Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line — House of Commons, 2019-01-30
Topic: Transportation
William James Quince (Conservative, Centre-right): We are starting this debate somewhat early, and it happens to be a debate on rail delays. Looking at the time, I can work out that I have approximately two and a half hours, which the House will be pleased to know I have no intention of filling. Ironically, though, it does happen to be the longest delay I have ever encountered, personally, on a Greater Anglia train—and that is a fact I am hugely grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of Delay Repay 15 on the great eastern main line. It is an issue that is hugely important to thousands of my Colchester constituents who are regular rail users and commuters. To set the scene, as a rail user myself, I know that sadly—as commuters regularly, in fact almost daily, remind me on Twitter and via email—our rail service is often lacking, with short forms, delays, dirty trains, poor communication, and regular line, points, overhead wire or signal faults. My constituents and I have experienced every kind of delay possible, whether it is snow, ice, leaves, rats, or being too hot or too cold. It is quite incredible to think how other countries run effective rail services It is hard to feel convinced, and certainly to convince constituents, that we receive good value for money when the situation appears to be getting worse while rail fares and car-parking charges increase. I would never seek to presume or know what the Minister may be thinking, but I would hazard a guess: that complaints on social media are common enough, and that very rarely will anyone tweet their local MP to say, "My train’s arrived perfectly on time—please thank the Transport Minister on my behalf." Perhaps he is thinking that this issue, while important, may be over-inflated by grumpy rail users like myself. I find the situation to be the complete opposite. I think that people have got so fed up with complaining about rail services that they have given up complaining about rail services Before we get off on the wrong track—there will not be too many bad puns—let us adopt a more statistical approach. The national rail passenger survey of more than 25,000 passengers in autumn 2017 has made something clear. For the avoidance of confusion, I have stripped the dataset down to the 1,493 Greater Anglia passengers involved in the survey. It is starkly but unsurprisingly clear that we are experiencing the lowest overall satisfaction with Greater Anglia services for over five years. On delays, which is the subject of this debate, only 32% of commuters are satisfied with Greater Anglia’s track record. The punctuality and reliability of services was also consistently ranked the single most important consideration for commuters Things have not improved much since autumn 2017. In the past 48 hours, we have seen in the press that Greater Anglia passengers have become significantly less satisfied with their journeys over the past 12 months. According to new figures from the rail watchdog Transport Focus, only 73% of passengers were satisfied with their journeys on Greater Anglia. That figure was 81% in its survey the previous year.