Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway 4.08
pm The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris
Grayling) I beg to move, That this House has
considered the Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway.
When I became Transport Secretary last summer, the Southern
rail network was already...Request free
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Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway
4.08 pm
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Chris Gibb Report:
Improvements to Southern Railway.
When I became Transport Secretary last summer, the Southern
rail network was already bedevilled by a deep-rooted
dispute causing massive disruption to the lives of
thousands of people and damaging the economy across the
region, but it was not the only problem that Southern rail
faced. Those problems included too many infrastructure
failures and a lack of joined-up government between track
and train, as well as the problems that most of our
commuter rail networks face after attracting ever more
passengers each year, and far more than in the days of
British Rail—a massive capacity challenge. That was the
background to my decision to ask one of the railways’ most
experienced leaders, Chris Gibb, to produce detailed advice
for my Department on what we should do to get things back
to normal for passengers: what was behind the poor
performance on the route, and how could we solve it?
I asked Chris for his advice, because he has more than 30
years’ experience in the rail industry. It is not just me
who acknowledges his experience; when the RMT was demanding
the publication of this report, it described him as an
experienced figure in the industry, and that was absolutely
right. I should like to thank Chris for his contribution.
His recommendations have been assessed, and 34 of his 38
suggestions are already in train and being worked on by my
Department, by the rail industry and by Govia Thameslink
Railway—GTR—which operates Southern. His findings make it
clear that industrial action was the main cause of
disruption for Southern passengers last year, when things
were at their worst.
Southern passengers know full well how much their train
service has improved since that industrial action largely
ceased in January. Performance has been consistently better
since the new year. The public performance measure is up by
more than 20 percentage points from its low of 62% last
December. That is much better, but it is not the best.
There is still a long way to go, but the situation is
clearly much better than it was.
Things are getting better for passengers, and the railways
have been working much better. That is why it is tragic
that the unions’ leaderships now want to carry on a battle
that is meaningless and unnecessary. The performance of
this railway will carry on improving only if the industrial
action by those unions stops, but they seem unwilling to
come to the party. ASLEF, the drivers’ union, started its
overtime ban again last week, with the result that Southern
passengers had 25% of their trains cancelled each day. And
just when passengers thought that the services had
stabilised, the RMT has called yet more strike action this
month. Those passengers are at the mercy of the unions. I
have asked the unions numerous times to walk in their
passengers’ shoes and to call off the disruption of
people’s daily lives that results from this ongoing action.
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Sir (Mid Sussex)
(Con)
My right hon. Friend is well aware of the terrible
inconvenience suffered by my constituents in Mid Sussex and
by many others along the line because of this and earlier
strikes. Is he aware of the unions, working together, being
encouraged by the Labour party? Or does he see this as a
straight inter-union rivalry?
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Let me stress again that I know how difficult this has been
for my right hon. Friend’s constituents and for others.
Their lives have been disrupted and turned upside down in a
whole variety of ways. It is certainly the case that, in
the early stages, the unions looked as though they were
working together on this, but I do not think that relations
between the two rail unions are now quite as warm as they
once were. I am clear now that I think there is a direct
link between the actions of the Labour party leadership, in
trying to cause disruption for the Government this summer,
and the decision to reprise industrial action. It is
absolutely unacceptable that senior figures in the Labour
party are being reported as encouraging trade unions to
take action this summer. The public are the ones who will
suffer.
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(Croydon South)
(Con)
In support of the point that the Secretary of State is
making, is he aware that Sean Hoyle, the president of the
RMT union, has described his objective as being to bring
down the Government? Will the Secretary of State join me in
saying that that is an absolutely appalling motive for
ruining the lives of our constituents?
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a shocking
state of affairs. The reality is that there are some
thoroughly good people working on our railways—people who
do not agree with the current action and who just want to
do the right job for their passengers. However, their
leadership is now leading them up a path that they do not
want to go up, and that is not in the interests of the
staff or the passengers.
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Ms (Wealden) (Con)
Following on from that point, did my right hon. Friend hear
the statement on Russia Today television from Mr Hedley, an
activist in the RMT? He said:
“It’s very clear in our rule book, we’re in an antagonistic
relationship with the managers and with the bosses. We want
to overthrow capitalism and create a socialist form of
society.”
How does that help our passengers?
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The trouble is that
this is all about politics rather than about the interests
of the railways or of passengers getting on with their
daily lives. It is a tragedy.
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(Brighton, Pavilion)
(Green)
Will the Minister acknowledge that page 93 of the Gibb
report shows a graph that demonstrates that Southern was
the worst-performing company a very long time before there
was any trade union industrial action? Will he also explain
why he has not got round the table with the unions and GTR?
This is an absolute nightmare for our constituents, but the
Government cannot pretend that it has nothing to do with
them, given that Gibb also says that the Secretary of State
is
“already determining the strategic direction of this
dispute”.
That is what Gibb says.
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I am slightly surprised that the hon. Lady has not declared
an interest, given that she has received donations from the
RMT union.
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(Crawley) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I understand that
the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is
sponsored by the RMT, so can you advise the House on
whether she should declare an interest when speaking on
this matter?
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
It is up to each individual Member to note whether they
have an interest or not. To be quite honest, I have no
knowledge of whether any Member is sponsored by a trade
union under the present legislation.
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Since last year, we have worked to sort out some of the
underlying problems with the management of this railway
line, joining up the operations of the track and trains,
spending more money on infrastructure, and helping to
contribute to a better performing railway. Performance has
been rising steadily since the start of the year. Chris
Gibb rightly identified a range of problems—I have said to
the House that we are working to try to solve those
problems—but he was absolutely clear that the principal
cause of the disruption experienced by the constituents of
the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and
others was industrial action by the unions. He said that
passengers would have experienced a relatively normal
service had that action not taken place.
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(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP)
The Secretary of State continues to argue that the
principal reason for the delays is industrial action. Does
that not mean that the £300 million pledged by the
Government in January is a waste of money and that they
should be sorting out the industrial dispute?
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No, it does not. We have provided additional money for the
infrastructure owned and operated by the public sector
Network Rail—an additional £20 million last year and then a
further £300 million that is being spent right now to stop
regular signal failures, for example—but it is
disappointing that all the unions and others can do is
misrepresent the situation and claim that we are giving
that money to the train operator. They know that that is
not true. It is simply not the case. One part of solving
the problem on this railway and ensuring that it is the
good performing railway that it has not necessarily been in
the past, even when the industrial action was happening, is
to spend money on the infrastructure, so that we do not get
points and signals failures—the things that frustrate
people and cause problems day by day.
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(Brighton,
Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Part of the problem is that there are not enough drivers on
the network, so the train operator is unable to operate its
trains when drivers do not take voluntary overtime. Drivers
not volunteering to take overtime is not the problem; the
problem is that the operator has not trained up or employed
enough drivers. I declare an interest in that I received
donations from RMT, TSSA and ASLEF during the general
election, because I know that we can get a better deal for
our railways by working with the unions.
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The hon. Gentleman is actually quite right. At the start of
this year, we launched an enormous recruitment programme
and some 350 trainees are coming through the system at the
moment. He will know that the system for training drivers
is too tied up in red tape, union agreements and past
working practices, so we cannot train drivers as quickly as
I would like or bring in extra staff. It is a nonsense that
we should depend on overtime to run any part of our rail
system on normal working days. Our strategy is to end that
situation, but it will be a blow to some of those who
depend on overtime as part of their regular income. It is
certainly not the case that Southern drivers are keen to
see their overtime disappear in the run-up to the summer
holidays.
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(Reigate) (Con)
I suppose I should thank Southern for taking me to and from
the hospital at East Grinstead for an operation this
morning. I have come back for this debate, and I want to
ask the Secretary of State about the future and the
investment that he is making. The situation in the Reigate
and Redhill area needs serious investment in changes to the
track layout at Croydon, and Reigate needs a 12-car
platform so that it can have proper services into London.
Will the Secretary of State provide the resources for
Network Rail simply to do a potential design of a proper
station at Reigate? My constituents are hit by fares and by
overcrowding on a service that has all the faults
identified in the Gibb report by the various parties.
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I assure my hon. Friend that I am currently working on what
we need to do to ensure that the Brighton mainline, which
has not had investment over the years, is capable of
meeting the challenges of the future. We are spending far
more money on our rail network today than has been spent
for decades. The Brighton mainline has been neglected,
which is one reason why performance has been so poor, and
that is something that we have to change and will.
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(Eastbourne) (LD)
It is interesting that the Secretary of State criticises
the fact that there are not enough drivers and explains how
more drivers are being recruited. Chris Gibb said in his
report:
“I understand that at least one losing bidder…had too many
drivers in their bid…but it may have been the case that the
bidder with the fewest drivers won.”
It is complete nonsense for the Secretary of State to
indicate that he did not realise the company won the
contract with fewer drivers. Surely he must recognise that.
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Actually, I was not Secretary of State at the time. The
hon. Gentleman says that I should have known, but what I am
trying to do is sort out the problems we have now. I have
made it absolutely clear that we do not have enough drivers
on this railway—there is no dispute about that—which is why
we have launched a big recruitment drive. I wish those
drivers were coming on stream now but, as those with union
links know, it takes 14 or 15 months to train a driver. I
do not think that is sensible, and it should not take that
long. That is something we have to address for the future,
but we are bringing new drivers on stream as rapidly as we
can, within the confines of union agreements.
On Chris’s recommendations, we are doing a variety of
things to deal with the problems on this railway, but we
should not forget the core issue. Chris Gibb’s main
finding—and, yes, there are things for the Department, the
train company, Network Rail and others to learn from the
report—is that the principal cause of the disruption last
year, which caused misery to so many people, was the action
of the trade unions. Let us make no mistake, it is the
union executives who call strike action and call disputes,
and they are the ones who can call it off.
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(Hove) (Lab)
It is worth reiterating that the one thing Chris Gibb was
excluded from investigating in his report was industrial
relations. He was not allowed to go into it, but he did say
that in recent times it had been the single greatest cause
of short-term inconvenience. In the section titled “How did
the system get to this point?” he clearly says:
“However I do not believe any single party have been the
cause.”
On behalf of passengers, I beg that we get beyond the
finger-pointing, the “he said, she said,” of this debate.
Let us all act with a degree of humility. Every single
party bears a responsibility for where we are today, from
the unions to the franchises and Government. Can the
Secretary of State please accept his own responsibility,
act with humility and say what he—
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Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. You all want to speak, and I am not getting at
anybody in particular. All I will say is that if we have
short interventions, everybody will get to speak. We have a
very long list to get through.
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The point is simple. We are talking about where we are now.
Two weeks ago we had a railway that was performing much
better and a service that most users said was much better
than it was last year. We had a joined-up management
structure for track and trains operating out of a centre at
Three Bridges. We had a programme of ongoing spending to
try to remove the perennial breakdowns, signal failures and
points failures that cause frustration. All that was moving
in the right direction, and then, lo and behold,
unnecessary strike action is threatened and work to rule is
taking place against things that the unions have already
been doing for the past six months, that have been working
well and that have been delivering improvements. That is
where we are now. We had something that was getting better,
after a lot of work by a lot of people. It is a tragedy
that we now seem to be taking a step backwards. It is not
necessary.
If the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) wants this railway
line to get better, he should please say to his friends in
the union movement, “You do not need to do this. It is not
necessary, it is the wrong thing to do and it must stop.”
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(Lewes) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that, whatever the
union’s concerns, whether it is rejecting the 24% pay rise
or other issues, the only way to resolve its concerns is to
get back round the table? Overtime bans and strike action
will not resolve the situation; it just makes life worse
for passengers.
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I absolutely agree. On the pay deal, what I find
particularly baffling is that ASLEF is now balloting for
industrial action on a 24% pay rise, including productivity
changes, that it has accepted on the Thameslink and Great
Northern routes. If it is not a political intervention, why
would it accept the deal in one part of the company and
threaten strike action in the other? Most of us now look at
the situation—with the railway line getting better, with
things on the mend and with a deal that most people would
say is generous and that the union has accepted in the
other part of the company—and ask why on earth it is now
returning to industrial action.
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Why can the Secretary of State not publicly say to both
unions and the trade operator, “Let’s meet together, with
no preconditions, to negotiate this”? That is what happened
with ScotRail, so why does the Secretary of State always
want to meet the unions separately? Do it together and do
it now!
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We had very constructive talks earlier this year, and I
want to pay tribute to the leadership of ASLEF for the way
they conducted themselves back in the January and February
negotiations. It is a disappointment to me now that they
appear to have returned to militancy, when I thought a
constructive dialogue was taking place. Those talks
happened, and they were facilitated by the General
Secretary of the TUC and by a senior rail executive. An
agreement was reached but, sadly, it did not pass the
referendum. A further offer is on the table for staff. That
offer of change combined with a substantial pay upgrade and
productivity improvements has been acceptable to the union
on Thameslink and Great Northern. It is a huge
disappointment that that cannot deal with this issue once
and for all.
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(East Worthing and
Shoreham) (Con)
The Secretary of State will be aware that this morning
several of us from across the House met representatives
from the RMT. I have to say that at the end of that meeting
we were perplexed as to why still no deal had been done,
given the very small number of trains that have been
leaving without that second person on board and the very
narrow difference between GTR and the unions on how one
breaches that. There seemed to be some union enmity
prolonging this strike. Can we not just get all of them
round the table, bang some heads together and at last get
our constituents a train service that stops disrupting
their lives?
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There is no reason why talks cannot start again tomorrow. I
say to the unions that they should call off the industrial
action and come back round the table. They are trying to
turn the clock back. Sensible arrangements have been in
place for years that do not require a train to be cancelled
if the previous member of staff has been delayed.
Ultimately, this is about whether we are going to modernise
our railways or not. We have a rail system that is bursting
at the seams due to the successes it has enjoyed in the
past few years. Our railways are packed, and we need to
look for smart uses of technology and smart ways of working
to deliver the capacity that we need for the future, and we
need to invest in infrastructure to make sure it is
reliable. Those are things we want to do and plan to do.
The unions need to work with us, and the message from Chris
Gibb’s report is that the unions should stop fighting
change and modernisation. Nobody is losing their job and
nobody is having their pay cut. I believe that we will need
more customer service staff in the future rather than fewer
on our railways. I am not in the business of removing staff
from working with customers, but we have to have an
industry that has the freedom to adapt, develop and equip
itself to deal with the challenges of the future. This
dispute is all about preventing that from happening; it is
about retaining old-fashioned union power and the ability
to halt the railways at the whim of union leaders. That is
not acceptable. It has been a tragedy for the people on the
Southern rail network that they have been on the raw end of
this for the past 18 months. Just when we thought things
were getting better and the services were getting back to
normal, it has started all over again, and it is a tragedy.
Opposition Members should say to their union friends, “Stop
doing this. Call off your action”, and then we will talk to
them again.
