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Rail Services
Westminster Hall
Tuesday 28 March 2006
[Miss Anne Begg in the Chair]
Rail Services
9.38 am
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): It is a pleasure to attend an Adjournment debate under your chairmanship, Miss Begg. It is the first time that I have done so. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) on securing the debate, which is a matter of considerable concern to my constituents, who predominantly use Maidenhead and Twyford stations, and also use the branch line stations of Wargrave, Furze Platt and Cookham.
I also congratulate the Minister. I attended an Adjournment debate last week in which no Labour Back Benchers were present—there was only the Minister. At least this Minister has a Labour Back Bencher present, although whether he will take as a positive the presence of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) is an entirely different matter.
David Taylor : I can reassure the Minister. He knows of my admiration for him, and he has an outstanding invitation to visit the route of the national forest line, where we are trying to restore passenger rail services. It was created by George Stephenson, to whom the hon. Member for Windsor referred.
Mrs. May : I think that the Minister has received invitations from some of my constituents to go and wait on Maidenhead or Twyford station for the 7.27, to understand the impact that cutting that service will have.
In his intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor, the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire made the point that once services were
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cut, it was very difficult to restore them, which is indeed the case. The sad fact for my constituents is that when Thames Trains was given the franchise for the local services, it increased the number of services and improved the services available to my constituents, but since the decision was taken to merge the franchise between Thames Trains and First Great Western, services have been cut year on year.
I have a sense of déjà vu about the debate, because I have been fighting cuts in services since December 2003, when it was first suggested that the timetable should be changed and there should be cuts as a result of the merged franchise. To that extent, I feel sorry for the Minister, because he has been saddled with the impact of the decision to merge the franchise, which was taken by the Government and by Richard Bowker when he was chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority.
I want to talk about issues that relate specifically to services for my constituency and I shall start with the timetable. We fought long and hard for a restoration of good fast services to Paddington from Maidenhead and Twyford, and my constituents were very pleased when changes were made to two services. The situation is a little complicated because both services leave at 7.27, although they go from two different stations. One train is the 7.27 from Twyford; the other is the 7.27 from Maidenhead. Extra carriages were put on the 7.27 from Twyford to accommodate the large numbers of people wanting to use that service, and a similar thing happened with the service from Maidenhead. That was a real victory for local passengers and commuters, whose voices were heard.
What will happen under the new timetable in December 2006? Those two trains, which are already overcrowded, will be scrapped and replaced by a single train. That means fewer spaces on the train for my constituents, and the service will be going later, which will cause my constituents considerable problems. Many of them will not get into Paddington early.
One problem that we have with the approach taken by First Great Western and the Department for Transport on the timetable is the failure to understand two things. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said, for people commuting from stations close to London, the time that the journey takes is crucial. On a good day, it takes someone who lives in Maidenhead about 45 minutes to drive to London in their car. If a train service is available that takes 20 or 25 minutes, they get on the train. If they are now told that their train service will take 35, 40 or 45 minutes, it is a toss-up, but they will probably get in the car, because the train is so overcrowded that it is unpleasant. The Department needs to understand the crucial importance of journey time for local commuters.
Secondly, the Department needs to recognise the importance that the services have for local people in enabling the economy of the Thames valley to thrive by allowing easy access into London. Obviously, many of my constituents boost the London economy by coming into London to work. Setting aside for a moment the impact on people's lives, which is crucial, cuts in services will also have a major impact on local businesses.
My constituents are, rightly, up in arms about the proposals. They are not quite sure whether to blame First Great Western or the Department for Transport.
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First Great Western tells me clearly that the Department for Transport is responsible. However, the message that I am now getting from the Department for Transport is that perhaps the situation is not quite as easy as that and there are some issues to do with First Great Western. Frankly, for my constituents, in a sense it does not matter who is at fault. There is a problem that needs to be fixed. The ultimate decision lies with the Government, so my constituents will ultimately say that the Government have to fix the problem.
Adam Afriyie : The problems do not exist only in our neck of the woods, in the Thames valley region; they stretch much further. I have been in correspondence with my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), who is sadly away on military training today and cannot participate in the debate. He points out that commuters living in Didcot face the loss of the 5.46 and 6.12 morning services and of the 5 and 5.18 evening services. They are at 80 per cent. of capacity, and the station is one of the 10 busiest stations on the First Great Western line, so my hon. Friend has similar concerns. People in other places are having to make similar judgments to those that have been described, so the problems that we are considering are widespread throughout the country.
Mrs. May : I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he is absolutely right. Many of our hon. Friends cannot attend this Adjournment debate, but they are also affected by what we are discussing. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) presented a petition at the same time as I did in the House of Commons with the signatures of more than 900 of his constituents, who were concerned about cuts to local services. The petition that I presented contained more than 1,700 signatures, and we have now had well over 2,000 signatures from people who are against the proposed cuts. Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) has concerns about his local services being damaged, and my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is concerned about the branch line through to Bourne End.
