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10 Mar 2010 : Column 107WH—continued
The old Saturday service...was 1 hr 20 mins to London and to save just 20 mins it is nearly double the cost".
Almost finally, there is Paul Twyman, who is a former under-secretary at the Department for Transport-I do not know whether he is known to the Minister-and a member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. He reminded me that journey times are now
"longer than in the age of steam"-
the trains in 1927 were faster than they are today. He asks:
"How can Thanet attract tourists if journeys can take up to 3 hours (my last journey at the weekend...was spent either waiting for a 'replacement bus' or journeying on it all round the highways and byways of East Kent; we nearly froze to death on Faversham Station)."
He adds that high-speed trains
"are no good for me. I do not want to pay more to go to a place that I do not want to go to."
A letter from another Southeastern customer relations officer, Dan Westlake, to Mr. Les Turner-this is brilliant-helpfully indicates:
"I should first of all explain that, when selling you a ticket, a railway company does not guarantee to carry you on any particular train (unless seat reservations apply) or that you will arrive at a particular time. The timetable is a guide to services that a train company intends to operate but it does not guarantee that trains will run in accordance with it".
So now the cat is out of the bag.
I am deeply indebted to Roy Coppins and John Nicholson of Herne Bay and to Bob Parsons, Terry Morland, Alastair Coles, John Cherry and many others for the painstakingly gathered information that they have provided me with. I am also grateful to Tunde Olatunji of Passenger Focus in the south-east for his staunch support and to the many hundreds of members of the travelling public who have signed John Nicholson's Downing street petition because they are, quite simply, at the end of their tether and their tolerance.
In a recent Kent Messenger newspaper article, Lord Adonis, having taken a brief train journey with his junior Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham, said:
"The message I'm getting is that trains are working successfully, they are very reliable and they have slashed journey times, so they are proving increasingly popular with commuters"-
"The trains were introduced at the same time as the severe weather when all trains were subject to delay and disruption, but since that weather ended, the high-speed service has been running extremely well."
I do not know what planet the Secretary of State inhabits, but I do understand that the upper House is not yet elected, so he might pause to consider that a number of his parliamentary colleagues in the Commons currently occupy Labour marginal seats in the Medway towns, South Thanet and Dover. Their constituents and mine would like- not in three years, not in months, but immediately-to see a cut in fares to reflect the poor standard of service; a return to the sensible timetabling of trains to destinations that travellers actually wish to reach in central London; an end to short-form trains and the provision of adequate seating in clean units; an end to the practice of skipping stations between Faversham and east Kent; and, in response to John Nicholson's Downing street petition, an apology for the manner in which the Department for Transport and Southeastern trains have to date failed the high-fare-paying travelling public of east Kent.
3.3 pm
Gwyn Prosser (Dover) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), who might be surprised to hear that I agree with some, but not all, of the points that he raised. I am not here to speak for other MPs' constituents, but I certainly want to speak up for my constituents in Dover.
I have been using east Kent trains occasionally for 30 years since I first went down to Dover in 1979, although I have used them more frequently since I became the town's MP 13 years ago. No matter what the deficiencies and weaknesses of the current service and timetables, let us not forget that they do not compare at all with the experiences that we all suffered during those early years. Right up until the late '90s, we were travelling on the old slam-door trains, which really rattled and were dirty, insecure and unreliable. We have certainly come a long way since then.
I have fond memories of turning up at Dover Priory station in 2001 to officially name the first of the class 375 services. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that it was named "White Cliffs Country" and not, I am afraid, "Gwyn Prosser". However, those services really marked a turning point in investment in trains down to east Kent. The trains were brought in by
Connex South Eastern, which was later to lose its franchise owing to poor performance-perhaps poor performance has something to do with geographical matters, rather than the train operator.