4.28 pm
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(Middlesbrough)
(Lab)
May I make it plain from the outset that I am a proud
member of the Labour and trade union movement, and very
happy to declare the support that I have received from all
three trade unions in the rail industry? I am grateful for
this opportunity to debate Southern rail and the Gibb
report, but it should be noted that this debate should have
taken place six months ago, when the report was finished
and presented to the Secretary of State. Unfortunately, he
decided to sit on the report for six months and wait until
after the general election before publishing it, denying
this place—and, most importantly, passengers—the
opportunity to scrutinise this assessment of the Southern
rail fiasco. The Secretary of State should not bury reports
until after a general election, when passengers deserve the
opportunity to see the findings immediately.
Just last week, the Association of British Commuters went
to the High Court seeking a judicial review of the
Government’s handling of Southern, motivated by the
Transport Secretary’s refusal to assess the force majeure
claims of Southern, which is requesting that it not be
found in breach of its contract for its abysmal
performance—the worst in the country. Those claims were
made in April 2016, more than a year ago. The High Court
has now ordered the Secretary of State to produce a report
on Southern rail within 14 days. Long-suffering passengers
should not have to resort to crowdfunding for legal action
to seek accountability, and the Secretary of State should
not have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, by the High
Court to do the job he was appointed to do.
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Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that we won the case?
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Perhaps the Secretary of State would like to confirm that
he has been ordered by the High Court to produce the report
within 14 days, and that he would not have done it
otherwise. Who won that one?
Crucially, the section of the Gibb report that would have
been the most informative—appendix 9, “Recommendations
regarding the GTR franchise agreement”—has been redacted.
Where is it? What is there to hide? The Secretary of State
has prevented us from seeing the part of the report that
would give us more details of the botched franchise design,
for which his Department is responsible; the nature of the
agreement with GTR, which has been cloaked in secrecy; and
the changes that Gibb has recommended. That is to say that
the Secretary of State has redacted the parts of the report
that would present the greatest political difficulties for
his Government if they were released.
It is highlighted that industrial relations are not the
only issue. The Gibb report clearly identifies failures to
assess accurately the number of available drivers, to train
and recruit enough drivers, to anticipate turnover with any
accuracy, to plan for the impact of infrastructure
enhancements, to account for changes in Network Rail and
for timetable expansion, to get the right trains in the
right places, and to cater for growth in demand on
overcrowded stations.
I do not recall the Transport Secretary doing anything but
oppose every single piece of industrial action. It is wrong
of him to attack the men and women who operate our railways
while washing his hands entirely of the collapse in
industrial relations.
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The ASLEF drivers have just been offered a 26% pay
increase, taking their pay from £51,000 to £63,000 for a
four-day week. If that is not a generous offer, I would
like to know what is.
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Does not that just lay bare a complete failure to
understand what this situation is about? It is not about
money; it is about the proper running of our railways, so
that we have a safe and accessible railway. If Members on
the Benches opposite could get their heads around that, we
might find ourselves working toward a resolution.
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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No. The hon. Gentleman has had a go. He can sit down.
The buck stops with the Government. The Tory Ministers who
designed and awarded the franchise are responsible for the
shambolic delivery of enhancement works and have directed
this unnecessary industrial dispute.
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(Bexhill and Battle)
(Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way on the point of safety?
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I am happy to.
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The hon. Gentleman may be aware that I took a Transport
Committee group to view the video operation. It was
entirely clear to us that a passenger getting on or off the
train is visible. Ultimately though, it does not matter
what I think or what he thinks; it is the independent rail
safety regulator who has confirmed that the system is safe.
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I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that
point, which I will address shortly.
We know all too well the Secretary of State’s idiosyncratic
approach to workers and unions, but even so, the handling
of industrial relations in the case of Southern has been
especially appalling, and relations are not helped by the
antagonistic behaviour of GTR, the Department for
Transport, and Ministers. In February 2016, a senior civil
servant at the DFT, Peter Wilkinson, director of passenger
services, told a public meeting in Croydon:
“Over the next three years we’re going to be having punch
ups and we will see industrial action and I want your
support... I’m furious about sit and it has got to
change—we have got to break them. They have all borrowed
money to buy cars and got credit cards. They can’t afford
to spend too long on strike and I will push them into that
place. They will have to decide if they want to give a good
service or get the hell out of my industry.”
Does the right hon. Gentleman honestly believe that
threatening to drown ordinary workers in credit card debt
is the right way to go about implementing staffing change?
The Transport Secretary has repeatedly attempted to
distance himself from industrial action, claiming that it
was a matter for the company, despite the unusually close
relationship between him, his officials and Govia
Thameslink Railway. That has never been a credible claim
and the Gibb report confirmed the suspicions that the
Transport Secretary was deeply involved in the industrial
dispute despite his claims otherwise. Gibb said that the
Secretary of State is
“already determining the strategic direction of this
dispute.”
In similar disputes on the TransPennine Express and
Scotrail, agreements were reached that avoided further
disruption and prevented industrial action.
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On Scotrail, the technology is there, but even in
exceptional circumstances, a driver cannot operate the
train despite 30% of the network operating in that manner.
What kind of deal is that? New technology is there but it
cannot be used.
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It demonstrates what can be achieved when we sit down and
have an intelligent conversation with people.
Where there is a willingness to talk on all sides, it is
clear that agreements can be reached that benefit
passengers. To put it simply, the Secretary of State’s
militant anti-worker, anti-trade union stance has
significantly worsened industrial relations and had a
devastating impact on passenger services. While I am at it,
he must come up with evidence for his allegation that the
leader of the Labour party conspired in the way that he
said he did because it is a complete and utter fantasy. He
knows it and he should not come to the Dispatch Box and
just make things up that he knows are not right.
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If the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the industrial dispute
is correct, can he explain why the Labour council and
Mayors on Merseyside have taken exactly the same approach
as the Government on this issue?
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That is not accurate and I will tell the right hon.
Gentleman why. If it were not for the stitch-up with Serco
and Abellio taking £17 million out of the deal and £5
million that we could use to have a guard on every train,
we would not have the problem. So, yet again, he just
serves this up to his mates. He does his deals with these
people, extracting the value from our railway system.
[Interruption.] Absolutely not. It is important to point
out that the Gibb report makes no assessment of the merits
and de-merits of driver-only operation. However, despite a
lack of assessment, Chris Gibb makes it clear that he
supports DOO and thinks that any industrial action is
wrong.
I would like the Secretary of State to reflect on the
following passage from appendix 1 of the Gibb report. It
says:
“We have undertaken this project for CLGR Limited, a
consultancy company owned and operated by my family and I,
and CLGR Limited has been contracted to Govia Thameslink
Railway, as facilitated by the DfT. Discussions have been
held under the terms of a confidentiality agreement between
CLGR Limited and GTR.”
There we have it—Chris Gibb is contracted to Govia, the
very company he is supposed to be reporting on. It is more
than just “he who pays the piper”. Surely even this
Secretary of State can see this latest blatant conflict of
interest. Where is the independence in this report? It is
just another stitch-up.
What is it with the DFT? Its senior civil servant, who
previously told the world he wanted unions out of his
industry, has his own consultancy company—First Class
Partnerships, I believe—to advise the parent company of
Govia, the very company that was then handed the
Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern concession on a
£1.2 billion-a-year gold plate. This Government would
refuse to recognise a conflict of interest if it got up and
bit them on the gluteus maximus.
Labour, like the staff who understand and operate our rail
network, the passenger groups who have been protesting and
have been motivated to take legal action, and disability
charities, simply do not agree with the assumption that
destaffing and deskilling our railways is a positive step.
Despite being first introduced more than 30 years ago, DOO
is only in use on a third of the national rail network. It
was originally introduced on three or four-car trains at a
time of declining passenger numbers. Passenger numbers
having increased hugely in recent years, it is now proposed
to introduce DOO on trains with as many as 12 cars. In the
past 15 years, passenger numbers on Southern have increased
by 64%, from 116 million to 191 million a year. That
enormous rise in numbers means that at the platform-train
interface there are inevitably increased risks to passenger
safety, as anyone who travels on Southern services can see.
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(Sutton and Cheam)
(Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman explain why the same union has
agreed to 12-car-train driver-controlled operation on
Thameslink, with the same company, and on the same lines?
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It is somewhat curious, is it not, that people are being
criticised for adhering to a previously achieved agreement,
whereas, looking at the situation as it is now, they quite
rightly want to look at it properly.
Labour believes that passengers are more at risk if they no
longer have the guarantee of a safety-critical member of
staff on the train to prevent something from going wrong or
assist when something does go wrong. The view of Her
Majesty’s chief inspector of railways, Ian Prosser, has
been laid out in the Office of Rail and Road’s report,
“GTR-Southern Railways—Driver Only Operation”, published
earlier this year. Mr Prosser is clear that there are
obvious caveats to safe operation of DOO, namely legal
levels of lighting—that would be a good start—suitable
equipment, suitable procedures and the competence of the
relevant staff. None has been adequately satisfied, even by
his assessment.
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If union members are concerned about the points that the
shadow Minister raises, why will they not get back around
the table to discuss them and resolve the situation,
calling off the overtime ban and any ballot for strike
action?
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To put it quite simply, because they could not get in the
door, as has quite rightly been pointed out, when the
Government were holding talks at the TUC that were an
attempt to divide and conquer—a typical Tory trick to keep
the critically important trade union out of the discussion
in the first place. Had the Secretary of State had any real
intent in that regard, he would have got everyone around
the table and got on with resolving the
dispute—[Interruption.] He says from a sedentary position
that it was the TUC that oversaw things. It did its level
best to try to bring this to a conclusion, but not because
of the assistance of the DFT or this Secretary of State,
because he deliberately excluded the relevant parties.
Sadly, the inference that the Government apparently seek to
draw from the ORR report—that all is well and that there
is, in effect, no cause for concern over safety—does
nothing to assist the process of resolution. Indeed, the
Rail Safety and Standards Board has been reluctant to
describe DOO as definitively safe, saying:
“DOO does not create additional undesired events but may
increase the likelihood of an event occurring or increase
the severity of its consequence.”
By the way, Mr Deputy Speaker, you can no longer find that
entry on the website—I wonder why.
At a time when there are increased risks of terrorist
attacks and a spike in hate crimes, it seems foolish in the
extreme to prioritise removing trained staff from services.
The safe management of a train when difficulties arise is
also key: a case in point was the derailment—
-
rose—
-
Let me make this point; then the Secretary of State can
have a pop.
A case in point was the derailment near Watford Junction on
16 September last year. After a train hit a landslip caused
by torrential rain, the guard evacuated the train when the
driver was injured in the incident, trapped in the cab and
incapable of doing so. If such an accident were to occur on
a DOO service, the safety of hundreds of passengers could
be compromised. Why does it take a catastrophe to bring
this Government to their senses in dealing with the issues
of safety, rather than wanting to compromise on safety at
every turn?
-
Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that today on Southern rail
there are more on-train staff than there were before the
dispute started? Is he actually saying that it is Labour
policy that if a member of staff is delayed, the previous
arrangement, whereby the train could carry on running,
should stop, that the train should be cancelled, and that
passengers should be turfed out on to the platform?
-
I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what Labour party
policy is: it is to ensure that there is a second
safety-critical trained member of staff on that train.
[Interruption.] It means that they have the appropriate
training and are not outsourced or sold short on training,
which is exactly what the Government want to do.
The changes proposed by the Secretary of State would be
retrograde for disabled passengers, whose independence
would be wound back. Without a guaranteed second member of
staff on board, the ability of passengers with
accessibility requirements to turn up and go is severely
restricted, requiring passengers to make arrangements 24
hours in advance. Southern passengers have been left
stranded on station platforms because, as there is no
on-board supervisor on DOO services, there was no one to
assist them so that they could get on the train.
-
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way—he has been very
patient. Does not the requirement for disabled to book 24
hours in advance relate to a completely separate service? A
conductor cannot leave the train and get someone over or
off the platform. The hon. Gentleman is confusing the
matter completely.
-
The hon. Gentleman rather makes my point for me. Why on
earth are we discriminating against disabled people, who
want the same freedom as able-bodied people to turn up at a
railway station and carry on with their journey?
-
(Tonbridge and Malling)
(Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
-
No, I am not giving way again. The hon. Gentleman should
sit down.
Before the Secretary of State claims that this a conspiracy
theory cooked up by ASLEF or the National Union of Rail,
Maritime and Transport Workers, a spokesperson for Govia
Thameslink Railway said that,
“there is no cast-iron guarantee that passengers with
accessibility requirements can spontaneously board a train
in the assumption there would be a second member of staff
on board every train.”
Here is another quote from a representative from a train
operating company seeking to introduce DOO, in a recent
edition of Modern Railways, on the advantages of trains
that could go into service with only the driver on board:
“The good thing would be that all of the regular passengers
would still be carried, it would only be the wheelchair
users who wouldn’t be able to travel”.
The Secretary of State will be well aware of numerous
stories of disabled passengers who have been left stranded
as a result of the staffing changes that he is forcing
through. Sandra Nighy, 56, of Highfields, Tarring, was left
stranded in the freezing cold for more than two hours
waiting for a Southern service on Hampden Park train
platform near Eastbourne, because there was nobody to help
her on to the train. Sandra said that,
“the whole situation was horrible and embarrassing and it
is unforgiveable when I had booked assistance 48 hours in
advance”.
Everyone should be able to use rail services, and providing
assistance to those who need it should be a top priority to
ensure a good quality of life. The Transport Secretary
should be ashamed that he is making our railway less, not
more, accessible for disabled people. I firmly believe that
the Labour party, passenger groups, staff and the
disability charities are in the right when we say that the
Government’s objective should be to make our railways safer
and more accessible, not riskier and more exclusive.
The Gibb report paints a picture of a chaotic relationship
between Network Rail, the Department for Transport and
Govia Thameslink Railway, none of which has sufficient
oversight or responsibility, leading to poor performance on
Southern. Gibb says:
“None of the parties in the system share the same
incentives or objectives”.
He recommends
“that the custodian of the overall system integrity be
better identified”.
While those criticisms are clearly true for Southern, they
are an accurate summary of what is wrong with the way in
which our railways are managed in general. Labour has
consistently highlighted the fact that privatisation and
fragmentation of the railway has prevented the necessary
oversight and responsibility needed to deliver upgrades and
run efficient services, which is why, as part of our plans
to take rail into public ownership, we will establish a new
national body to serve as a “guiding mind” for the publicly
owned railway, to avoid the chaos over which this
Government have presided.
There is no need for the Government to prolong the
suffering of passengers any longer—this industrial dispute
is but one part of an unedifying scene—as basic managerial
inefficiency characterises this woeful service.
It is within the Secretary of State’s power to end the
industrial dispute tomorrow. He can do it by calling off
his plans to expand driver-only operation and by
guaranteeing a second safety-critical crew member on every
train, and he should do so immediately.
As with the east coast main line, which delivered the
lowest fare rises and highest passenger satisfaction of any
rail service in the country, and which returned over £1
billion to the Treasury, it is time to admit defeat and to
take Southern back under public control as a public
service.
