Summer Adjournment — House of Commons, 2018-07-24
Topic: Transportation
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), whom I have had the privilege of serving with on the Select Committee on Justice. May I also take the opportunity to congratulate the hon. Members for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and for Sheffield, Hallam (Jared O'Mara) on their distinguished maiden speeches today I want to take a few moments to speak about CrossCountry services from Cheltenham, because this matter relates not only to the convenience of my constituents, but to social mobility and opportunity. Unless those rail services are at the standard my constituents are entitled to expect, both those vital priorities will be undermined. Putting it simply, those services are too costly and too crowded, and they finish too early. It is particularly important that I mention them at this moment because a public consultation has been announced by the Government about the future of CrossCountry’s rail franchise and it is important that these points are made So what is the context? Cheltenham Spa is the busiest station in Gloucestershire, with 2.35 million passengers using it last year, which is an increase from 1.73 million in 2011. So we are talking about some 800,000 additional passengers in that relatively short time. The next busiest station, Gloucester, had 1.48 million users—about 900,000 fewer. There has been good news in recent years: there has been a new, additional, early morning, 200-seat service from Cheltenham to Bristol and through to Taunton and Exeter, as well as an additional 1,000 seats per day on the CrossCountry routes between Bristol, Cheltenham Spa and Birmingham. It is the cost that is the problem. An off-peak return ticket from Cheltenham to Manchester will cost £81.90 and a peak return will cost £129.40. That is extremely expensive—prohibitively expensive. That is important because, if we want to drive things such as the Cheltenham cyber-park, people need to feel that they can go between Manchester and Cheltenham in an affordable way. Oddly, not only is this travel expensive, but there is a strange discrepancy; someone who wants to go north from Cheltenham has to re-mortgage their house, whereas someone who wants to go south from Cheltenham finds that a return to Bristol costs £25.40—[Interruption.] I appreciate that it is a bit closer, but there is an enormous discrepancy Overcrowding is a really important issue for my constituents, a number of whom write to me about it. When we drill into the service that is put on, we see why there is overcrowding. The 7.10 am train from Cheltenham to Birmingham, which Members might feel is at a peak time, has just four carriages and the 7.41 am has just five. That means trains are running at or beyond capacity. To put that in context, trains running from Cheltenham to London on the Great Western Railway line have about 10 carriages. So CrossCountry really needs to resolve that The final point I wish to raise is the business of these trains finishing too early. Cheltenham residents who want to go to Bristol have to get the 10 pm train back and Cheltenham residents who want to go to Birmingham have to get the 10.12 pm back: the trains finish quite early. By comparison, a Bristol resident who wants to get the train back from Cheltenham gets to stay in Cheltenham until 10.50 pm and if they want to go to Birmingham they get to stay there until 10.58 pm. In other words, these trains need to run until later in the evening I wanted to make those short but none the less important points. As I say, it is an issue not only of convenience for my constituents, but of how we provide opportunity and social mobility to people in Cheltenham so that my town can continue to provide great opportunities for young people and for people across its demographics, and so that they are well connected to some of our great conurbations, including Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and beyond.