The trains were subsequently renationalised for two and a half years-I would call them two and a half glorious years-and they ran under the name of South Eastern Trains. It is on the record that South Eastern's trains were more punctual and provided a better, more reliable service and that industrial relations were better than ever before. Along with my colleagues in the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, I campaigned hard, although unsuccessfully, to get Ministers to keep at least this rail operator in the public sector to provide a benchmark with which to compare private operators. We have seen some really dismal, sad stories from a lot of those private operators, large and small, over the years. As I said, it was well documented that the service improved under South Eastern, that punctuality got much better and that industrial relations were much better in that window of nationalisation. RMT and ASLEF fought hard to keep things that way, but it just was not to be.
This afternoon, we are debating the timetables and the standard of service under the current operator, Southeastern trains. From a constituency point of view, I am pleased to put on record how delighted Dover is to be connected to the high-speed train service to London. That did not happen by accident, and it could easily not have happened at all. Some Members will remember the fight and the campaign that we undertook to ensure that the train came all the way down to Dover. The experts told us that there were safety issues at Shakespeare cliff and that there were technical matters and obstacles.
For a long time, it looked as if the trains would terminate in Folkestone. I have nothing against Folkestone, and I should just mention that it is another east Kent constituency represented by a Welsh MP. However, one deficiency with the high-speed service is that the train stops twice in the little town of Folkestone, which has two stations less than a minute apart. If we took away one of those superfluous stops, we could easily cut the travel time from Dover to London to the magic one hour, rather than the present one hour and seven minutes; I just say that as an aside. Of course, if the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) were here, I would see him outside afterwards. As I said, however, I have nothing at all against Folkestone.
The campaign that we fought to get the trains into Dover has already had good results. Business people in the town say that even within weeks of the trains coming in, estate agents were reporting rising markets and more interest in commercial properties and general accommodation. We are therefore happy with the high-speed train as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough at present. That is why I have been pressing since the middle of last year for some high-speed trains to stop at Deal, which is an important part of my constituency. Its population is slightly bigger than Dover's, and there is huge potential for growth in the number of travellers from the town, so it deserves to have some of the high-speed trains stop at Deal station.
The hon. Member for North Thanet made a number of complaints about the impact of High Speed 1 on domestic services. We have the high-speed train, but it
impacts negatively on domestic services, and that is true at all our stations-I echo those complaints. It has a particularly bad impact on the town of Deal, where passengers have longer journey times and poor connections to Dover. Deal people, like quite a lot of others on that line, have none of the advantages of High Speed 1 and probably all or most of the disadvantages. However, I believe that that can be overcome.
Last year, I started to talk to Southeastern, Network Rail and Ministers, to press the case for Deal. I met Charles Horton; we have all met him, and he is an amiable fellow. The chief executive of Southeastern acknowledged, I suppose, that there were some deficiencies, and promised a review, but wanted the present timetables and systems to settle down and wanted to get some service experience from them. However, I particularly pressed Deal's case. Since then I have discussed Deal with Lord Adonis.
Mr. Gale: We are going to be told later, I suspect, that there will be a review and that things might get better at some time. The point is that we raised the issues a year ago and no one listened, so I wonder why the hon. Gentleman thinks they will listen now.
Gwyn Prosser: I have some sympathy with that remark. My experience of the Department for Transport is that it takes an awful lot of shouting, booing and pushing to make anything happen. It is the Department's inertia that may need to be addressed; I do not think that it is down to individuals.
I raised the issue of Deal and the high-speed rail deficiency, as I called it at the time, with Lord Adonis, who came to Dover with two colleagues to celebrate the high-speed train. He got off at Dover Priory a month or so ago. He wanted to ram home the advantages of regeneration-the boost that high-speed trains give to regenerating places such as Dover. We have very ambitious regeneration plans on the table.
