Extracts from end of day adjournment debate on Chester-le-Street: Rail Services - Jan 15
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Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab):...The main rail morning and
evening services are provided by three
operators—Transpennine Express, Northern and CrossCountry—but,
since May last year, the main problem has been the reliability of
services, particularly those run by Transpennine Express.
Not only have trains been late, but they have often been cancelled
altogether. Those two things are particularly difficult for people
at the two main commuter times: first thing in the...Request free trial
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham)
(Lab):...The main rail morning and evening services
are provided by three operators—Transpennine Express, Northern and
CrossCountry—but, since May last year, the main problem has been
the reliability of services, particularly those run
by Transpennine Express. Not only
have trains been late, but they have often been cancelled
altogether. Those two things are particularly difficult for people
at the two main commuter times: first thing in the morning, when
people are keen to get to work at 9 o’clock, and in the evening,
when people want to get home. Commuters often find themselves
either late for work because trains have been cancelled, or stuck
in Newcastle or other stations further south in the evening with no
ability to get home. In some cases, people have not made it home
until 7 o’clock or later...
...My constituents’ other frustration has been with the appalling way in which Transpennine Express deals with customers. No information is given to stranded commuters when trains travelling south from Newcastle to Chester-le-Street are cancelled in the evening, and no alternatives are offered for getting them home. People are just left to make their own way or make alternative provision. When that happens regularly to people with childcare responsibilities, it is not acceptable, and I know of one constituent in particular who has to care for her elderly mother. When a person is expected home at quarter past 5, it is not acceptable for them to arrive after 7 o’clock. I have raised the lack of information with Transpennine Express. There are not even staff at Newcastle to give information or to provide alternative forms of transport, be it replacement buses or alternative train options. There is a compensation scheme but, again, Transpennine Express is not good at advertising the fact that people are entitled to compensation. As a one-off goodwill gesture, I think Transpennine Express should offer all regular travellers a month’s free travel, because people have had to put up with this for far too long. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any powers to intercede in making sure that Transpennine Express pays reasonable compensation to people.
I come back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for
Gateshead (Ian Mearns) about the franchise. It is clearly not
working. Either Transpennine Express needs to up its game
and start acting like an organisation that cares about its
customers, or the franchise should be taken off it. If we are
going to refranchise, we should look in detail at how appallingly
it has operated it so far... The right hon. Gentleman rightly focused on the central issue of performance—about which the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) also expressed concern—and how bad it became, particularly after the May timetable change. Let me stress that I entirely agree: the services that were offered to several parts of the country, including those offered by franchises in the north of England, were unacceptable. I must also stress, however, that important lessons have been learnt, some of which have already been implemented by the industry and have led to a significant improvement in performance. The planned December 2018 timetable changes in the north were deliberately scaled back in favour of a phased approach. Risks were mitigated to the extent that this was largely a rollover of the May timetable, but with a focus on some performance “fixes” to improve the resilience and reliability of the network. They included changes to local Transpennine services between Leeds and Manchester, although I fully recognise that “the north” extends further than Leeds and Manchester. Indeed, I represent a constituency that is north of Leeds and Manchester. Those changes have already delivered significant improvements and the provision of standby trains at key locations to help recovery should things go wrong... Mr Kevan Jones:...I agree with the Minister, but what concerns me about Transpennine is that it does not care. A company that should be focusing on what is good for customers has no customer ethos at all. I would love to know how we can change that.
Andrew Jones: The right hon.
Gentleman has made a significant point. I have to say that that
has not been my experience when I have been dealing with the
train operating companies, but it is nevertheless clear that the
communication to which he referred in his speech has not been
good enough.. |