fares into more rural and suburban areas of the London commuter belt, as well as the improvements on some rural midland lines—but we are urging the Government to establish a nationwide tap-in, tap-out ticketing system, which would be simple, modern and fair. It is time to end the regional lottery that passengers face across our network. We also continue to campaign to reverse the cuts to the restoring your railway scheme, which was scrapped by the Chancellor in last year’s Budget. That scheme would have delivered genuine social, economic and environmental benefits to rural areas that are too frequently cut off from public transport. We want to see smaller rural stations reopened and a UK-wide Network Rail railcard introduced, making rail travel more affordable, tackling regional inequalities and simplifying the system for passengers.

Accessibility of Radiotherapy

Debate between Rachel Gilmour and Tim Farron

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron]

Yes. By definition, almost all of the radiotherapy deserts—those places that are beyond sensible and safe travelling times—are rural communities. As a result, they have terrible public transport. It is not just about the cost. The increase in the bus fare cap is hugely damaging, but for many of our communities—my hon. Friend’s and mine alike—it almost does not matter what the bus cap is; if there is no bus to spend the fare on, people are stuffed, really. That has a huge impact on their cancer outcomes, which means whether they survive or not.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Could the reason that radiotherapy is used in only 35% of cases, rather than 50% of cases, be that local transport just does not exist to take people to have the treatments that they need?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a combination of reasons, which I will come on to in a moment, but distance from treatment is undoubtedly the critical point that decides whether people can access and take advantage of lifesaving and life-prolonging treatment.