I pay tribute to our local rail campaigning group, which is called Trains4Deal, and to the East Kent Mercury, for the work that they have done together to promote Deal's interests. Trains4Deal has produced a detailed document, which made a well-argued business case for including Deal on the high-speed network and improving connection times. I shall not burden the House by going through all those issues, except to say that on Monday, further to our discussions and meetings, I met the Minister, along with a member of Trains4Deal, and we discussed the paper in detail.
It is right to complain when there are complaints to be made, and it is right to raise the question of the deficiencies of the service, but my group is more concerned with suggesting practical solutions that will give us the advantage of the high-speed trains without the present disadvantages for the domestic services. I am looking forward to the Minister's response to our detailed document, when he has had time to look at it, and perhaps to another meeting and finding some practical solutions to the situation in Dover and Deal. It would be tragic if the tenor of this debate gave the impression that High Speed 1 is a waste of time, that High Speed 1 has brought no advantages to Dover or other parts of east Kent, and that High Speed 1 is not recoverable and cannot be made into a first-class service without affecting our domestic lines.
3.13 pm
Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) on securing the debate. In our part of the world he is regarded with great affection and respect, and on the evidence of this afternoon's debate it is easy to see why.
My constituency is in effect two smaller constituencies-the Faversham end and the mid-Kent end-and is bisected by three railway lines. In the south there is the Headcorn line, which has recently had a considerable increase in the number of complaints. I went to see the Minister about the Maidstone to Ashford line, with my right hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). The issue in that case is the impact that the high-speed line has had on services. I have many constituents who live in Bearsted whose lives have been completely altered, to their detriment, as a result of losing services that got them home in time to pick up children from school, and the rest of it. In the north of the constituency is the north Kent line, which is the subject of this afternoon's debate.
I should say at the outset that I am not one of those people who take a remorselessly negative view of rail services, and I always thought that it would take some time for the high-speed train line to settle down, when it arrived, and that we would need time to see the benefits or otherwise of the new service. However, just like my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet, I have been staggered by the number of complaints that I have received, relating to all three lines but most noticeably the north Kent one. In nearly a decade as a Member of Parliament I have never received as many complaints about the railways as I have in the past six months. Those complaints are not only in the letters that I have received, which I have passed on to Southeastern; also, everywhere I go, I get buttonholed by constituents who want to complain about what is happening. For example, last Friday night I was at a goodbye party for a local solicitor who was retiring after 30 years, and in that half hour I was buttonholed by two people. One of them said he had taken the train from St. Pancras back at rush hour the previous week, and had been the only person in his carriage. Then, lo and behold, across the room 10 minutes later I received exactly the same complaint. This is serious. It is not just a disruption caused by a new service.
In essence there are three issues affecting the north Kent line, and they mirror many of those already raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet and the hon. Member for Dover (Gwyn Prosser). The first and most important is the disruption that the new high-speed train has meant for what people in Faversham call the classic service-the existing service. The people concerned are those who moved to Faversham and bought houses, taking the decision to raise their family there, generally on the basis of the rail service. The lives of many of them have been completely disrupted by the arrival of the new services. They cannot get connections, they cannot get home in time, and there are not sufficient numbers of trains going to Victoria and Cannon Street now. For those people there has been an immediate impact.
A second, associated issue affects that category of people, concerning a little station called Selling, which is on a line between Faversham and Canterbury. Because
of the knock-on effect of incorporating the new service, a considerable number of services have been lost to the station of Selling, and that has completely disrupted people's lives there. Selling is the point to which people would come from many of the surrounding rural villages. Those people now drive to Faversham, clogging up the roads and causing extra congestion, and of course having to pay car parking fees. Selling, without doubt, is the place that has suffered most from the introduction of the new service.
