Portsmouth-London Railway Line

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) on securing this debate. She made her case with great clarity and determination—she is a steadfast defender of her constituents’ interests. The first question that I should like to answer concerns the meeting she requested: I would be happy to meet her to discuss this further.

I fully appreciate how important rail services are for the residents of Portsmouth North—my hon. Friend’s constituents—and I am very much aware of the concerns that have been raised about the provision of class 450 rolling stock on the London-Portsmouth main line, which is an essential artery connecting communities across Hampshire, Surrey and south-west London. The provision of reliable rail services on the line is enormously important for economic activity and growth along the route. Nearly 7 million passenger journeys were made to and from Portsmouth stations in 2009-10.

To answer the questions asked by my hon. Friend, some explanation is required of the contractual history of the SWT franchise. The current Stagecoach South Western Trains franchise was competitively tendered by the previous Government in 2006, with the contract commencing in February 2007. All bidders were required to give a commitment to lease both the class 450 and the class 444 rolling stock for the life of the franchise term, because the Strategic Rail Authority—a body now disbanded but which at the time handled franchise decisions for the Government of the day—gave a statutory undertaking to the rolling stock company that owned the trains. That arrangement, known as a section 54 undertaking, was part of the funding package agreed to replace the older slam-door stock, which had operated in the south-west since the ’60s.

New-build class 444s and 450 electric multiple units were phased in between 2001 and 2007. If the previous Government had not required the operator to lease the trains, the taxpayer might have been left to foot the whole bill. Although the section 54 undertaking requires SWT to lease the trains, the operator takes the decisions on where to deploy the rolling stock across the different parts of the franchise network to address capacity problems as efficiently as possible.

As we have heard from my hon. Friend, SWT deploys a mixture of class 444s and 450s on services between Portsmouth and London. A 10-car maximum formation class 444 provides 598 seats, whereas a 12-car maximum formation class 450 provides 738 seats. My hon. Friend is rightly and understandably focused on the concerns of her constituents, but the train operator needs to balance the competing interests of different communities that use the services provided by the franchise.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

Is the Minister in a position to ask her Department to examine the figures that justified the decision by South West Trains to move the rolling stock away from Portsmouth to elsewhere? Is she able to argue that those figures are somewhat arbitrary to say the least and totally misleading in most cases?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Villiers]

I am always happy to respond to the concerns of colleagues; I am happy to look at the numbers again and ask my officials to do that. As I shall point out later, however, there are very real capacity problems on the line that would be difficult to address without the use of class 450s.

[Penny Mordaunt]

The key part of my argument, which I hope the Minister will understand, is that South West Trains has not addressed overcrowding on the line. The fact that spaces for people to sit are provided does not mean that people have space to sit down. The group of people who suffer overcrowding potentially are the same group of people who suffer painful and uncomfortable seats. They are the same group of people who are asking for the new trains.

[Mrs Villiers]

I very much understand my hon. Friend’s concern, but in reality we—the Government and the train operator—have to balance the interests of different communities along the line. Even if it were affordable to replace all the 450s with class 444s, and even if they were used on all services, it would have a significant detrimental impact on people further up the line, many of whom would not be able to get a seat as a result. I shall come to that in a moment, however.

The most recent route utilisation strategy work makes it clear that the infrastructure is just too full to deliver additional trains. That leaves limited options for relieving overcrowding, one of which is to use longer trains with more seats, which the operator has chosen to do. The seats on the 450s provide vital capacity for passengers closer to London. If SWT were to use class 444s for all Portsmouth services, it would worsen peak crowding problems from stations such as Guildford and Woking. More passengers would have to stand between Woking and London than do today, and removing 450s from the Portsmouth to London route might have other knock-on effects, such as displacing the class 450 carriages on to the Weymouth line, where journey times are even longer than from Portsmouth to London.

We all accept that key crowding between Portsmouth to London occurs during peak hours. In response to public concern of the sort that my hon. Friend has raised, SWT has promised to use 444s in the off-peak where it can. The extent to which it can do this, though, is dependent on complex issues to do with timetabling and the availability of trains and train crew. These complexities flow from the intense use we make of our railways and the need to deploy rolling stock and staff in a way that generates maximum passenger benefits. That means that some off-peak trains have to be class 450s to ensure that they are in the right place for the peak-time slots.

