Southeastern Rail Services — House of Commons, 2016-01-28
Topic: Transportation
Claire Louise Perry (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it was exactly that conversation which led to the decision to cap fare increases at RPI plus zero for the whole of this Parliament. We effectively now have rail fares going up at the lowest level, certainly relative to wages, in over a decade. We will continue that cap, which is costing the Government about £700 million a year, precisely because we do not think that fares should be going up at a time when we are doing engineering works and causing disruption, not just at London Bridge but right across the country. We have a £38 billion investment programme and we cannot deliver that without some disruption. That cap is worth about £425 to the typical commuter on a season ticket over the course of this Parliament My hon. Friend raised the question of customer service levels, and he was right to say that Southeastern was not at the top of the list for overall satisfaction. It is not quite at the bottom, but it is not at the top either. I know that there are many people out there who are genuinely in despair about their journeys. Nothing could be more dispiriting for them than showing up at the station only to find that their train is delayed, or being unable to get home to pick up their children from day care at the regular time. That is incredibly dispiriting, and that is why we need to make these investments. However, 75% of the users of Southeastern say they are satisfied with their journeys. There might be pockets of dissatisfaction, but overall, three out of four users are satisfied. We would clearly like that figure to be higher, of course I can tell the House that we included in the franchise agreement some specific improvements to customer services that we wanted the operator to make. My hon. Friend talked about information systems, and they are not always perfect. However, the company has made a considerable investment in better information systems, including through giving its staff real-time devices. Drilling through the numbers, I was interested to note that the score for how well Southeastern deals with delays has gone up by 9 percentage points in the past year. Similarly, the score for the attitude and helpfulness of staff has gone up by 4 percentage points, so it looks as though some of the improvements are starting to bear fruit. The company has also made a £5 million investment in stations, which has included deep cleans at Bromley South, Bromley North and Chislehurst, which I hope my hon. Friend has noticed. I do not have the numbers on station improvements, but I think that passengers are starting to recognise that they are taking place I understand the concerns and I know that the industry has to do more, particularly on the infrastructure side, to stop the delays. My hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner on these matters, and I want to draw his attention to the proposals for London Overground to take control of some of these metro services. This is in response to tireless campaigning on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) —for obvious reasons—and the prospectus sets out some thoughtful questions that need to be answered. Clearly, some hon. Members will think that some of the services involved should go into a TfL-type service, although others might wish to raise concerns about that, particularly in relation to democratic accountability. I believe that there is a solution out there. This kind of devolution of service has happened before The new partnership is designed to give passengers what they need. We are trying to design the industry around passengers and customers. This proposal could deliver more frequent services and more reliable trains. It would also move the decisions on stations and stopping patterns away from Horseferry Road—much as I have fantastic officials—and closer to the people who actually use the services. This will be similar to the devolution process that we have seen in relation to transport investment in the north, as well as the support for TfL. I urge all Members who have an interest in these devolution proposals to stand up and ensure that their voices and those of their constituents and transport users are heard. The deadline is 18 March I would be the first to acknowledge that the system is not delivering for customers at the moment. When we talk to commuters, we find that they have been incredibly tolerant and understanding. They welcome the investment, and they want to see a joined-up industry that can respond to their needs, particularly when there are disruptions and delays. It is my Department’s job to facilitate that, either through the contracting process or, as my hon. Friend rightly says, through conversations with Network Rail, which is indeed an arm’s-length public body. I give the House my full commitment to ensure that this happens The aim is to return these vital parts of the railway, which move people around the busiest parts of the network, to high performance by 2018. If the results of these unprecedented levels of investment cannot be seen and felt by passengers, we will need to do better, and I offer the House my full commitment on this. I thank my hon. Friend once again for providing this opportunity to discuss these matters. He asked whether I would agree to meet him to discuss what is happening, and of course my door is always open Question put and agreed to.