The second main batch of complaints is about a bit of a Faversham-specific issue-the parking and berthing of the high-speed trains overnight. They are berthed in the sidings at Faversham, which are right next to a new-build housing complex. Because the fans turn on and off in the early hours of the morning, people report regularly having a disrupted night's sleep. It was suggested over Christmas, when Swale borough council did some investigation, that the sort of noise disruption that people were suffering was considerably above the World Health Organisation recommended limit. I shall not take the Minister through the technicalities of that this afternoon, but it is apparent to me that it gives rise to a considerable issue. When the matter was first raised it was suggested that people who bought a house next to a railway line should expect a train to be parked on it overnight. There is an element of truth in that, unsympathetic though it is, but that should not be the expectation if the noise being generated is unreasonable. I am sure that everyone would agree on that.
The third point, which echoes one that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet made earlier, is about the fare structure of High Speed 1. I had not heard the Passenger Focus figure about the 15 per cent. take-up, but apocryphally I had heard a number of constituents complaining about it. The problem with High Speed 1, which is already well documented, is that it takes existing residents into what they see as the wrong part of London-St. Pancras-when archetypally they want to get to the west end or the City. To make use of the service they must pay a much higher fare and an underground fare to get back to where they wanted to go in the first place. The justification, clearly, was that the service would open up connections going north to people who lived in east Kent, but having looked at the issue for a few months I suspect that the number of people who are benefiting is relatively small and the number who are suffering disruption to their existing trip is pretty extraordinary.
What do I want to be done about all of this? What do I want the Minister to say he will do? First, Southeastern has pointed out time and again-it is becoming a mantra-that the timetable is set by the Department. I ask the Minister if, indeed, he promises us a review this afternoon, to make sure that the timetable is rebalanced, so that it better reflects the demand of existing users.
Secondly, on the Faversham-specific issue, I would like some reassurance that the overnight parking problem will be looked at seriously. It is simply not acceptable in this day and age for someone who buys a new-build house next to a railway line to have their night's sleep disrupted night after night, as two of the constituents who have written to me have claimed. They are nurses who work in the health service and have to go to work at the Kent and Canterbury hospital the next day, having had two or three hours' sleep. I would like some
reassurance from the Minister either that properly sound-proofed sheds will be introduced or that the trains will be parked further away.
In addition, for the good of the high-speed train service, I hope that the Minister will be able to promise us some sort of review of the fare structure. Clearly, the concept of pricing the high-speed service higher than the ordinary fare does not appear, on the evidence presented thus far, to be working.
In conclusion, I would like once again to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet on initiating the debate. Above all, I do not want the Minister to think that this is some sort of pre-election heist on him or that the issue is being driven by press releases. There is a very real problem here. I promise him that, in my nine years as a local MP, I have never come across such consistent anger over the rail services. I hope he will take the matter seriously and that he can promise us this afternoon that he will look into it.
3.21 pm
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) on securing this important debate. I shall start by giving a few more facts-we have heard lots of facts today-and picking up the subject of fares, which was where the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) finished. Fares are clearly very pertinent to the debate. We have heard what the additional cost of the fares on the high-speed line allegedly is-I heard the figure of £13 mentioned, although my information suggests it is £8 more.
Mr. Gale: Just to set the record straight, the figure is £13.50: about £4.50 each way plus £2.50 return on the tube. The fare is not just for the high-speed train.
Tom Brake: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I think he just confirmed that the fare increase is very substantial-we are talking £9 for the train alone.
Hon. Members might be interested to know that someone can travel 391 miles for £10 in Bulgaria. Indeed, I have-admittedly not recently-travelled on Bulgarian trains, and I can confirm that they do run and are spacious. For £10, someone can travel 200 miles in Poland, 131 miles in the Czech Republic and 61 miles in France. We then get to the UK, where someone can travel 23.8 miles at that price. I suspect that for someone travelling on a high-speed train, it is significantly less than 23.8 miles.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Mole): I once travelled some hundreds of miles on a Polish train during a Select Committee visit, when an aeroplane failed to take off. If someone wants the experience of a 1950s British Rail reconstruction, they might enjoy a journey at such a price, but if they want a modern high-speed train, surely the hon. Gentleman would concede that they will pay a little more.
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