The privatised, franchised railway system, which allows all
comers, including state-owned rail companies from across
the globe—with the bizarre exception of the UK itself—to
extract profits from passengers and taxpayers alike has had
its day. The Government should wake up and recognise the
chaos they have created. They should do the right thing and
bring our railways back under public control and ownership.
If they don’t, a Labour Government will.
-
Several hon. Members rose—
-
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Can I just say to all Members, apart from the Front
Benchers to come, that I am working on six minutes? I am
going to introduce a time limit of six minutes.
4.50 pm
-
(Arundel and South
Downs) (Con)
Let me start with something that I am sure hon. Members on
both sides of the House will agree on: the service Southern
has provided for passengers over the last more than two
years has been completely unacceptable. There is no
disagreement about that. Our constituents are at the end of
their tethers, and the service last year, in particular,
was wholly unacceptable—to the point that it was causing
economic loss and real suffering on the part of our
constituents.
The question, therefore, is not whether the service has
been poor, but why that is the case and who is responsible.
There has been no shortage of criticism on the Government
Benches of Southern and Network Rail for their part in the
story. Two and a half years ago, at the beginning of 2015,
I and other Conservative Members initiated debates in
Westminster Hall, asked questions and held a succession of
meetings with Ministers about Southern’s performance after
it took over the new and expanded franchise.
There were clearly serious problems. There were not enough
drivers, and the infrastructure was inadequate because of
the London Bridge improvements. It is an irony that the £6
billion London Bridge improvements, which will result in a
better service for passengers, have caused a temporary
shortage of capacity for the new franchise, which has
exacerbated the issues.
In response to the criticism we made on behalf of our
constituents, the then Secretary of State and the then rail
Minister convened a meeting of the industry, and a
performance improvement plan was introduced, whereby the
industry agreed that it was necessary, step by step, month
by month, to improve performance in the new franchise,
recognising that it was a matter for not just the operator
but Network Rail, which provided the track, and which is,
of course, already in public ownership—a point that those
on the Labour Front Bench might do well to consider.
As a consequence of that performance improvement plan,
performance steadily improved again towards the end of
2015, but it then began catastrophically to deteriorate at
the beginning of 2016, and specifically from April onwards.
There was no coincidence about that. The reason it
deteriorated was the industrial action that began at that
time. That was not just the official industrial action on
the part of the RMT, but the unofficial action, which the
union has denied. There were suddenly very high rates of
sickness, and there was a general unwillingness on the part
of the workforce to co-operate with the management. It was
undoubtedly the case that the operator was already having
to improve its performance and already facing
difficulties—there is no disagreement about that—but its
performance declined catastrophically as a result of that
industrial action. That action was then joined by the
drivers, whose work to rule was official, rather than
unofficial. The consequence was that the service last year
was simply appalling.
What was that all about? It was about the alleged lack of
safety as a consequence of the introduction of a system
that has been operating on a third of the railways for 30
years. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald)
implied some kind of culpability—some kind of casual
response to safety—on the part of the Government, but the
Labour Government were in office for 13 years when
driver-only operation trains were running. These trains run
on the London underground; there happens to be a Labour
Mayor responsible for that now. Indeed, the Docklands light
railway has no drivers at all.
Currently, according to the figures that the unions gave us
in a meeting this morning, over 97% of the trains that
Southern is operating still have a safety-trained second
member of staff on board. There have been no pay cuts,
there have been no job losses, 97% of the trains are still
running with a second person on board, and fewer than 3% of
those trains are not, and yet the hon. Gentleman implied
that there had been de-staffing. Far from de-staffing,
there has been an offer of a 24% pay increase to ASLEF
drivers. There is no doubt about the unions’ responsibility
for what happened last year.
-
(Worthing West)
(Con)
We heard nothing from the Opposition Front Bench about the
patients, teachers, pupils and clinical staff whose lives
have been wrecked as they have been forced from rail to
road, which is far more dangerous. We need to get the
railways working properly so that they are all safe and all
can rely on them.
-
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend.
For those who have faced such constraints on their pay over
the past few years, it will stick in their throats to see
an offer given to the train drivers such that their
salaries for a four-day, 35-hour week will rise to over
£60,000 a year. That is a perfectly generous offer.
Frankly, this has nothing to do with safety at all. The
Opposition have been unable to produce any evidence that
the service that is now running is unsafe, partly because
it runs extensively across the national network and has
done for 30 years, and partly because, as I said, there is
still a second member of staff on board anyway—it is just
that they are not operating the doors.
-
Sir
My right hon. Friend and I have been working on this for a
very long time as next-door neighbours. If all that is
correct, as it is, can he tell us, with all that we have
examined and learned about it, what he thinks this strike
is about?
-
My right hon. Friend’s question would be best addressed to
the unions themselves. I think it is about control of the
railways—that is what they seek. It is certainly nothing to
do with safety or the interests of passengers.
It is telling that since the industrial action fell away
and the driver-only operation trains were successfully
introduced on the line, the service has started to improve
again. That gives the lie to the suggestion that this is
only about Southern. It is not only about Southern—it has
principally, although not exclusively, been about the
industrial action that the unions have unreasonably taken
on this railway.
There is no doubt that there is an inadequacy of investment
historically on lines that have been carrying more and more
people over recent years. In the 12 years that I have been
a Member of Parliament, the number of passengers on
Southern’s main routes has doubled. I welcome the £6
billion London Bridge investment and the £300,000 million
package that the Government introduced, quite rightly, in
response to the Gibb report. However, looking forward,
there will need to be substantial further investment in
lines that are carrying more and more people on a daily
basis, because the infrastructure is not equal to the task
of carrying the numbers of people that will only increase
with the development that is now anticipated in the
south-east. Let us be clear where the blame principally
lies for the disruption over the past year—it principally
lies with the unions.
4.59 pm
-
(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP)
I am sure that quite a few hon. Members are wondering what
the Scottish National party transport spokesman can bring
to a Southern rail debate. I am hopeful that I can provide
a more rounded opinion on the Gibb report, which is what
this debate is meant to be about. The Transport Secretary
stood up for nearly 20 minutes and union-bashed; he did not
give us much about what was in the report, and I think he
made a poor start. I say gently to the right hon. Member
for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) that his
suggestion that staff are falsely taking sick days does not
bode well for future worker relations. It is indicative of
where the Government seem to be with the unions.
In this Chamber, we continually have debates about
ideology. The Tory ethos is that the free market will
always outperform the public sector, but the fiasco of GTR
and Southern rail’s performance over the past few years—not
just the past year—suggests otherwise. Calls have been made
repeatedly for the franchise to be terminated, but the
Government have always refused to act. Instead, they
initially helped to reset benchmarks to ensure that GTR was
not in breach of contractual performance measures.
Looking back, the report by the Transport Committee
complained about a lack of transparency in performance data
against contractual obligations. That in itself makes it
harder for those who want to understand the contractual
position and find solutions. The Gibb report was a welcome
interlude, although we have to question why the Government
sat on it for six months. They have brought this general
debate before us, not in a constructive manner but in a
politically motivated, union-bashing fashion, and that will
not help things.
I touched earlier on the fact that the Gibb report
identified £300 million that had to be spent within the
next year to ensure that the 2018 timetable could be
achieved. That is quite an eye-watering sum, and it is a
massive commitment. The Government committed that £300
million in January, but we are now a quarter of the way
into the two-year process, and it would be good if the
Secretary of State had told us how the work was advancing.
I hope that the Minister will give us an update on that
later on.
It took the Government 10 months to complete the programme
of work and spend the £20 million that they pledged last
November. I will just throw out there the fact that it took
them 10 months to get through the initial £20 million
programme, but they now expect to deliver a £300 million
programme in two years. I presume that some of the £300
million programme will follow on from work identified in
the initial raft.
The Secretary of State admitted that the Gibb report
confirmed that franchise arrangements have been completely
inadequate in their understanding of how infrastructure
upgrades would impact on services. That is a failing of the
Department for Transport, and the Government have to get to
grips with it. The Gibb report also suggested that an
immediate revision was required to the overnight timetable
to allow for maintenance on the Brighton main line. Again,
I throw that out there. What is happening about that, and
about the production line maintenance that was supposed to
be brought in as a consequence of the report?
-
I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman has actually read the
report. The appendix sets out both the short-term and
long-term infrastructure projects, all the way to 2020. If
he wants answers to those questions, I suggest that he
reads the report.
-
I am asking for answers from the Government, and I expect
Ministers or the Secretary of State to give them to me. The
Government announced a £300 million package to be delivered
over two years. I am asking what is going to happen and
whether the programme is on track, because we are a quarter
of the way through the time period already.
The Gibb report also called for a review of little-used
stations that have, it claims, too many services, which
seems incredible against a backdrop of nearly 59,000 fully
or partially cancelled trains in 2016. That is an issue
that the Department for Transport could have identified
earlier, and it should be resolved.
In terms of industrial relations—a subject that has formed
the cornerstone of the debate so far—I am pleased to see
that Gibb did say that negotiations must be entered into.
Again, I repeat calls from other Opposition Members to the
Secretary of State to show leadership and try to lead those
negotiations. I disagree with Gibb’s negative comments
about collective bargaining, and I do not think that that
should have been within the remit of the report. His
suggestion that discussions about driver-only operation
could have a roll-back effect on other services that are
already driver-only operation is a conclusion too far for
me.
We have to be clear about the fact that safety is a key
issue. The Gibb report confirms that narrow platforms at
Gatwick cause overcrowding, and that the lack of station
shelters elsewhere is an issue for passengers accessing
trains. It is therefore fair for me, looking at this from
the outside, to say that DOO can be seen as a problem for
staff, because at the end of the day the staff have to deal
with the consequences if an incident arises from
overcrowding or when people alight from trains. I would
also say to the Secretary of State that this is a serious
dereliction of duty, given that the Government are picking
up a £38 million tab for lost revenues, as well as setting
aside £15 million in compensation for passengers. Think
what that £15 million could have done in infrastructure
upgrades if there had been proper forward planning.
In Scotland, there has been far wider national scrutiny of
the Abellio ScotRail Alliance, which operates Scotland’s
trains. It came into being in April 2015, and I must say
that it came in as a living wage employer right away, which
is to be applauded. However, we must also acknowledge that
its early performance was below contractual levels. The
Scottish Government took the lead by intervening, and a
performance improvement plan was agreed. Since then, 181 of
the 249 actions have been completed, and a further 180
action points have now been agreed. The plan has been
reviewed by the Office of Rail and Road, which found it to
be robust and deliverable, but challenging. Punctuality on
ScotRail is now at 90%, and it has been ahead of the UK
average for four years.
Looking ahead, the Scottish Government are now exploring a
public sector bid for ScotRail when there is a franchise
break. On public sector bids, the UK Government have
demonstrated, with the east coast main line, that public
sector services are not only viable, but profitable for the
taxman. The refusal of the Government to acknowledge this
and the rush to reprivatise the east coast main line is
frankly shocking. The franchise has raised £1 billion, and
2015 was rated as the best year in its history. It shows
that public sector franchises can lead the way over private
sector ones. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hove
(Peter Kyle) is just delaying me further. To be fair, he
made an intervention earlier that was frankly a speech, so
I presume he will cut out some of his own speech.
Additionally, the UK now has a franchise system that allows
state-run bids from foreign countries, yet the Government
still refuse to allow private sector bids. There is
absolutely no logic to such a conclusion.
Finally, as was mentioned earlier, there has been some
industrial action involving ScotRail in Scotland. The
Scottish Government were willing to meet the unions, and
they ultimately agreed a deal that the unions and the
Abellio ScotRail Alliance have signed off. [Laughter.] That
is actually what should be happening, so instead of
laughing about it, the Transport Secretary should show
leadership and face up to being willing to speak to the
unions and getting around the table with them.
To conclude, I hope that the Gibb report will show how
these matters can be progressed with GTR. In truth, the
Scottish Government have shown what can be done by showing
a different attitude north of the border, and I suggest
that the Transport Secretary should think about that as
well.
-
Several hon. Members rose—
-
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I remind hon. Members that a six-minute limit
applies to Back-Bench speeches.
5.08 pm
-
(Croydon South)
(Con)
I congratulate you on your recent election, Madam Deputy
Speaker.
Throughout this debate, we should not forget that the
terrible service on Southern railway has had a devastating
impact on hundreds of thousands of people. People have lost
their jobs, or have had to quit their jobs. My constituent,
Lee Fenton from Coulsdon, was sacked for persistent
lateness due to the poor service on Southern railway.
Parents have not been seeing their children because they
have not been able to get home on time. Doctors have been
unable to treat their patients, and teachers have been
unable to teach their pupils because of this terrible
service.
As Chris Gibb found in his report, which was long called
for by Opposition Members and the unions, the primary cause
of the problems in 2016 was the industrial action by the
trade unions. The unions’ claim—the nub of their
contention—is that driver-operated doors are unsafe, yet
30% of UK surface trains, or 1.3 million trains a year, run
perfectly safely with driver-operated doors. The whole of
the London underground runs with driver-operated doors on
to far more crowded platforms, and so does most of Europe.
In June last year the Rail Safety Standards Board wrote:
“No increased risk from properly implemented Driver
Controlled Operation has been detected in any research”
that it has carried out. There is clear evidence that
driver-operated doors are entirely safe.
The other sticking point with the unions is whether a train
can still run if the second member of staff does not turn
up because, for example, they are sick, late or on strike.
By the way, every train that was scheduled to have two
members of staff will continue to have them, but what if
that second member of staff does not turn up? The company’s
position, which I think is reasonable, is that the train
can still run. The union position is that it cannot, which
leads to needless cancellations. A strike by conductors is
ineffective if the train can run anyway. I believe that
that is the real reason why the RMT is so keen on that
point.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), the
shadow Transport spokesman, said that there had been
de-staffing on the railway. I gently point out that 100
extra on-board supervisors have been hired since the
changes were made. Therefore, far from de-staffing, there
has been an increase in staffing, and in practice 98% of
trains have run with a second person aboard.
I am disappointed that ASLEF has instructed its members to
work a four-day week, because it is having devastating
consequences for our constituents as we speak. It is
completely unacceptable. There are no good safety grounds,
as I just laid out, and an incredibly generous financial
offer has been made: a 26% pay increase from £51,000 to
£63,000 for working a four-day week. There is absolutely no
justification for the strike and I call on the hon.
Gentleman to prevail on his friends in ASLEF to call off
the overtime ban at the earliest opportunity.
There is no question about the fact that we need to train
more drivers, and I strongly encourage Ministers to put
pressure on GTR to do exactly that. While this unjustified
and damaging overtime strike is in place, we should make
sure that trains ideally run with eight or 12 carriages and
that they are not short-formed. I have had reports from
constituents at Purley Oaks station in my constituency of
four-carriage trains, which leads to overcrowding. I ask
Ministers to look at that.