My hon. Friend set out her view that three-plus-two seating is not suitable for services on journeys of the 90-or-so minutes that her constituents face in getting to London. I can understand her concerns. However, three-plus-two seating is currently deployed on a number of routes with comparable journey times—for example, journeys between London stations and Margate, and London Liverpool Street and Ipswich. Issues of health and safety are the responsibility of Her Majesty’s railway inspectorate and the Office of Rail Regulation. Neither of those bodies, I am afraid, has sought to restrict the use of class 450s on longer-distance journeys.

At the heart of my hon. Friend’s speech is the request that the Government should introduce new requirements on rolling stock seating into current and future franchises. I hope that she will understand that to intervene in the current franchise and require SWT to change its rolling stock would involve renegotiating contractual terms. This always comes at a cost to the taxpayer—a cost that I am afraid we can ill afford when we are striving to address levels of borrowing inherited from the previous Government which are the highest in our peacetime history. Looking forward to what might be included in the next franchise, she will be aware that the decisions that the Government make on the railways are constrained by a number of factors, including infrastructure capacity, affordability and value for money.

The experiences of my hon. Friend’s constituents reflect some of the very difficult trade-offs that are made on our railways every day of the year. I acknowledge, of course, that many passengers in Portsmouth would probably prefer the environment and the seating pattern of class 444 carriages rather than class 450s. However, for the practical reasons that I set out in my response about crowding levels further up the line and infrastructure limitations, I would be unwise to make promises on the pattern of rolling stock use on the Portsmouth line in the future. Changes of the sort that she would like in relation to the seating patterns on trains would have a significant impact on the affordability of the franchise process.

As well as these practical considerations, there is another reason why I am reluctant to make declarations on rolling stock deployment on the south-western franchise in years to come. We are in the process of reforming franchises, and we have recently completed a consultation on this. A significant element of the approach that we propose would involve giving railway professionals greater flexibility to make key operational decisions to enable them to react more effectively to passenger needs and to run their services in a more commercial way. We do not envisage specifying detailed operational issues such as the seating layout of rolling stock required on specific routes, as we do not believe that it makes sense to take that sort of decision in Whitehall. We want instead to put in place the right incentives to ensure that operators respond to passengers during the period of their franchises. We will therefore be looking to include demanding requirements on service quality.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I would very much like to hear from the Minister a commitment on this and an understanding of the implications of these types of seating, especially over long journeys. While I acknowledge that these trains are being used for longer journeys elsewhere, this is causing a tremendous amount of physical damage. People are having to employ osteopaths and chiropractors and are really suffering. It is not just a comfort but a health and safety issue. There are a wide range of options—for example, sticking the different trains together when they get to Guildford. Often, trains join up when they get to Guildford, and class 450 carriages can be put on when they get to Guildford and Woking to allow other commuters to use them. If they are in operation down in Portsmouth, people will sit on the comfier seats first. Also, there is other rolling stock that the Department is trying to do something with—I think that they are called class 460s and they used to be on the Gatwick line. There must be a solution to this out there, and I urge the Minister to pull the train operating companies together to try to find it.

[Mrs Villiers]

I am happy to work with my hon. Friend and the train operating company to see whether there are alternatives that have not been considered which can be brought into play without unfairly compromising the interests of passengers on a different part of the route, and without affecting the affordability of the franchise for taxpayers and fare payers. I encourage her to continue this dialogue with the train operator, and I am happy to take part in that. I think she will accept that I cannot promise to issue a directive to train operating companies on the detail of the seating plans of their rolling stock. That would not be affordable and it is not the right long-term option for the management of the railways in this country.

I appreciate the opportunity to debate this issue with my hon. Friend. As I have said, I am happy to continue to work with her to see whether a compromise can be found. I look forward to meeting her, and perhaps other colleagues who have attended this debate, to discuss the matter further.

Question put and agreed to.