Inter-City Rail Investment

Simon Kirby Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak and to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), who made some interesting points.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate on an issue that is very important to people in my constituency. He will not be surprised if I mention London and that other great city, Brighton and Hove.

I am one of the many people from Brighton who frequently commute to London for work, and over the years I have come to know the Brighton main line very well—better than I ever wanted to know it, if the truth be known. I know how important the train service is to people in my constituency and to the whole economy of the south-east. I also know, unfortunately, how frustrated regular rail users in Brighton are with the service they receive.

When I tweeted about this debate on my way up to London this morning, I was inundated with responses from fellow passengers who have simply had enough. One person told me that he has been late to work every day this year because of the trains. Another pointed out that 44% of Southern trains operating on the Brighton main line last year were late. Another tweet described the daily commute as “grim” and rightly protested that people in Brighton deserve better.

Concerns about rail services are raised with me by constituents every week, perhaps more frequently than any other issue since I was elected in 2010. Concerns over cancellations, delays, overcrowding, cold and dirty trains and a lack of information feature most prominently. Last year’s Which? survey confirmed that rail passengers in the south-east have the lowest customer satisfaction in the whole of the UK. First Capital Connect, which operates on the Brighton main line, finished bottom of the pile with a 40% satisfaction rating. The understandable anger among commuters is exacerbated by increases in rail fares, which went up again last week. As one constituent put it to me, people simply do not feel that they are getting value for their money. That is backed up by the 2013 national passenger survey, which revealed that only 32% of First Capital Connect customers and 36% of Southern customers feel that they get value for money for the cost of their ticket. That is hardly surprising when only about 40% of customers feel that they are likely to get a seat.

Clearly, there are serious problems that need to be addressed. At their root is the problem of capacity. The huge demands on the line present challenges for Network Rail and the train companies, and their current failure to meet them is having a terrible effect on passengers. Projected employment growth along the main line between Brighton, Crawley, Gatwick and London means that demands on the line are only going to increase. A report from WSP group last year revealed how serious the situation could become. It concluded that the capacity problem on the Brighton main line would reach critical levels within the next 20 years and prevent rail services from operating efficiently, but none of the people who use the service today would say it will take 20 years to reach critical levels; they would say it is operating inefficiently as we speak.

A number of solutions have been proposed, all of which would require significant investment as a matter of urgency. The WSP report proposed an upgrade of the current line to allow more trains to more destinations and reduce journey times. Another option, which I have thrown my weight behind, is the Brighton main line 2 proposal. I am happy to work with my Brighton colleague, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), if it means that we can make it a reality. It would provide a new line between Brighton and the capital and obviously reduce pressure on the current line while avoiding the bottleneck that is Croydon, which currently causes many of the problems. Network Rail is assessing plans to link Lewes and Uckfield as part of its long-term planning process and acknowledged the attraction of a new route that does not involve the congested east Croydon corridor.

Last year, in the House, I received assurances from the previous rail Minister that the Government were considering Brighton main line 2 as a potential solution to the capacity problems affecting the south coast and would be looking to take the issue forward in due course. My constituents would welcome an update from the new Minister. If he can reassure me this afternoon that Brighton main line 2 is still being considered, I, like many of my constituents, will be very grateful. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite him to Brighton to experience the daily commute and see at first hand some of the issues that my constituents face every day.

In closing, I welcome the work being done to improve the Brighton main line in the short term and the £18 million of improvements carried out over the Christmas period—not without their own inconveniences—which will deliver benefits, but clearly they are not the long-term major investment solution required to expand the rail network in the south-east and to give my constituents in Brighton, Kempton and Peacehaven the service they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

It feels appropriate to be the last speaker in this debate, given that the journey time from my constituency to London to talk about inter-city rail travel is probably the longest of anyone here. I think that it is longer than that of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) at four and a half hours from St Austell on the main line. I join other Members in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) for securing this debate.

I congratulate the vast majority of Members on avoiding long and drawn-out references to High Speed 2. As I have often remarked, in the south-west of England, we would just like average-speed rail, please. I am very supportive of the plans for high-speed rail. It is a necessary part of our economic diversification and of the future-proofing of our rail infrastructure and network. However, the journey time of almost five and a half hours from Penzance to Paddington means that one can fly from London to New York in about the same amount of time as one can get from Cornwall to the Commons. We would therefore very much like to see investment in average-speed rail.

As hon. Members will know, rail connectivity is vital for the peripheral parts of our country, whether to deliver the visitors to Cornwall who spend so lavishly and support a good quarter of the local economy or to enable businesses in Cornwall to take their goods and services to markets in London, the south-east and further afield. That rail connectivity is a vital part of the overall transport network, which also includes Newquay airport, to which colleagues have referred, and the A30 and the A38. That network enables businesses and others to travel around our country, with all the benefits that that brings.

I wish to place on the record my support, along with that of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), for the Government to make a priority of resolving the issue at Cowley bridge in Exeter, which threatens to cut off the south-west every time there is significant rainfall—or, as we say in Cornwall, if there is rain in Exeter, England is cut off. That is part of the future-proofing and resilience that we need to ensure happens promptly in the rail network if we are to continue to experience weather events such as those at the moment, which I am sure we will. Such events have become all too common.

I welcome some of the developments on the network, such as the wi-fi that First Great Western is rolling out. I have long campaigned for that, because it has been absurd that inter-city travellers from Penzance to Paddington have not been able to access it. A business man or any other worker has had to sit on a train for about five hours without being able to access reliable internet services, meaning that they could not use that time as productively as they might have done. I am delighted that my campaign, along with others, to secure wi-fi on the network has been successful.

[Simon Kirby]

Would my hon. Friend be surprised to learn that in the south-east many First Capital Connect trains not only have no wi-fi but no sockets, and that some Southern trains have no toilets? It is a long way to go without them.