Having placed responsibility primarily with the trade
unions, Chris Gibb goes on to make a number of other
points, one of which, as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and
Loudoun (Alan Brown) mentioned, is the £300 million
programme. I strongly commend the Government for having
found that money, which was so urgently needed. The hon.
Gentleman asked what work has taken place. I have a note
sent to me by Network Rail, which I can share afterwards,
which lists the work. It includes high output ballast
cleaning—I am not sure what that is, but it sounds good—and
work on the Balcombe and Sevenoaks tunnels water management
systems. Further particulars are available if he would like
to hear them. That investment was incredibly welcome and
important.
I am very excited about control period 6—the major capital
works programme coming up in a couple of years. With the
right investment between South Croydon station and Windmill
Bridge junction, we can increase capacity on the entire
Brighton main line by 30%. I strongly urge Ministers to
move that project forward.
Finally, the franchise is rather too large. I entirely
understand why it was let in this form—the works at London
Bridge and the Thameslink transformation—but in due course
it should be broken down into its component parts of
Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern,
which would allow for much better management. The behaviour
of people such as Sean Hoyle, who has stated that his
objective is to bring down the Government, is wholly
inappropriate. I call on the unions to end their
unjustified strike action forthwith.
5.14 pm
-
(Nottingham South)
(Lab)
I know that there are colleagues who have yet to speak
whose constituencies have borne the brunt of the appalling
state of Southern rail so I will do my best to be brief. I
would like to say a few words about the impact of the
Southern situation on my constituents and some of the wider
issues raised by the Gibb report.
It might surprise hon. Members to hear that delays on
Southern can impact on trains in Nottingham, but the linear
nature of the rail network combined with forthcoming
changes to the Thameslink timetable could have a hugely
damaging effect on inter-city midland main line services.
The Gibb report rightly states:
“Sometimes funding availability has prioritised elements of
the system, without considering the welfare of the overall
system.”
This appears to be the case on the midland main line, where
Thameslink, long distance and freight services share the
same track south of Bedford.
The December 2018 timetable change will increase the
service frequency through the Thameslink core to 24 trains
an hour. On paper, that is a welcome improvement for
passengers, but, in an indictment of the disjointed and
fragmented railway planning, the new timetable is not
integrated with the east midlands franchise. The intensity
of the new timetable will impair the ability of operators
to recover after periods of disruption. As the Gibb report
points out, this problem is compounded by GTR’s
theoretically efficient but brittle rostering practices.
This means that a single service disruption in Brighton can
cause reactionary delays that travel up the line and on to
the wider network, paralysing trains hundreds of miles
away.
It has been reported in the technical press that there
could be a nine-minute journey time penalty for services
operating from Nottingham to London St Pancras, and a
12-minute penalty for journey times from Sheffield. That is
obviously a real concern for passengers and the business
community in Nottingham. I understand that it is not too
late to make amendments to the timetable and I ask the
Minister to commit to addressing the issue.
The Gibb report is long, technical and in places
contentious. There are many issues arising from it that
could be discussed, but I want to say a few words about the
section on level crossings, which are a continued source of
delays on the Southern network. The legislation that
governs the closure of dangerous level crossings is archaic
and hugely inefficient. It was therefore welcome that the
Gibb report says that the recommendations of the Law
Commission should be adopted as a new Bill. The issue has a
long history and I have pressed Ministers on it in the
previous two Parliaments.
Dangerous level crossings are the main cause of external
risk on the railways and a major contributor to delays. The
issue was referred to the Law Commission by the Government
in 2008, and the commission’s recommendations were
published in September 2013. In January 2015, the then
Liberal Democrat Minister of State, the Noble , said in another
place that they wanted to bring forward legislation as soon
as possible. Two and a half years later, however, and
nothing has changed. On the back of this report, will the
Minister give a commitment today to finally bring forward
this necessary legislation?
Finally, we need to talk about the lack of transparency
that has characterised the Government’s approach to the
prolonged period of exceptionally poor service on Southern.
As the Transport Select Committee said in October:
“Until”—
it—
“recently managed, after several attempts and considerable
time and effort, to extract information from the
Department, GTR’s contractual performance benchmarks, and
data relating to GTR’s performance against them, were
entirely opaque.”
There are questions about the transparency of the report
itself. We know that the final version was submitted to
Ministers on 30 December, so the claim that the document
could not be released until June because of purdah is,
frankly, unconvincing.
In the minutes of the rail national task force meeting held
on 23 November, it is recorded that Peter Wilkinson, the
Department’s franchising director, said that the
“Gibb report had been drafted but was not yet signed off”
by the Secretary of State. The meeting was also told by an
individual with the initials “NB”, who may be , GTR’s chief
operating officer, that
“GTR had had a lot of input to the review.”
When the final version of the report was published, its
sweeping statements about the general state of rail
industrial relations and the undesirability of direct
operations surprised some observers, especially as several
hon. Members on both sides of the House had backed some
form of state intervention. We need to know what Govia’s
involvement was in the drafting of the report and whether
it extended beyond the provision of factual information. We
need to hear why first the approval of the draft report,
and then publication of the final version, appears to have
been delayed. It is vital that the travelling public can
place trust in these reports, so will the Minister give the
House a specific and unqualified assurance that the
Department did not seek to pressure, amend or otherwise
influence the report in any way to politicise its content?
The situation on Southern has complex causes, but the
imperative must be to end the years of misery that
passengers have endured. The Government have a role to play
in ending it, and part of that role must be to generate
less heat and more light in the months ahead. We do not
have to endorse the Gibb report in full to acknowledge that
it has made some sensible and practical suggestions. It is
vital that Ministers now take all reasonable steps to get
the Southern rail network moving again.
5.19 pm
-
Ms (Wealden) (Con)
This morning I attended a meeting with representatives of
the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.
It was a futile and frustrating meeting, in which the
unions argued that it was proportionate and appropriate to
strike because 2.75% of trains on Southern operate without
an on-board supervisor. The fact that 97.25% of trains
operate with one did not seem to sway them, which will mean
untold damage to my constituents once again. In Wealden the
service provided by Southern has been unsatisfactory for a
long time, and we have raised that time and time again.
While its performance has gradually improved over the past
year, the behaviour of the unions has deteriorated, and the
current industrial dispute is entirely irresponsible and
cynical.
I welcomed the Gibb report, and met Chris Gibb last year to
discuss the situation and, principally, Southern’s poor
management and poor communication. The report does not pull
any punches in respect of either GTR’s management or the
Department for Transport, but the most damning indictment,
by a long chalk, is Gibb’s assessment of the unions. The
report plainly states that the primary cause of disruption
to passengers has been industrial action by the unions,
compounded by incredibly high levels of sick leave among
drivers. The report describes the unions’ motives as
“debatable” and their actions as “undermining the system”.
Having said that, I should add that GTR and Southern are
not totally devoid of responsibility. The union’s behaviour
does not excuse the previously existing and ongoing
infrastructural problems, which are within the control of a
franchise whose financial penalties for failings are too
lenient.
In any event, my constituents still have to put up with
delays, timetable changes, short-form trains, extended
engineering works, overcrowding, unsatisfactory
compensation processes, nonsensical bus replacements, poor
communication, and potential ticket office closures.
GTR’s handling of the dispute does not cover it in glory.
Unfortunately, the Uckfield line is known as the misery
line in my constituency. The Govia “transforming rail”
consultation is certainly a step in the right direction,
and I am pleased that passengers will have an opportunity
to comment in detail on timetabling arrangements and
proposed reforms, but that simply is not enough. GTR must
be made to appreciate the seriousness of the inconvenience
and frustration that are being caused on a daily basis.
Let me draw the Minister’s attention to appendix 5 of the
report, which concerns the modernisation of the Uckfield
line. I have already raised the issue with the Minister,
and, as he knows, I support Chris Gibb’s recommendation for
electrification of the line and a depot in Crowborough. The
Uckfield line connects the towns of Uckfield and
Crowborough to London, and is one of the very few routes in
the south-east that have not been electrified. It is hard
to believe that a major railway line in a highly developed
“global” country still relies on diesel trains, which are
outdated and increasingly difficult to keep on track. When
they break down they are hard to fix, and it is difficult
to find new rolling stock. Even in the sweetest spot, when
the Southern service is running a full timetable, with a
full number of cars and a full quota of staff who have
turned up for work, the service is still woefully
inadequate.
The Gibb report states that the current fleet is
“inefficient”, and that the sustained use of diesel is not
viable. It points out that electrification of the Uckfield
line would significantly increase passenger capacity and
improve performance and timetabling, and would result in
more efficient crewing and less pollution. Above all, it
would provide a seven-day service in my constituency. An
annual season ticket from Crowborough to London costs
thousands of pounds. If my constituents are paying
21st-century prices for their rail tickets, they are
entitled to receive a 21st-century rail service in return,
and that means electrification.
We forget what the present situation means for people’s
day-to-day lives. My constituent Christopher, who lives in
Uckfield, says:
“The loss of peak trains will make it even harder than
usual for me to keep my commitments to work and family,
including being able to reliably collect my two 6 and 8
year old boys from school or after school club.”
Electrification and a depot at Crowborough would provide
much-needed resilience on the line. No doubt the Minister
has read the conclusion of that particular section of the
report, which recommends electrification and has a solid
financial case behind it. I look forward to having
continued conversations with the Minister to try and secure
that.
Wealden is in desperate need of a reliable modern train
service that offers value for money. My constituents would
like to know when the Uckfield line will no longer be known
as the misery line, which will come about only once the
strikes are called off. I look forward to working with the
Minister to ensure not only electrification but a depot in
my constituency of Wealden.
5.25 pm
-
(Eastbourne) (LD)
I congratulate you on your elevation, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I am staggered that now, 18 months later, the Southern rail
dispute is still going on. I find it staggering for a range
of reasons, some of which are alluded to in the Chris Gibb
report, which I will come on to. I remind Members that it
was a resilience report; it was not about the dispute, but
was a resilience report looking at Southern rail generally.
On driver-only operation, I appreciate that the unions talk
about safety—which is fine; they are perfectly entitled to
do that—but there are three key reasons why I disapprove of
DOO. First, many female passengers in Eastbourne have
contacted me over the last year as I have been campaigning
against this dispute and trying to find a resolution,
saying, “Stephen, we would not feel safe coming back to
Eastbourne late in the night or even early-evening if we
were in an empty carriage on our own and knowing there was
no second member of staff.” That is a very important point,
because effectively it discounts about 50% of the
population.
Secondly, in Eastbourne a lot of local children go to St
Richard’s school in Bexhill, and many parents have told me
that they would be anxious if they knew their children were
on a train with no second member of staff. Thirdly, as has
been mentioned by Labour Front-Bench Members, there is the
issue of disability access. Only a couple of weeks ago, a
wheelchair-user colleague at Hampden Park in Eastbourne had
to sit on the platform as three trains went through because
she could not get on.
Those are three powerful reasons why I am fundamentally
against DOO. I do not accept the principle and I do not
care if 30% of the rail network already carries driver-only
trains.
-
The hon. Gentleman has explained why he thinks a second
member of staff is important. Does he accept that 98% of
trains are running with that second person on board and
that the alternative for the 2% that are not is that those
trains do not run at all?
-
I agree, and I will address that when I turn to the Gibb
report, but I wanted to say something else before getting
on to it. If we asked members of the public around the
country where they have DOO—outside the underground, as
that is a different kettle of fish—whether they would
prefer to have a second member of staff on the train, I bet
they would say that they would.
The Gibb report identified GTR as being the worst
performing operator in the country, with performance
deteriorating two or three years before the current
industrial dispute. I grant that the report identified
industrial relations as being a primary cause of the
system’s breakdown, but that featured on only one page of
the entire 163-page document. That leads me to wonder just
how impartial Gibb was in putting together the report.
After all, while doing so he apparently spoke with GTR over
30 times and Government agencies over 45 times, yet spoke
with the two unions zero times. What is going on here?
When GTR won the contract direct attention was given in it
to “best price”, rather than deliverability.
Extraordinarily, that meant GTR winning without enough
drivers. Gibb himself wrote:
“I understand that at least one losing bidder”
included more drivers and that
“it may have been the case that the bidder with the fewest
drivers won”.
In other words, it was about cost; it was not about quality
or customer care. So it was nonsense for the Secretary of
State, who unfortunately has left the Chamber, to say
earlier that he is trying to train more drivers and that he
wants more train drivers. Frankly, the original contract
was won by GTR on cost, with fewer drivers than its
competitors.
Who is actually leading in the Southern rail dispute, from
the rail perspective? Is it GTR and Southern rail, or is it
the Government?
-
The hon. Gentleman was an MP during the time when the
contract was being let, while many of us were not. Did he
not raise these questions and make these points at the
time?
-
I certainly did! I welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention and
I thank her for reminding me that I was furious about
Southern rail at the time. I thought it was absolute
rubbish, and I said so frequently. I appreciate her
allowing me to remind everyone about that. And it is good
to be back; thank you.
Let me go back to the question of who is actually leading
for Southern rail in the dispute, and to the Gibb report.
Gibb says that the Secretary of State is
“already determining the strategic direction of this
dispute”.
As I said earlier, I am not sponsored by the RMT. Members
on both sides of the House know that the Government are
behind this dispute because they want to bring in DOO. That
is as plain as the nose on your face. Yes, at the minute,
there is a second member of staff on 97% of the trains, as
another Member said, but that was not the intention at the
beginning. The intention was to break the RMT and to bring
in DOO. My priority is the customer—the rail passengers of
Eastbourne who have suffered so much. This is frustrating
because the Government went into this ready to have a war.
They were ready to have a battle and to beat the RMT, but
they have ended up with a complete stalemate in which the
two sides have dug in and the passengers, people and
communities of Eastbourne and the south-east are suffering.
-
Ms Ghani
rose—
-
I will not give way. I am about to finish.
This is ridiculous, and it is about time that the
Government and the Secretary of State showed some
leadership. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the
hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul
Maynard), is in his place, so I shall ask him two questions
before I finish. First, will the Government confirm or deny
that the Department for Transport has never interfered with
or blocked the resolution of the Southern rail dispute? I
am asking the Minister that specific question in the
Chamber because he has the full responsibility to answer it
truthfully, and I will ask it again. Will he confirm or
deny that the DFT has never interfered with or blocked the
resolution of the Southern rail dispute?
My second question relates to something that a couple of
other colleagues have already said, but it is crucial. If
the Government are serious about ending this dispute, to
the benefit of the entire south-east as well as those in my
constituency, why will they not host negotiations with both
the unions? We know that they have had opportunities to do
that, but they have not done so. They are trying to divide
and rule. I say this: Minister, pick up the phone tomorrow
and say to Mr Whelan at ASLEF, to Mr Cash at the RMT and to
GTR, “I want you to meet me tomorrow in my office in
Whitehall. I want all the unions and all the sides together
with no preconditions.” I am absolutely certain that if the
Government had the guts, and the honesty, to do that, we
would resolve the issue within a week. Minister, I wait to
hear your answer.