We are talking about damaging changes to the timetable, which will have a significant impact on people throughout the country. I say to the Minister that for those of us with constituencies from which people commute to London and to which people commute from London to work, as is the case in Maidenhead, the Government need to take into account the time that that journey takes and the frequency of the service.
The Government also need to recognise that working life is no longer nine-to-five. My constituents do not aim to be in the office by 9 am; many of them, particularly those who commute to the City of London, have to be in the office by 8 or 8.30 am. Should Crossrail ever arrive, it may improve things, but in its absence, commuters have tube journeys to make after they get to Paddington. They do not leave the office at 5 pm; many leave at 6, 6.30 or 7 pm, or even later. The timetable needs to reflect the fact that working life today is not nine-to-five. Sadly, neither the Department nor First Great Western seems to have understood that.
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The time that journeys take is crucial. Fast services at peak times to Paddington from both Maidenhead and Twyford and from Paddington to Maidenhead and Twyford need to be reinstated in the timetable to accommodate the needs of my constituents.
Adam Afriyie : It strikes me that for people who live in the parts of the Thames valley region that are closer to London, five or 10 minutes one way or another make an enormous difference to their choice of travel. If, for example, someone has to consider child care, a 10-minute difference in arrival back home makes a huge difference to their life. However, someone who has a two-hour or two-and-a-half-hour journey into London is less likely to be susceptible to a small change in the timetable of five or 10 minutes. It would therefore make much more sense to have fast trains stopping perhaps in just two or three locations to pick up more local commuters to London.
Mrs. May : My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I am grateful to him, because he brings me to the next point that I wanted to discuss. There is a fundamental misunderstanding by those who are taking the decisions in the Department and at Network Rail—which I also consider has some responsibility in this regard—in that they are focusing on trying to improve the reliability and journey time of long-distance services, even though it is commuters on local services who are most affected by a change in journey time, who most care about that length of time and who are most likely to get out of the train and into their cars if their journey time is lengthened.
The crucial thing for my constituents is fast and semi-fast services at peak times. If we are to reinstate the decent services that we used to have with Thames Trains, the local services need to be allowed to go on the main fast line. The one thing that has caused most problems for my constituents and others is that, now, most of our services have to go on the slow line. That does not mean only that they take longer; they are often held up by slow, stopping trains. The Government's emphasis on long-distance services only is misplaced, partly because that contradicts other Government policies to try to get people out of their cars and on to public transport. That is the first key issue.
The second issue relates to branch lines. We fought long and hard to ensure that the Henley branch line and the Marlow-Bourne End branch line were not included as community railways. I believe that if that were to happen, the services would deteriorate. They are part of the mainline service. They are commuter services. The Henley branch line runs from Twyford, Wargrave, Shiplake and Henley, but under the new timetable, for no accountable reason, a number of trains will run from Twyford to Henley without stopping at Wargrave and Shiplake. When I challenged First Great Western about that, its response was that the Department had asked it to run some trains on the branch line but did not say that they had to stop at the stations. For goodness sake, what is the purpose of running trains on a branch line if they do not stop at the stations to allow passengers to get on and off? Will the Minister consider the specific issue of stops at Wargrave and Shiplake stations? If the trains do not stop there, people will get in their cars to drive to the nearest station to access trains.
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It was interesting to see the table in the Evening Standard and other newspapers recently showing the most overcrowded trains on the rail network throughout the country. The 18.06 from Paddington to Maidenhead and Twyford was the sixth most overcrowded train in the country, despite the fact that the Government keep telling us they do not have any measurements for overcrowding and that no safety limits are set for the number of passengers allowed on trains, and that First Great Western keeps saying, "No, no, no, we do not want overcrowding; we are doing everything we can to stop it." That is just one example. I have already mentioned the morning trains and how overcrowded they are. There are safety issues and the new timetable will exacerbate those safety issues by merging trains. Hundreds of people get on the early morning trains at Maidenhead and Twyford. In future, those hundreds of people will get on one train instead of two at around 7.27. There will be real safety issues.
The key issue is that people's lives will be severely damaged as a result of the proposals. I already know of people who have had to change jobs because of the timetable. Henley further education college had to change its timetable for lectures to enable people to get there on time. The last timetable changes had an impact on the ability of my constituents to get to Henley on time. That FE college had to change its entire morning timetable to accommodate a change in the branch line timetable. Heaven alone knows what will happen if trains on the branch line do not stop at the stations en route to Henley.
People have had to change their jobs and the FE college has had to change its timetable. People have been getting off the trains and into their cars because there are so many problems with the timetable. Businesses have come to my constituency because it is a good place to locate and has good transport connections, particularly to Paddington. I fear that if those connections go, the economy of my constituency will be affected. I urge the Minister to listen to those thousands of people who are telling him that the new timetable will cause a significant problem in their lives. They are fed up with the cuts in services during the past few years under this Government. We need those fast and semi-fast services and we need reinstatement of the sort of timetable that we had until recently and preferably the sort of timetable that we had under Thames Trains. We need our trains back on the main line. If a service is provided more people, not fewer, will use public transport. I urge the Minister to listen to the thousands of commuters whose voices are raised against him.
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