South Western Railway Franchise

Debate between Vince Cable and Ruth Cadbury

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable]

That was not on my list of complaints, but I am sure we can add it.

The central concerns that people have are the following. First, there has been a marked deterioration in punctuality and reliability. The consumer group Transport Focus measures satisfaction with punctuality and reliability and it has sunk to 65%, which represents a 12% deterioration in the past year.

The second problem is the ability of the rail company to deal with major disruption. When there is somebody on the line or a points problem, we have been used to recovery within a reasonably short space of time. Now, the whole network is disabled for prolonged periods, due to the apparent inability of either Network Rail or South Western to deal with the problem.

The third problem is a strategy that I would call the concentration of misery. Whenever there is a serious disruption, the rail company has the choice of whether to spread it widely or concentrate it on one or two neglected branch lines. What is happening in practice is that some of the branch lines, including the so-called Shepperton line that runs through Fulwell and Hampton in my constituency, are particularly badly affected. The justification given to me by the company is that that affects fewer people, but the effect is that an already poor service becomes impossible. People are not able to get to work or to school and large numbers of cancellations take place. I had a message yesterday from a constituent who boarded a train and it was then announced that it would not stop at any of the announced stops, but would go straight to Waterloo. That kind of experience is commonplace.

There is then the issue of industrial action. I am reluctant to ascribe blame and I am sure that the rail unions have their share of responsibility, but for almost a quarter of a century we had virtually no industrial action in this part of London. It is now frequent and we have had eight major strikes since the change of franchise. Clearly there is a complete breakdown of communication between the employees and the employers.

Then there is the issue of the new timetable that we were promised. It is probably a source of relief that the company has not tried to put it into practice. We are still offered the old timetable, which the company finds extremely difficult to operate.

Last but not least, there is the promise of a 3% fare increase. That has led to probably the most serious and general complaint about the service: that it simply is not value for money. The surveys recently carried out by Transport Focus suggest that only 36% of passengers judge the service to be value for money, and I am sure that is deteriorating by the day.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour, for securing this important debate on a subject that also affects the thousands of people who use the six stations on South Western Railway’s Hounslow loop line—not only my constituents but the thousands who work at GSK, Sky and so on. I agree with him about the disruption to people’s working, daily and family lives, and I share the concern of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about what the promise to remove the guarantee of a second person on the train means for people who are disabled. The situation needs looking at urgently.

[Sir Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Lady for that additional information, which is germane and extremely useful.

There have been a couple of serious and authoritative reports by the Office of Rail and Road. Sir Michael Holden was invited to carry out a study, and he has actually run railways, so we think he can be trusted for technical judgment. The analysis that is now available suggests that the following are the main sources of disruption. The first is that the franchise itself was not properly conducted. The company overbid or, to put it another way, underbid for subsidy and is now financially stretched. It appears to be struggling to maintain payments to its financiers, and the consequence is that passenger welfare is being sacrificed and the promised investment is not materialising. There are serious questions for the Department and the Minister about to how the franchise was allowed to take place and result in a serious deterioration of standards. The Government have plenty of experience of refranchising, and why they were allowed to disrupt what was a perfectly serviceable arrangement with the previous franchisee is unclear.