5.33 pm
-
(Horsham)
(Con)
The point of agreement between me and the hon. Member for
Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) is that the service has caused
heartache, distress and job losses for thousands. The
report was commissioned to try to find ways to improve the
resilience of the service, and I welcome it. I think
everyone acknowledges the author, Chris Gibb, to be a
serious, experienced individual, and he has produced a
report that is thoughtful, helpful and comprehensive. The
clear message that emerges from his report is that the
primary cause of the appalling service that passengers
received last year was the result of members of the
workforce
“taking strike action…declining to work overtime
and…undermining the system integrity”.
He concluded that
“if the train crew were to work in the normal manner…the
output of the system, a safe and reliable rail service for
passengers, would be delivered in an acceptable manner”.
The validity of Mr Gibb’s words has been reinforced by the
23 percentage point improvement in performance achieved by
Southern over the past few months, when there have been no
strikes. GTR has shown that with the support of its
workforce it can deliver, as Mr Gibb says, an acceptable
level of service for customers.
Like everyone in this House, I am horrified that we are
again seeing a return to industrial action. The Opposition
were keen to lambast the Government on public sector pay
restraint last week, but I am acutely aware of how many
public sector workers use these trains. ASLEF, on the
behalf of train drivers, rejected a pay offer worth nearly
24% over four years. Passengers will draw their own
conclusions. [Interruption.] Is the hon. Member for
Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) trying to intervene? If he
would like to get in, I would love to hear whether he
thinks that that is a bad thing that is being put to
members. I have offered the hon. Gentleman the opportunity
to come in and say that the 24% rise is adequate, but he
has declined to do so. I understand, so I will return to my
speech.
Passengers do not believe that the DCO trains that have
operated on our network for the past 30 years are unsafe.
They do not believe that passenger trains operated in
Germany, Austria or Canada using DCO are unsafe. Passengers
do not want much; they simply want the drivers and the
on-board supervisors to do their job, so that they can get
into work to do theirs. In the helpful statistics provided
by the RMT in a meeting this morning, as referred to by my
hon. Friends, it was confirmed that 97.25% of the 70% of
Southern trains that used to operate with a second person
on board continue to do so. Those trains have a second
person who is not preoccupied with opening and closing
doors; they are there to help passengers. That is a high
proportion, reflecting the additional numbers of OBSs that
have been recruited. It is not as high as I would like, nor
is it as high as GTR intends it to be—GTR is aiming for
100%—but all train users would rather see the 2.75% of
those trains continue to run for the benefit of passengers.
If they did not run, the negative impact to the service as
a whole would be far more than the 3% diminution in
service. It would lead to many thousands of passengers
being wholly unnecessarily delayed.
-
Ms Ghani
After this morning’s meeting, I just want to clarify
whether the unions are striking because 2.75% of trains are
running without on-board supervisors. That will have an
impact on thousands of paying passengers.
-
I thank my hon. Friend. She really has to ask the unions
why they are still on strike. My understanding is that it
is because of the 2.75% of the 70% of trains that
traditionally had a second person on board. I am convinced
that her constituents and my constituents would rather that
those trains continue to run. I look forward to 100%
coverage, but the 97.25% figure and the recruitment shows
that GTR is serious about ensuring that there is a second
professional on board. Passengers have had enough. It is
high time that the unions ended their action.
As the Secretary of State made clear, however, it would
belittle the report to suggest that it focuses only on
industrial action. It is far broader and more useful than
that. What runs through the report is the difficulty of
operating trains on a hugely well used and complex service.
As the report states, Southern is
“simultaneously running at absolute capacity at peak times,
and undergoing a period of dramatic… change”.
The introduction of class 700s, new depots at Three Bridges
and Hornsey, a doubling of Thameslink peak-hour trains to
24 through central London, and major infrastructure
enhancements at London Bridge are all good improvements for
passengers. They are vital to maintain a railway that has
seen a massive increase in passenger numbers. As the report
makes clear, Southern has been under strain with
“unreliable infrastructure, a timetable that is very tight
and with overcrowded peak services”.
In some ways, the railways are a victim of success. In the
days of British Rail, which the Opposition still seem to
recall so fondly, the network was declining and, as Gibb
points out, was relatively lightly used. In the 20 years
since privatisation, passenger numbers have grown such
that, on Southern’s routes, more passengers are now
travelling than at any time in the past 90 years. The
emphasis that Gibb places on collaborative working is
welcome, as are the practical steps that he recommends to
ensure that that takes place, many of which have already
been implemented. I am pleased that on receipt of the
report back in January the Government immediately committed
£300 million to meet the basic infrastructure requirements
that were set out. It is good to hear the Department’s
strong commitment to ensuring that the region secures the
investment it requires.
The report also has lessons for the operator, and Gibb
makes clear the complexity of the Southern operator’s task.
There are few, and I am certainly not among them, who view
the scale of the franchise as optimal. However, for those
who believe that firing the operator would be a simple
gain, Gibb argues persuasively that such an approach is
naive. Twice operators have been replaced by Government
emergency provision, as the shadow Minister said, and the
report implies that this comes at greater cost. In both
cases, the routes were running at steady state; Southern is
going through a period of substantial change. The
implication of the report is that firing the operator would
be, at best, risky, and at worst could lead to chaotic
failure.
However, it appears to me that the operator, in bidding for
the franchise, was too optimistic about what it might be
able to achieve by crewing via diagramming software. The
system can be highly efficient when it works well, and in
theory it should work brilliantly, but that requires
perfect operating conditions, which is not what Network
Rail delivers. I am therefore delighted by the Secretary of
State’s commitment to the additional drivers who are being
trained and coming online, and I am pleased that there are
now more on-board staff than at the start of this process.
They will increase resilience and reduce dependence on
overtime. He is determined to ensure that we have a modern,
resilient railway that delivers for its passengers. I
congratulate him on commissioning this report, and I thank
Mr Gibb for his work.
5.40 pm
-
Mr (Luton South)
(Lab/Co-op)
I appear to have a very good hit rate with you so far,
Madam Deputy Speaker. You have called me two days in a row.
I have seen great men and women stand at the Dispatch Box
and take responsibility for things that were often beyond
their control but within their Department’s remit. If we
are honest, today’s debate has proceeded along some
well-worn tramlines. Conservative Members have said that
the entire problem with Southern rail is caused by
industrial action, and Opposition Members have tried to
acknowledge that the systemic failure has wider
implications. This debate was set up to fail from its
opening remarks. It is important to be aware that it is not
a bug within the system that the Secretary of State chooses
not to take responsibility for the situation; it is a
feature.
I do not have to declare an interest other than that I
commute daily to this place on Govia Thameslink, and the
everyday experiences of my constituents, which in some
cases mirror my own, are at the forefront of my mind. The
House has to take responsibility for the very real failings
of the system as a whole and plot a course out of them, and
I will explain why that is important right now.
How did we get here? Gibb identifies three or four major
factors. First, there is no single system operator. With
particular regard to Southern, he says:
“The rushed 1990s privatisation...failed to understand the
critical needs of the system”.
We see that in the fragmentation across the planning and
the response to critical failures. I have had conversations
with the train operating companies, which revealed that
they could perhaps better manage disruption if they put
their own staff in the control room—so that other train
operators, which are already in the control room, do not
put their services in front. That is a pretty basic
failing, but it underlines the fact that there is not a
single point of accountability for this failure.
-
Does my hon. Friend not think that the Department for
Transport should be stepping into that role?
-
Mr Shuker
My hon. Friend pre-empts my idea. We should recognise
Southern rail as a critical piece of infrastructure for
London, the south-east and the whole United Kingdom and
treat it as such. The Government should take custody and
oversee Southern rail.
Secondly, the £6 billion investment in the Thameslink
programme will bring very real benefits, but unfortunately
it has been bolted on to a system that has some basic
failings. This major infrastructure programme is specified
by DFT and led by Network Rail, but it is being put at risk
because the basics are being ignored. Gibb instructs DFT to
make a call in this calendar year about whether, given what
we know about the system, we can turn on an increase in
capacity through that £6 billion investment. That is a
shocking state of affairs to find ourselves in: the basic
infrastructure failures of this system could cause us to
waste that money or to delay implementation.
In my constituency, in Luton, we have been trying to get a
station rebuild since the Government cancelled the money
when they first came to power in 2010. The need is
desperate; the station is recognised as one of the 10 worst
in the country. The net effect of the Thameslink programme
was to make our station worse, as we have gone to 12-car
platforms and we have reduced disabled access, and I
struggle to explain to my constituents the benefits that
will come. My fear is that we will not be able to explain
to them why there is not a commensurate increase in
capacity, as a result of the basic failings that Gibb
identifies.
Thirdly, we have a fragmented system, with not enough focus
on integration. Gibb says:
“The infrastructure on the Southern network is in a poor
and unreliable condition.”
He goes on to explain that some of these things relate to
pretty basic aspects of railway maintenance, such as
renewing sleepers, tackling vegetation and dealing with
fencing. What an indictment of a system: it does not
prioritise the basic upkeep. I served on the Transport
Committee in 2010 when we reported on the cold weather
disruption, as was the Under-Secretary of State for
Transport, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and
Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is in his place. That report
identified that the third rail running south of London was
a major problem, yet we have still struggled to tackle that
basic thing. I hope that the Transport Committee will look
at the future shape of this franchise at the earliest
available opportunity, so that Members will have a chance
to have an input there.
Fourthly, all of this situation was led by Government
decision making. In the last Parliament, I took a view that
with this major infrastructure programme coming in it was
not appropriate to let this franchise in the normal
commercial way. My view was that it was better for
government to manage it. These stations are dealing with
one third of all passenger journeys in this country. In a
sense, the Government found a halfway house, as they went
with a management-style contract in which they took on a
large degree of risk and the incentives were changed for
the operator. That was a mistake; it was neither fair nor
foul, and we are trying to manage a contract that would not
work in the first place. Gibb’s comments in the report
about why the franchisee was chosen are instructive. It is
an open secret that for a long time Sunday services have
been cancelled, because, for example, insufficient drivers
work on Sundays. The answer to that is not to bully drivers
into coming into work; a contract has been taken on and if
the operator wants to change the terms and conditions, they
should bring forward appropriate proposals.
If this were any kind of project other than Britain’s
fragmented railways, we would have an Olympic-style
delivery authority taking over this network. It is key to
our infrastructure, but nobody is accountable, and the
clear message from the Secretary of State today from that
Dispatch Box was not that he took responsibility; it was to
say, “I am not to blame.” It is time we had a serious
discussion. This franchise highlights the problems with our
fragmented railway system, and we need to tackle them.
5.48 pm
-
(Bexhill and Battle)
(Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I warmly welcome you to
your place, and I warmly recommend and welcome the Gibb
report on the performance of Southern rail. I thank Chris
Gibb for posing some serious challenges for us all to
consider this afternoon.
I wish to focus on a couple of those proposals before
turning my attention to what the report outlines as the
primary cause for the system integrity to fail: the
industrial action, and the illogical position taken by the
rail unions and their members. First, let me talk about the
resilience in the system. Rail has been one of the great
success stories of the past 20 years, but its success has
caused the current problem, in that passenger numbers have
doubled, but investment in trains and track has not. With
23% of all rail passengers using the Southern network, it
only takes one ingredient to fail and the entire network
goes down, as this report makes clear.
The report contains difficult sections for hon. Members to
consider. It recommends that trains “non-stop” at more
stations; that daytime closures occur to allow for
engineering; that off-peak services are reduced to give
more resilience and allow preparation for the challenge of
the peak period in rush hour; that Gatwick station is
transferred over to the airport operator; and that depots
are transferred to reduce empty trains on the network. It
is important that we focus on the big prize and recognise
that that series of measures, taken together, could give
the system the resilience it so badly needs.
Another recommendation is that some services be transferred
from Southern to Southeastern. My right hon. Friend and
neighbour, the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd),
has championed a project to extend High Speed 1 from
Ashford to Bexhill, Hastings and Rye. With the innovation
in train technology whereby expensive overhead
electrification can be substituted by a system of hybrid
trains that charge themselves over track, my right hon.
Friend’s project looks within reach. As it would require
the relevant part of the network to be transferred from
Southern to Southeastern, we welcome that recommendation in
the report and ask the Department for Transport, Network
Rail and the train operators to make the necessary
investment in extending High Speed 1. As the Gibb report
notes, Southern’s Sussex coast line is at the bottom of the
table for capacity, with only 52% of passengers satisfied
that they have sufficient carriage space. We badly need to
extend High Speed 1 to improve their experience.
I had a seat on the Select Committee on Transport in the
last Parliament, I have a constituency reliant on
Southern’s services to get people to work and college, and
I have had a season ticket on Southern for the past 10
years, so I have witnessed the illogical and devastating
impact the industrial action has caused. I say “illogical”
because no drivers or second crew members are losing their
job—indeed, as we have heard, 100 additional second crew
members have been recruited, and trains will operate
without a second crew member only in exceptional
circumstances, such as when the crew member is stuck on
another part of the line. Secondly, no employees will lose
pay—indeed, train drivers are being offered a 23% increase
to take their pay for a four-day 35-hour week to £60,000,
and most would earn £70,000 by working the fifth day.
Thirdly, the crew are not being asked to do anything novel.
The dispute is allegedly about a driver controlling doors,
but as we have heard, 30% of our rail network has run in
that manner for more than 30 years and many of the trains
have no second crew member at all. Fourthly, this practice
is deemed to be safe. The report by Dr Ian Prosser, the
rail safety regulator, has been mentioned. When called on
by the rail unions to confirm that the practice was safe,
Dr Prosser did just that. In fact, it can be argued that
the practice is safer than other modes of operation. A
coroner looking into the death of a passenger who fell on
to Merseyrail tracks recommended that the operations be
focused in one person; that the driver should control both
the doors and movement of the train. That links to another
argument that driver-controlled doors are even safer. As I
saw with the Transport Committee when I travelled in a
train driver’s cab, when carriage doors are opening and
closing, it is entirely possible to see on the video
display unit what is coming in and out of the train. That
is what the rail regulator has opined on, but the video can
also run as the train moves through the station. At the
moment, a conductor cannot see what is happening on the
platform once the doors have closed. Unfortunately, that
video capacity is not being used at the moment, but it
should be. If it were, the system would be safer than
current practices.
Although the lack of logic is frustrating, it is the
devastating impact on individuals, families and businesses
that distresses me the most. People have lost their job
because they cannot get to or from work; they have lost
earnings because many earning less than £49,000 a year
cannot commute to London for higher wages; and they have
lost precious time with their family, which they will never
get back. The economy in my area, much of it based on
travel and tourism, has lost £40 million. Public services
have suffered because essential workers cannot get to
hospitals and schools or will not relocate to our region
because they will be unable to do so. As a result, tax
yields go down as well. For people such as Labour Members
to call for protection of and investment in public services
while supporting their degradation via this strike is rank
hypocrisy and a disgrace.
