Train Services: Southend — House of Commons, 2016-05-11
Topic: Transportation
Claire Louise Perry (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted that my hon. Friend saw what we were discussing on the annunciator and rushed into the Chamber to make those points on behalf of his researcher. What is fascinating about working in the DFT is that many of our staff who commute by train sit around with their official hats on saying all the right things, but as soon as someone opens up a debate about what it was like at Victoria station or at another London station that morning, everyone surges back to reality and describes what it is actually like commuting on the network I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was in his place when we talked about the new rolling stock that will be coming into service on this line over the next few months. It is built by Bombardier, and part of it has already been procured by Porterbrook, one of the rolling stock companies. It is a very exciting development. I have visited Bombardier many times. In fact, I have driven a train on its test track. Not many Ministers can say that—actually, I am sure that every rail Minister has probably said the same thing. Bombardier is building the Crossrail fleet as well as the S-class trains—the new worm trains as we call them—that are currently running on the tube network. They are wonderful as they can clear a whole platform of many hundreds of people in a matter of moments What is exciting in all of this is that a single line, such as the one we are discussing today, encapsulates so much of what is going on across the whole rail network. First of all, we have unprecedented levels of passenger demand. Although people might wonder whether privatisation was the right thing to do—I do not think that—what we can say is that our railways have never been busier. At no time since the 1920s, pre-Beeching cuts, have we had so many passengers. Indeed, passenger numbers and journeys have doubled since privatisation, largely because of the energy, commitment and fair innovation of many of these private companies. My hon. Friends will recall from the pre-privatisation days that it was not this Mecca of wonderful customer service that people like to cook up. I used to take the line from university to home, and all we could get was a curled up old sandwich if we were lucky and there was no apology if we were late Let me mention the compensation scheme—hopefully, my hon. Friends’ trains are never delayed, and so they never have to claim. I urge them to sign up for the automatic season ticket—the key card—because then they get compensation automatically. Our compensation schemes are among the most generous in Europe. People always talk about compensation. Of course we want it to get to the right people, but let me explain the levels that we pay. A person will get 50% compensation if their train is delayed by 30 minutes and 100% compensation if it is delayed by 60 minutes Assiduous Members will have seen that, in our manifesto, we have a commitment to introducing compensation payments if the train is delayed by 15 minutes. I am happy to tell the House that we are working up that proposal. I am looking forward to announcing it as soon as permitted. It is an important development, because on many of these lines, where the journey time is not hours, but minutes, it will mean that we can all claim should the trains be late. [Interruption.] There is an awful lot of excellent dancing going on behind the Speaker’s Chair. The aim of all our proposals is that we should not have delayed trains. We should have trains that run exactly to time.