I welcome the report and its findings. I hope very much
that we can implement the recommendations and that the
unions will cease their pointless action.
-
Several hon. Members rose—
-
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. After the next speaker, the time limit will be
reduced to five minutes. I call .
5.54 pm
-
(Hove) (Lab)
What a huge honour it is, Madame Deputy Speaker, to be
called to speak for the first time in this Parliament under
your leadership in the Chair. I congratulate you on your
elevation.
I share the frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for
Luton South (Mr Shuker) that, sometimes in this debate, we
have been speaking most about the thing that Chris Gibb
spoke about the least. That has been an intense source of
frustration. Like every passenger, I utterly despair of the
situation. If the Gibb report teaches us anything, it is
that there is a lot of blame to go around. No organisation
is blameless and, right now, a small amount of humility
would go a very long way. That is why the Gibb report is
such a useful tool and a credit to him as its author. For
the first time we, as parliamentarians and passengers, can
finally see behind the smoke and mirrors and grasp the full
extent of the dysfunction that is the root cause of today’s
problems.
The Gibb report states that,
“all of the elements of the system have been under strain:
unreliable infrastructure, a timetable that is very
tight…some key stations that are overcrowded, depots that
are full and…in the wrong place, and people that are
involved in informal and formal industrial action.”
This, in one paragraph, explains why the network has
experienced so many catastrophic failures even before the
start of the most recent industrial action. For example,
two summers ago, Southern reduced its timetable by two
thirds for almost four months. It was a terrible blow for
commuters. The reason was a shortage of drivers. It was
inexplicable to passengers how such a stupid act of
planning and incompetence could have happened, and the
consequences were far-reaching.
At the time, neither Southern nor the Government would
accept responsibility for the shortage, simply blaming, as
the Minister did today, the length of time it takes to
train new drivers. When things go wrong, passengers deserve
two things: an honest explanation of what has gone wrong;
and the belief that lessons have been learned and will
never be repeated.
This situation has become the “new normal” for passengers.
It is a “normal” that has wrecked careers, broken
relationships and hampered the economy of the south-east of
England. Large businesses such as Brighton and Hove Albion
have lost more than £l million in revenue, while charities
such as Brighton and Hove Pride lost £140,000 last summer
alone.
My point is simple: continued failure on our rail network
is not a victimless situation. Its impact is felt deep and
wide throughout our communities. That is the reason why an
all-party group for the southern commuter was established
almost two years ago. It has been an honour to co-chair the
group with the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir
Nicholas Soames), who is in his place. The group has
transcended party boundaries, which has been incredibly
important in such a difficult situation.
The Gibb report is clear on the way forward. We need better
leadership, more partnership, and much more investment than
has been the case for generations. On leadership, the
report says that,
“the custodian of the overall system integrity should be
better identified, empowered and trusted.”
Gibb goes on to recommend the creation of a “system
operator”. That is a logical conclusion of the leadership
vacuum that has been created by a botched privatisation and
an overly-fragmented system. It also begs an important
question: what on earth is the point of having a Secretary
of State, a Railways Minister and an entire Department for
Transport if we now need a new person to come and give
leadership to our rail network? What exactly are Ministers
doing—or not doing—that is leaving such a leadership vacuum
in our rail network? Rather than having a new rail boss, or
“super-boss”, can the current ones not just do their jobs
properly? Heaven knows, they are paid enough to do it.
-
(Brighton,
Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Minister is unable to
show that leadership, he should think about resigning?
-
It is an honour to take an intervention from my hon. Friend
for the very first time. May I welcome him to his place?
There have been failures right across the board. Right now,
what passengers really need is for people in those
positions to get a grip without delay.
Infrastructure investment is the final piece of the jigsaw.
On page 5, the report states:
“The infrastructure on the Southern network is in a poor
and unreliable condition”.
The blame for that rests with successive Governments, not
with this one alone. Passengers are shocked to hear of the
historic under-investment in their rail network. The
south-east of England accounts for 30% of our country’s
passenger journeys but only 15% of the investment. At a
time when Government are focused on HS2 at a cost of over
£30 billion, too little is being spent on what , chair of the
Government’s National Infrastructure Commission, said is
the greatest transport challenge that we face, which is
getting people to and from work every day in the south-east
of England.
The Government have unlocked £300 million of funding for
immediate investment in the south-east, but to stand a
chance of delivering the robust infrastructure we need,
this level of investment simply must continue into the next
control period.
-
Sir
I agree with every word that the hon. Gentleman says, but
does he agree that it is now all the more important to come
to an agreement between all the parties, so that this
infrastructure investment may proceed? Without it, it
frankly would not make sense to create that level of
infrastructure.
-
I could not agree more. I have said so to the right hon.
Gentleman off the record, and am happy to say so in this
place. I am calling on the unions to get around the table
and, as I have said to the Minister in person, I hope that
Ministers will be more muscular and more active in this
process, rather than sitting on the sidelines. Every party
needs to get around the table actively to resolve this
problem for and on behalf of passengers.
It is imperative that Government confirm without delay that
they will continue investment into the next control period,
guaranteeing that up to £l billion will be available for
the entirety of that period. Once this industrial action is
settled and the remaining structural challenges are once
again the focus of our attention, passengers will
rightfully demand month-on-month improvements in the
service they actually experience. Right now, the
infrastructure that underpins our system is too weak to
offer the robust improvements that passengers deserve. We
must move unrelentingly towards the point where our rail
network is bulletproof.
Within a month of becoming an MP, I had asked Ministers to
scrap the class 313 units from the Coastway route. Some
were built in 1976 and none has a toilet. These trains are
loathed by everyone. Some of the things the report finds
are so blindingly obvious that they prompt the question why
it took the report to say them in the first place. Then
there are things that I did not know about, such as suicide
hotspots, bridges being struck by vehicles due to lack of
signage, and unnecessarily crowded timetabling for
historical reasons.
Why we needed an independent review to tell us these things
is beyond me. Government, GTR and Network Rail should have
easily had the capacity to sort these things out without
the need for an independent assessor, but we are where we
are. At last we have the manual on how to improve our
system. It is now up to the Government and their partners
to make it a reality and this Parliament to scrutinise,
challenge and support it every step of the way. I, for one,
will not let up in that task.
6.02 pm
-
(Tonbridge and Malling)
(Con)
What a pleasure it is to see you in your place, Madam
Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Hove (Peter
Kyle) for all he has done, along with my right hon. Friend
the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), on the
all-party parliamentary group on Southern rail. I hope that
the group will reform as soon as he is ready.
This is a particularly important debate for me and it is
one that is very close to my home, in the sense that I live
very near a station on the Southern line, from which I take
a train to get here. This situation has had a huge impact
on my life and the lives of many of the people I have the
privilege to represent. People around our communities
cannot get home. Children cannot get to school and
therefore the parents, even if they could have got to work,
cannot go because they do not have emergency childcare.
I have been working very closely with my hon. Friend the
Minister, who has done enormous amounts of work of late to
ensure that the rail network gets the money it requires.
But in the Gibb report we find many indications of why this
is not just about money. It is about so much more. It is
about huge amounts of time and infrastructure, and that is
why I shall skip over the industrial relations that have
been so adequately covered by so many of my right hon. and
hon. Friends and over some of the aspects of union power
touched on by those who are my friends, even if they sit on
the other side of the House. I shall focus instead on areas
in which we need to take the Gibb report seriously.
As various people know, electrification of the Uckfield
line has been spoken about since the 1970s. It was, I
believe, the last track to use a steam engine for regular
commuting services, right up to the 1970s, and now that
legacy is coming through on the diesel line. Surely enough
is enough. It is 2017, Thomas the Tank Engine is on an
iPad—he is not even a book any more—yet we have diesel
trains running on what should frankly be electric tracks.
Please, Minister, can we have the electrification we need?
Can we catch up with the iPad generation?
There are many people from Edenbridge and District Rail
Travellers Association with whom I have been working very
closely who have spoken about this and about how we can get
this done: how to get the lines dualled—or rather,
redualled, as the dual line was removed in the 1990s.
Perhaps—here is the real chance—we can get the line to run
beyond Uckfield. Imagine that, Madam Deputy Speaker: taking
your holidays and deciding that instead of driving down—you
do not want to do that, through Croydon and south London,
on all those crowded roads—you will get on the tube at
Westminster. You take the Jubilee line straight through to
London Bridge, where you get on the train. You will travel
down some of the most beautiful tracks in Kent, but then
you end up by accident in Sussex. However, you will still
go through beautiful parts of Kent, travelling on from
Uckfield down to the coast. Imagine that, Madam Deputy
Speaker, for an evening in Brighton after a day in the
House. I can see that you are already desirous of those
moments.
I can see that that is something that we can all aim for.
There are many issues that we can touch on: the parking at
Cowden and Hever; the fact that many folk have to drive to
stations such as Hildenborough or Sevenoaks, rather than
getting on at the station nearest to them, which has an
impact on the environment and road safety. These are narrow
lanes with cyclists and horse riders. That is a danger for
all of us.
Perhaps the most important issue is the fact that we have
to invest in our future. Time and again, we have lived off
the legacy of our great-grandparents’ thoughts and
dreams—those investments that built the trains, bridges and
roads. They were built by the Victorian and Edwardian
generations, and in this new Elizabethan age surely we need
to emulate that investment, because when we spend on the
rail networks we are not spending on getting to London five
minutes quicker; no, we are spending on making our nation
great, and we are doing it because London is not just the
people who live in it. All great metropolises depend on the
networks they feed off, and there is none greater than ours
and there is none that requires more investment.
6.07 pm
-
(Mitcham and
Morden) (Lab)
Almost a century ago, the campaign to get a train station
at Mitcham Eastfields began. The first questions in
Parliament about a new station for Mitcham are believed to
have been recorded by Hansard in the early 1930s. I myself
was part of the campaign for a quarter of a century, so the
House can imagine my delight in 2008 when the first train
arrived from London Victoria at Mitcham Eastfields station
at eight minutes past four on Monday 2 June. The station
connects Mitcham with central London in just 19 minutes,
and since it opened nine years ago, the growth of the area
has been remarkable, with residents now able to commute to
work in central London. Mitcham Eastfields has been a huge
boost for local housing, and has enabled more students and
teachers to access St Mark’s Academy and other local
schools. The opening of the station is one of my proudest
achievements as the Member of Parliament for Mitcham and
Morden.
Unfortunately, Southern rail operates the services that run
through Mitcham Eastfields, as well as the other stations
in my constituency, including St Helier and Mitcham
Junction. My constituents comprise many of the 300,000
passengers who use Southern rail every single day, paying
extortionate ticket prices for an appalling service. When
Mitcham station was opened, all the tools were there for
the growth of Mitcham and ease of transport for my
constituents. Because of Southern rail, the reality is the
worst rail disruption since 1994. A phone call yesterday
from my constituent, Mark, summed it all up. In his words,
“the drivers are often missing, the trains often break
down, and I don’t think there is a single day that the
train is on time. And that’s not down to striking staff.”
My constituent, Arexa, was put on disciplinary measures and
subsequently lost her job in retail because of the
unacceptable regularity of Southern delays. Her story is
not unique. Only last month my constituent, William, left
his dream job, as the company where he worked could not
continue to tolerate his lateness. In fact, my constituent,
Collis, uses the phrase, “daily REG”—random excuse
generator—for the explanation that Southern give for their
appalling service. It is not the service that he and his
wife deserve, as they pay over £3,000 a year.
In the last week, services in my constituency have been
slashed by even more than was publicised, and the current
revised timetable has dropped direct off-peak services from
London Victoria. Similarly, the proposed new timetable from
May 2018 sees a reduction in rush-hour trains, and there is
a gap of nearly 30 minutes between the off-peak trains. It
is so frustrating to see the intermediate services fly
through Mitcham Eastfields without stopping, helping the
Surrey shires at the expense of suburban Mitcham.
It is clear that Southern rail is not working and shows
little sign of improvement. The services should be
transferred to the Mayor of London. Transport for London
clearly has the experience and proven track record of
running world-class public transport in the capital. In
fact, the Gibb report suggests that parts of Southern would
be better operated by Transport for London, and I wonder
whether that is the reason why the whole of appendix 9 has
been redacted from the report.
This issue is beyond politics, and it is affecting the
quality of life of thousands of people—people who get up
early, go to work, pay their taxes and, on top of that, pay
hideously high fares. All they ask in return is for the
trains to run on time.
6.10 pm
-
(Lewes) (Con)
I welcome the Gibb report and agree with almost every one
of its findings, and I will not go over many of the
comments made by right hon. and hon. Members this
afternoon.
My constituency has been particularly affected by the 18
months to two years of disruption we have faced on the
Southern rail network. The constituency is served solely by
Southern, so there are no alternative rail routes. It is
also very rural, and there is no bus service in many parts,
so people either drive or get the train—otherwise, they are
left completely stranded.
The 18 months of sheer misery were caused by a whole range
of things; all the reasons are laid out in the Gibb report,
and Southern rail, which I am no fan of, has played its
part in this. That has led to dangerous conditions for many
passengers. Many times, we are turfed out at Haywards
Heath, when the train is terminated and we can go no
further. On a dark winter’s night, when there are no taxis
about, and there is no other way of getting around, there
will be elderly passengers left there, young mums who are
desperate to get home to their children, and people who are
just trying to get home from work. That has been the legacy
of the last 18 months.
We are a tourist destination—we are set on the beautiful
south coast, and we are also in the South Downs national
park—but the disruption has hit at peak times. In the
tourist season last summer, we saw a 25% drop in business
in many of our retail areas, and they were hit again during
the Christmas period. This has been a devastating time for
the tourist parts of my constituency, and businesses are
only just starting to pick up now.
Things have improved. Performance rates have improved, and
we are now around the 90% mark for daily performance, which
has to be welcome. Passengers have started to get used to
being able to rely on the train service and feel safe on
it, and businesses are starting to see their customers come
back and to do business. So for the problems to start up
once again, with overtime bans and ballots for strike
action, is absolutely heart-breaking.
We are seeking the second person—the on-board supervisor—on
trains. When I go back late at night, I see that second
person, and it is reassuring to have them there. I would
not support a deal that removed them completely. I
absolutely welcome the work they do, and I am pleased they
are still there.
Southern still has some passenger care issues to tackle.
The Gibb report shows that we are on the most congested
rail network in the south-east, and the trains are heavily
congested. It is an hour and a half’s journey to London,
but time after time—even this week, with the overtime
ban—first class is not declassified. We had an incident
only last week involving a pregnant woman being told off
for sitting in first class, but other trains had been
cancelled because of the overtime ban. That is a Southern
rail customer service issue; it is not something that
should be acceptable in this day and age.
Facilities for disabled passengers are a key issue. In an
Adjournment debate earlier in the year, I raised the issue
of toilet facilities at Haywards Heath, where our trains
join to go into London. There are some fantastic facilities
now, and people can drive into the new car park and get the
lift straight down on to the platform, but there are no
toilet facilities for disabled passengers. It is that sort
of customer care that Southern still needs to address. When
the Minister responded to the Adjournment debate he was
fairly positive in urging Southern rail to try to bring on
some of the facilities that it has promised.
We also need to look at issues of the flexible season
tickets that we were promised when the franchise was let.
Many passengers travel to work two or three days a week and
the rest of the time work from home. We were promised
flexible season tickets. It cannot be right that someone
has to purchase a full season ticket when they are only
using it two or three days a week. We urge Southern to
deliver on its promises and its commitment in the
franchise.
I welcome the huge investment that is going into the main
rail line, which has been underinvested in for decades,
causing 50% of the delays over the past 18 months. That
urgent money that the Government have put in is making a
difference, and it is a significant reason why performance
has improved over the past few months. My final plea is for
us to look at Brighton main line 2. If we had a second main
rail line, it would enable many of the works that need to
be done on the line to be done and give us an alternative
route from Sussex to London.
6.15 pm
-
(Brighton, Pavilion)
(Green)
May I, Madam Deputy Speaker, add my congratulations to you
following others that have been expressed? It is a pleasure
to see you in your place.
I welcome this debate, as the Secretary of State has some
major information gaps to fill and some serious questions
to answer. It is a shame that he left the Chamber almost as
soon as he could, because on top of the six-month delay
between the Government receiving the report and its
publication, we have had no serious formal Government
response. The Minister’s 500-word statement barely
stretches to a side of A4. That is indicative of the whole
attitude that we are seeing from the Government—all
hands-off and no leadership. After two years of the
Brighton main line rail nightmare, my constituents expect
more and deserve better. They have regularly been in tears
of anger and frustration. We have heard the stories of jobs
lost, relationships broken up, and businesses taking a very
serious hit in Brighton and Hove. All the while, passengers
continue to pay through the nose for Britain’s
worst-performing rail service.
I have listened to the Secretary of State today. May I
point out to him that it will not help passengers to heap
all the blame for our long-running rail nightmare on to the
unions? The people who work on our railways every
day—people who are trained to a safety critical standard
and working on the frontline—are raising specific concerns
about access and safety that have yet to be answered.
Moreover, the Secretary of State simply cannot keep up the
pretence that this two-year-long fiasco is nothing to do
with him and the Government. The buck stops with him,
whether he likes it or not, and chronic problems long
predate the industrial action. That action started a little
over a year ago, at the end of last April, whereas we have
had enduring problems for well over two years. A glance at
the graph on page 93 of the Gibb report makes that very
clear. Southern was the worst-performing company a very
long time before any industrial action took place.
As the Secretary of State well knows, Chris Gibb says that
“all the elements of the system have been under strain”.
He says that Southern rail was attempting to run too many
trains on poor and unreliable infrastructure. He makes a
lot of technical suggestions on issues such as signalling,
timetabling and service patterns. He says, critically, that
strategic leadership is missing. That is not news for
long-suffering passengers. With regard to this dispute, the
bottom line is that there has been a chronic lack of
leadership from this Government and from Ministers. It is
plain that we are not going to get anywhere unless we get
people talking together.
-
(Carshalton and Wallington)
(LD)
Does the hon. Lady agree that this is a case of “a plague
on all their houses”—that Southern, Network Rail, the
unions, and indeed, I am afraid, Ministers, have all failed
passengers? Does she agree that it might be worth
investigating the possibility of using binding arbitration
to get them in the same room to agree a way forward?
-
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I
certainly agree that we need a situation where everybody is
in the room at the same time, not a strategy where certain
unions are picked off separately, and not one where the
Government do not sit in the room either.
In his report, Gibb makes it clear that:
“In GTR ‘do nothing’ is not an option, so negotiations must
be entered into.”
The Transport Committee has called for all parties,
including the Government, to sit down together and resolve
the dispute, and that was months ago. The involvement of
Ministers in the industrial dispute is often officially
denied but in one phrase Gibb lays bare their central role,
saying that the Secretary of State is
“already determining the strategic direction of this
dispute”.
If the person in this position will not get around the
table without preconditions, I really do not see how we are
going to make any progress.
Can the Minister also tell us where the famous appendix 9
—entitled “Recommendations regarding the GTR franchise
agreement”—is? That appendix, which might just shed a bit
of light on the issue, is conspicuous by its absence. My
constituents think that Southern has failed, as do I, and
we want to see that section of the report. Does the
mysteriously missing appendix 9 actually tell us whether
GTR is in breach of its contractual obligations? Is the
censoring of that appendix in its entirety the reason why
the report was kept hidden for half a year? Perhaps
Ministers want to avoid being pushed for answers about
whether GTR was in breach of contractual obligations.
In October 2016, the Select Committee told the Government
to “get a grip” on the monitoring and enforcement of the
franchise, to speed up their assessment of the franchisee’s
force majeure claim and to be prepared to restructure or
terminate the agreement should GTR be shown to be in
default. Until the court case brought by the Association of
British Commuters, however, no action was taken at all.
ABC is also raising interesting and important questions
about the safety of the concourse at Victoria station,
which I want to touch on briefly. Gibb says:
“At major stations such as Victoria, pedestrian flows,
gateline and concourse capacity are all significantly
influenced by commercial strategy.”
He pointed to the dangers that arise when many commuters
are concentrated in very small areas of the concourse. He
points to the Department for Transport as the place from
where we should be getting leadership, but are we getting
that leadership? Is Victoria safe from overcrowding? Can
the Minister give us a timetable and a funding commitment
for the works that are needed?
Finally, Gibb says that bringing the franchise into public
hands would create disruption and result in projects having
to be put on hold, but that lays bare the fact that the
Government have allowed the travelling public effectively
to be held to ransom by a failing operator. The Government
have dismantled Directly Operated Railways, so if they had
to strip GTR of the franchise, they would have very limited
options in terms of current project delivery. That is a
serious dereliction of Government duty.
The state has to guarantee that if the private sector
fails, the Government can and will take the franchise back
into public control. Without that, there is no stick. The
Department needs to rectify the situation and must
immediately start preparing a publicly owned organisation
to take over on a clear and agreed date. If the industry
knew that, for example, in six months’ time the GTR
franchise would switch to a directly operated railway,
projects could be provided without disruption and my
constituents in Brighton Pavilion would have a chance of
getting a better deal on the railways.
6.22 pm
-
(Crawley) (Con)
As this is the first time that I have spoken when you have
been in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I offer my
sincere congratulations on your recent election?
It is difficult, without risking being accused of
hyperbole, to describe the sheer misery that passengers and
commuters in my constituency and across the south have
suffered in recent years because of the significant
disruption to Southern Railway services. Many hon. and
right hon. Members have described people losing their jobs
and facing disciplinary hearings at their place of
employment because they are consistently late for work.
At the other end of the day, I have come across many
accounts of my constituents being unacceptably prevented
from getting home to do the simple but very important
things, such as reading their children a bedtime story or
sitting around the table to have an evening meal together.
Lives and livelihoods are literally being wrecked by the
disruption. I have yet to cross you in this way, Madam
Deputy Speaker, but many times I have been late to Question
Time and debates in this Chamber because of delays to the
Southern service that I regularly use to get to
Westminster.
Why has this situation come about? I think the reasons are
fourfold. First, the franchise structure has been bizarrely
established by the Department for Transport. The Government
need to learn some serious lessons about the structuring of
train franchises. Secondly, as many hon. and right hon.
Members have said, the network is by far the busiest in the
country, and it is at capacity, or over capacity, on too
many occasions. On that point, I particularly welcome the
£300 million of investment for Network Rail that the
Government are putting in to ensure that the engineering
problems are addressed.
Thirdly, Southern and the parent company GTR have, frankly,
not performed very well at all. Without repeating the
stories that were told earlier, some of the ways in which
they have treated their customers have been quite
appalling. Lastly, as highlighted in the Gibb review—I
congratulate the Government on initiating it last
year—militant unions are determined to exploit the misery
of passengers and this situation for their own political
ends.
There is blame on all sides on this issue, but the people
who are suffering—they are standing, often on cold
platforms, in the middle of this argument—are the
travelling public from my constituency and elsewhere in the
country. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for East
Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) says people are also
standing on trains, and that is certainly my daily
experience.
This situation needs to be addressed. There have been
improvements, and I welcome the millions of pounds of
additional investment at Three Bridges and Gatwick stations
in my constituency, which is important. Quite frankly,
however, there is the issue of the image of Britain that is
created when people arrive at London Gatwick airport and
try to get to our capital.
-
(Eastleigh) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend comment on the impact on Gatwick? There
are problems for my constituents commuting from Southampton
to Brighton who decide to travel that way to avoid the M27,
and indeed for people trying to get to Gatwick for flights,
who are missing them after simply being left on the
platform.
-
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been a
massive impact on the economy, for people trying to do
business in the capital or around the south-east, and on
lives, when people miss flights to go on holiday. That
aspect has not always been highlighted, and I am grateful
to her for giving me the chance to do so in the House
today.
As I have said, this situation needs to be resolved. I call
on the unions to stop their industrial action. A very
generous offer is on the table, with over £60,000 for a
35-hour week for drivers. As we have heard, driver-operated
doors have had a proven track record for over three decades
on the London underground and many other rail systems
around the world. As we have also heard, most of the guards
on trains will simply be redeployed to more
customer-focused efforts, which is very important,
particularly in enabling them to help disabled passengers
on the network. That means that rather than just standing
by the doors that they are opening and closing, they can
engage with and support customers better, which is very
important.
I urge the unions to get fully back to work, and to support
my constituents and other commuters. I urge the Government
to continue their investment in our railway, particularly
on the London to Brighton main line, and I urge Southern
and GTR, as the operators, to be much more
customer-friendly in the way they operate so that this
misery can finally be ended.
6.28 pm
-
(Brighton,
Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to be called by you for the first time,
Madam Deputy Speaker.
The reality is that this franchise has been a bad franchise
for a significant time: it has not worked. I find the
finger-pointing at the unions slightly hypocritical, given
that Peter Wilkinson, a senior official at the Department
for Transport, said only last year:
“Over the next three years we’re going to be having punch
ups and we will see industrial action and I want your
support...we have got to break them.”
He said that they had borrowed money for cars on their
credit cards and could not afford to go on strike, and he
went on and on. If that is not a political motivation to
aggravate this strike, I do not know what is—it is a clear
ratcheting up of the dispute. Of course, there is always
blame on all sides, but the Government and the Department
for Transport are in a position of responsibility.
-
Ms Ghani
We all want a resolution because we want to ensure our
constituents can take the journeys they have paid for. The
hon. Gentleman has talked about how much friction there is.
I will read a quote from Mr Hedley, the RMT union assistant
general secretary. He said on LBC:
“I think all the Tories are an absolute disgrace. They
should be taken out and shot to be quite frank with you.”
Is that the new, gentler kind of politics that the
Opposition agree with and believe will bring a resolution
to this problem?
-
It does not help when the Government have not been getting
the unions around the table in the same room without
preconditions. That is how we de-escalate things. People in
positions of responsibility, such as the Minister, need to
come forward and de-escalate it, and not just point fingers
and quote from the radio but actually show leadership.
The reality is that this dispute is not about money. We
have heard a lot from the Conservatives about trying to
shove cash into the mouths of drivers. This dispute is
about safety and accessibility. The unions have put a clear
proposal on the table. They have offered to come to a deal
that will ensure that disabled and vulnerable people can
turn up to the train station without having to give notice,
and that there will be safe conditions on the trains. The
unions would then withdraw their action. That offer has
been disregarded by GTR and its puppet masters in the
Government. I call them puppet masters because this is a
rigged contract that allows GTR to continue to get the cash
incentive to run a service that it fails to run—it does not
lose a penny when ticket sales are not made. It does not
have to bear the risk. The problem is the contract.
The Government clearly need to bring the contract in-house.
Gibb says that that would be disruptive but, as the hon.
Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, that
is because the Government wound down the direct operator
and have left themselves with their pants down. They are
unable to run a service and they are unable to hold the
contractors to account.
-
The hon. Gentleman has spent most of his speech panning the
role of the Government and the Department for Transport and
now he is saying that he wants the franchise to be brought
in-house, to be run by that same Government and Department
that he has been panning. I have no problem with the
franchise being removed, but he has to have a care that
whoever is taking it over can do a better job of it, and
that is not clear at the moment. Could it be a case of out
of the frying pan, into the fire?
-
The hon. Gentleman is quite right—I would not want the
Minister to be directly running the railways. It seems that
the Minister is barely able to run his own Department and
get people around the table to negotiate, which is one of
his key responsibilities. Directly Operated Railways
operated well on the east coast franchise and the franchise
taken off Connex South Eastern. The service improved and it
brought money back to the Exchequer. It worked then, and I
see no evidence why it would not work in future.
Of course, hon. Members can point fingers at each other—I
will be pointing fingers at the Government—but we must try
to resolve this without preconditions. That means getting
the unions around the table. We must not say that they are
welcome around the table only when they have called off
their strike. The Government have not got them around the
table and we need to make sure that that is done.
If I was a headteacher in a school and had to send my
children home because I could not organise supply cover, I
would be blamed—not the teachers or the supply teacher who
did not turn up. The blame needs to be on the management
and on the Government. They need to step up. Our
constituents are suffering every single day because of
their failings.
6.35 pm
-
(Sutton and Cheam)
(Con)
I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on taking your
place.
When I was first elected two years ago, I was campaigning
to bring a number of extra train services to Sutton,
including extending the London Overground, but I was
rightly told by many passengers—mainly Thameslink
passengers, at that time—that they just wanted the trains
that were already there to run on time. If we fast forward
to today, the complaints about Thameslink in my postbag and
my inbox have been clearly overtaken by complaints about
Southern. One thing that I knew I was going to hate about
being elected as an MP was the return to commuting, which I
had not done for a little while. I have been furiously
tweeting about the complaints I have received and about my
own experience. I even missed a “meet the manager” event at
London Victoria station, because I could not get there on
one of its trains.
It is predominantly the Brighton main line that causes a
lot of the problems in terms of infrastructure and poor
linkages. A lot of the problems start when Sutton services
link at Selhurst. That is where we need investment. All the
trains that go through Sutton at the moment are driver-only
operated, and they all work reasonably well until they get
to that point.
In the short time I have to speak, I would like to make
four points on how we need to sort this out. No one
component, institution or organisation in this dispute has
come out of it particularly well. The Department has to my
mind built up a very unwieldy agreement that takes up 22%
or 23% of the entire rail network within its structure. I
would like that to be addressed when the franchise is up
for renewal.
I would like the Mayor of London to have a greater say in
the management of the suburban lines. Now, that is not the
Kent line or the Sussex line.
-
I am glad my hon. Friend is clarifying the fact that he
does not include in that the Sussex, Surrey or Kent lines,
because of course we do not have a chance to vote for the
Mayor of London.
-
I totally agree and I was very specific about that. The
Mayor of London did himself no favours by overstepping that
mark.
We need, with the congestion on the lines and the poor
quality of the rail, to invest in the lines. The hon.
Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked
about the time it takes to get to Mitcham Eastfields. That
is great in theory, but sometimes the trains go so slowly.
Today, I was going to London Bridge and I might as well
have been on a milk float, frankly, with the speed we were
going—and then I might have even got a seat, which would
have been a bonus.
Southern has been very abrasive in its approach to union
matters, especially at the beginning. There are clearly too
few carriages so we often have breakdowns, and there are
too few drivers, hence the staff shortages, but we must
come back to the unions. That is for no other reason than
that they are the pressing issue. Chris Gibb said:
“The fact that nobody is being made redundant or losing pay
against their wishes, that there will be more GTR trains
operating with two people on board, and that safe Driver
Only Operation is already extensive in GTR, the UK and
Europe, just serves to make this dispute more difficult to
comprehend, especially for passengers.”
Let us work backwards and get the unions around the table.
Let us sort out this dispute and get a terrible service
back to being just an incredibly poor service. From there,
we can then make it to the next stage and get it to be a
good service. As we have heard, the punctuality figures are
starting to come up at the end of the dispute as drivers
and new carriages are starting to come on stream. Let us
get the £300 million investment in and, when the franchise
comes up for renewal, let us look at it in the round and
break it up so that it will be more manageable.
6.39 pm
-
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome
you to the Chair, and thank you for chairing the debate.
May I also put on record my proud relationship with working
people through the trade unions, and declare my interest in
that regard?
Today’s debate started abysmally. The Secretary of State
for Transport failed to mention safety or access for
disabled people once. His prejudices against working people
came to the fore, clearly not from a party for working
people. Thankfully, my hon. Friend the Member for
Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) brought us back to the Gibb
report, and we heard a total of 19 contributions.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South
(Lilian Greenwood) for highlighting the consequences of
brittle rostering and the problems caused by level
crossings. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Mr
Shuker) spoke of the bullying that drivers experienced in
attempts to make them come to work on their days off. My
hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) called for
humility, and a focus on the breadth of the issues in the
Gibb report. He also identified the Government’s failure of
leadership. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and
Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked of rail chaos, but
stressed that it was not due to industrial action. My hon.
Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd
Russell-Moyle), who made the 18th contribution, focused on
the issue of disability access.
The scene was set for the perfect storm. Today we have
heard about the consequences for constituents, the industry
and staff. Ageing infrastructure is failing because of a
lack of resources and critical management to address vital
maintenance. Heavy demand and over-capacity manifest
themselves in overcrowding. New working practices—new
timetables, new commencement of routes, new trains and
technological advances—have been recommended, but there has
been no strategic co-ordination to date. Above all, we have
failed and fragmented franchises. Collaboration and
strategic oversight were the last considerations, and the
very worst outcomes from a profit-driven privatisation
process have been apparent. Putting profit before
passengers has resulted in their paying heavily:
financially, for their tickets; in terms of the worst
effects of overcrowding; and—Mr Gibb mentions this at every
turn—in terms of having to deal with the complete
unpredictability of the service. It has been utterly
chaotic. The buck stops with the Government and the
Secretary of State, whom even the courts have now told to
exercise his force majeure to find a resolution.
It has all been matched by a safety-critical industry.
Staff rightly fear that they will find themselves before an
inquest following an incident involving a passenger, for
whatever reason—perhaps because the technology has missed
what a second, human, eye would see. It is all happening in
a high-risk setting in which there is the potential for an
accident, a landslide or terrorism, and the possibility of
a driver or passenger falling ill, antisocial behaviour, or
some other incident. Those with disabilities are pushed to
the back of the queue when it comes to ensuring that
people’s needs are met throughout their journey. As we have
heard, only 3% of trains do not have a second
safety-critical member of staff. We have to wonder why the
Government cannot resolve this dispute, and give priority
to the dignity of a disabled person who could be left on a
platform.
All this is happening in a charged industrial environment
in which the Government’s agents, and the Government
themselves, have declared that rather than resolving the
dispute, which would be easy to do, they are deliberately
trying to fuel it—
-
Will the hon. Lady give way?
-
I do not have time.
They are deliberately trying to fuel the dispute owing to
their ideological aversion to trade unions—wanting to
“break them”, in the words of Mr. Wilkinson, the Department
for Transport official—as opposed to listening and
addressing the real concerns that have been raised and are
apparent for all others to see.
The stakes are high, and the Gibb report, although
conflicted, recognises that. It is a serious attempt to
analyse the multiple problems with the network, focusing on
10 different areas of failure, and then bring those
findings together.
Cutting through the layers of self-interest—and no part of
the network comes out particularly well—Gibb’s
recommendations have sought to put passengers at the centre
and he has pragmatically analysed the steps that need to be
taken to build one Southern rail service which collaborates
across operators, infrastructure bodies, the regulator and
contracted services such as maintenance companies, with a
reform programme that not only challenges behaviours, but
sets a template for the industry to refocus.
The immense task set requires all parties to take a step
back and listen to what Gibb is actually saying between the
lines of text. This is an immense challenge. There has to
be transition. Problem solving and working together is the
only way through this and a new approach must be adopted by
all. There has got to be space for everyone to raise their
concerns and, instead of being met by a wall of denial, a
bit more flexibility would provide a win for everyone. When
people talk about staff shortages, that must be addressed;
and when people talk about safety challenges, that must be
heard.
I want to return to the fact that we live in critical times
and throw this challenge down to the Government. Technology
is advancing at a pace, and this is something that we can
be immensely proud of. Over the next decade, engineering
and digitalisation across the rail industry will take us to
new places that even today are unimaginable. But the rail
industry is ultimately about people and, as we progress
from generation to generation, the reassurances we seek do
not change. In a safety-critical environment, passengers
want safety guaranteed.
Incidents do occur, and I will never forget working in
intensive care as the Potters Bar tragedy happened, and the
carnage that I faced as a clinician trying to save lives
and put bodies back together. Life is too important.
We lose 40 people on the Southern rail network each year
through suicide. That is traumatic for our drivers and of
course tragic for those involved. Passengers, or even
drivers, take ill. Threatening and anti-social behaviour
still occurs. Women can still feel unsafe travelling alone
at night, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd)
reminded us—and I note that there is no woman’s voice in
the Secretary of State’s team; perhaps that would have been
helpful to understand those safety-critical issues.
Terrorism is now a reality that hovers in all of our minds.
Overcrowded stations and overcrowded trains do create
risks. A disabled person may need assistance, not just with
boarding and alighting, but throughout their journey. Who
will be the passenger champion on each train? Who will keep
them safe? Who will have the vital training in order to
carry out those vital tasks? Who will provide the second
set of eyes to support safe departure and keep the public
safe? Those are the real questions the workers are asking
and the Government are refusing to hear, and these are the
issues that must be addressed for the sake of the public.
The Government would never dream of taking away cabin crew
on a short flight, and yet, on journeys which may take a
lot longer, removing the one person who keeps us safe, can
answer our questions and concerns, and can help meet our
needs, is doing the reverse of what Gibb is calling for: a
passenger-centred service.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy
McDonald) said, none of us want to stand at this Dispatch
Box and lament, “if only”, and recite that “lessons must be
learned.” That is why Labour would build a united,
integrated, safe, accessible and functioning service for
the passengers, and we would also the champion the rights
of passengers.
6.49 pm
-
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport
(Paul Maynard)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to serve
under your chairmanship for the first time in your new role.
I also welcome the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael
Maskell) to her place as a new shadow Minister. Having had to
face the Transport Committee on this very issue on day two of
my job, I know the challenge of taking up this complex issue
at short notice, and the hon. Lady has acquitted herself well
in her performance at the Dispatch Box. I thank all right
hon. and hon. Members across the Chamber for participating in
this helpful debate today, particularly those whose
constituencies are on the line of route—whatever party they
represent—who have worked so hard to support their
constituents and deal with the impact of the disruption over
the past months.
I believe that we have to continue to apologise to all those
passengers who have been affected by the disputes and the
disruption. We have heard many Members speak eloquently today
about lives that have been disrupted, jobs that have not been
a success and people who have been unable to get the
treatment they need. We have heard so many examples, and my
hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) spoke most
eloquently about the impact on her constituency.
It is worth reflecting on why we asked for this report in the
first place. The hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) seemed to
suggest that I should have sufficient knowledge of these
matters to know precisely what was wrong immediately. I think
we can all agree that Mr Gibb was a powerful and persuasive
performer when he met the all-party parliamentary group on
Southern rail, and I brought him in precisely because, in my
early days in this role, I wanted to understand what the real
issues on the network were. We were having an epidemic of
finger-pointing, and I wanted someone with a lifetime’s
experience on the railway, in whom everyone on all sides had
confidence, to come in and analyse the situation. I think
that that is what Mr Gibb has done, and I was surprised to
hear some Opposition Members express surprise that he had
sought to meet representatives of GTR. I do not think he
could have written a proper report without doing so.
It is worth restating the central finding of the report,
which is that, were it not for the actions of the unions,
passengers would have experienced a much better service.
Ultimately then, the quickest and surest path to improvements
on Southern is for the unions to refrain from their
intransigence. Members on both sides have said that many
factors lie behind the poor performance on Southern, and yes,
there are lessons for the Department, but one thing is
abundantly clear: when the service is not subject to
industrial action, performance improves because of the
actions that Mr Gibb has recommended.
-
The Minister is quite right to say that the service has
improved over the past six months when industrial action has
not been running. However, in the previous two years, service
levels were falling without any industrial action taking
place. The central finding of the Gibb report is that we need
another £1 billion in the next period after this funding
agreement. Will the Government provide it?
-
I will come to that in a moment. The hon. Gentleman has
spoken sensibly on this issue, as did the hon. Member for
Luton South (Mr Shuker). They both made thoughtful
contributions to the debate. I will do my best to answer all
the points that have been raised, but I doubt that I will
succeed in the eight minutes remaining. I will do my best to
write to anyone I miss.
-
I am grateful to the Minister for taking my intervention. I
did not speak earlier because I missed most of the debate. I
would just ask him to mention one thing that was not covered.
We made a manifesto commitment to customers to establish a
railway ombudsman to ensure that the operators are properly
penalised when they provide a rubbish service, so that
customers do not have to jump through all sorts of hoops to
get the compensation to which they are entitled.
-
I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned that. It was indeed a
manifesto commitment, and it is my personal crusade. I am
determined to ensure that we bring it in, partly because of
what I have seen for myself in dealing with the issues on
Southern. I have had meetings today and—as they always say at
the Dispatch Box—I will have further meetings in due course.
I believe that this proposal is on track, and we hope to
deliver it as soon as possible. I am sure that it will be
welcomed across the House.
We have talked about some of the wider pressures on the
network. The £300 million investment that we announced in
January was a specific response to many of Mr Gibb’s
recommendations, but I recognise that more will be needed.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), who
spoke for the Scottish National party, asked about the speed
with which it would be spent. We made it clear from day one
that it would be spent up to the end of control period 5—that
is, until December 2018. That money is being spent at the
moment, in addition to the £20 million he referred to. It is,
for example, being spent on replacing old tracks, points and
signalling. That is not just a matter of replacing bits of
old kit; it will result in 15% fewer delay minutes and a more
reliable and resilient railway.
There are other examples. My hon. Friend the Member for
Croydon South (Chris Philp) showed interest in high output
ballast cleaning, and I can happily share with him that that
is about replacing the ballast on the track. One might think
that it is just a matter of cosmetics—not at all. Not only
does it provide a smoother journey, but it reduces the number
of temporary speed restrictions that increase perturbation on
the network and make it harder to adhere to the timetable.
Some £17 million has been spent on vegetation clearance,
which may also appear to be a matter of cosmetics, but two of
the five most recent incidents in the last control period
that caused significant delays were due to trespassing. There
is a clear link between vegetation management and the
likelihood of trespassing on the railways, and that causes
delays on the railways.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) mentioned
the Uckfield electrification. We are well aware of that
project, and we are looking at it closely to ensure that we
have the best possible business case. My hon. Friend the
Member for Lewes referred to BML2, and I know that the
Secretary of State has met with the group and is urging it to
carry on its work. Others have mentioned issues at stations.
A particular finding about Victoria of Mr Gibb’s is that we
need single station leadership, much like that being
developed at London Bridge. A problem at stations is when
train operating companies and Network Rail are all trying to
make different decisions at the same time. We need single
station leadership at our major termini.
We also recognise—I recognised it on day 2 at the Transport
Committee—that the number of drivers at the start of the
franchise was inadequate. We needed to understand why that
was. Some of it was down to unexpected departures—fine—but I
wanted to be clear about what procedures the Department had
in place to ensure that any franchise handover involved
adequate driver numbers. I am delighted that we now have over
322 drivers in training across the GTR network, but it takes
18 months to train a driver adequately with the route
knowledge they need to operate safely on the network. I look
forward to those drivers being part of the GTR network,
reducing the reliance upon overtime and reducing the impact
of any ASLEF overtime ban.
As we have heard, performance has been significantly better
when we have not been facing industrial action. Back in
December, it was as low as 62% on the PPM measure, but it is
now at 82.5%. That is positive, but it came about only
because so many of Mr Gibb’s recommendations have already
been put in place. Many people referred to the benefits of
smart ticketing. I constantly urge GTR to do more with its
key and keyGo smart cards, and I look forward to that
benefiting constituents, particularly those in Lewes, soon.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood)
mentioned the Thameslink programme, and my understanding is
that many journeys on the East Midlands Trains franchise will
be significantly shorter due to the new Thameslink timetable.
That is why Mr Gibb is continuing in his role for the
Department and is looking at the Thameslink readiness board,
ensuring that all the different actors work together in that
complex interaction, which will deliver a significant
enhancement to the railway. I look forward to sharing more
information with the hon. Lady. Mr Gibb’s willingness to
chair the Thameslink readiness board is a sign that an
approach to rail where we use expert knowledge and bring it
to the table ensures that both Network Rail—many Opposition
Members seem to forget that it is publicly owned—and train
operating companies point in the same direction and have
aligned incentives. She also briefly talked about level
crossings, which I take seriously. We must ensure that the
Law Commission proposal does what it seeks to achieve, but we
also want to address safety around level crossings more
widely—not just how we close them more quickly.
We will continue to do all that we can to try to bring an end
to the dispute. We have no magic wand, but some evidence that
a resolution can be reached is that ASLEF and GTR met for 32
days and managed to reach agreement on two occasions. That
proves that things can be done without a Minister having to
sit in the room. They are actually grown-ups, and they can
reach agreement.
-
rose—
-
I am afraid that I have already given way.
In conclusion, a lot has gone on already, but there will be a
lot more to do. There is far more to do to ensure that all
passengers get the timely, punctual and reliable service that
they deserve on this railway. My Department will work hard to
ensure that that happens. I thank everyone for their
participation today.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Chris Gibb Report:
Improvements to Southern Railway.
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