§ Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North)I very much appreciate the opportunity to put the case for better train services to Northampton. I do so not only as the Member of Parliament for Northampton, North and a sometimes disgruntled train passenger, but as chair of the Northampton rail users group, which campaigns for better train services. In that capacity, I pay tribute to both Railtrack and Silverlink for their commitment and good grace in regularly meeting the group and in supporting our efforts to promote the cause of rail transport. We want faster, more comfortable and more reliable trains, yet current plans for the rail network mean that we may not see any real improvements in our lifetime—indeed, the service may become even worse.
In terms of everything that the Government want to do for economic development, transport and housebuilding, Northampton is a town of great strategic importance; it has enormous potential and the skills, talents and resources to expand and excel. It has had to reinvent itself economically several times. It has been a market town and a boot and shoe town; it is now a distribution centre and, increasingly, a financial services centre of some importance.
Because Northampton is, literally, at the crossroads of the country—it is situated where the M6 meets the M1—it has established itself as an important distribution centre for road transport. However, it is not a centre for rail transport, as freight trains go straight through Northampton to the DIRFT inland rail freight terminal further north. Indeed, inter-city trains have the misfortune to be diverted on to the Northampton loop only because of main line engineering works; people frequently tell me—in a bad mood—that they have passed through my constituency because their train service was delayed owing to engineering works.
If the Government seriously want to get people off the road and on to public transport, which I completely support, they would make great progress if they persuaded people in Northampton to use the trains rather than to belt up and down the motorway. I confess to being an offender myself; if one needs reliable transport, one has to use the roads because of the problems with the train service.
Northampton is a growth point. It has a population of almost 250,000, and it is projected to grow by a further 30,000 households in the coming years, which means that an additional 120,000 people will live in the catchment area of Northampton station. That represents a huge growth in population, which must bring jobs if it is to succeed. It must also bring the high-quality public transport links that will be so necessary for the new millennium.
§ Mr. Tony Clarke (Northampton, South)I applaud my hon. Friend and the rail users group for continually raising this issue. Does she agree that there can be few towns of the size that we are talking about—200,000 plus—that do not have access to a main line station? Despite all the efforts of Silverlink, unless such access is given, commuters and travellers will continue to be dissatisfied.
§ Ms KeebleYes. That has been a constant cause of complaint, not only by the rail users group but by the 378 many people who use the trains from Northampton to travel to London or Birmingham and who face extremely long journey times on uncomfortable trains.
I have no doubt that, without high-quality public transport links—trains—the town's economy will be stunted and our ability to fashion for ourselves a good future will be limited. Equally important, a good train service is essential for people in Northampton in their day-to-day lives. People who travel to Milton Keynes, London or Birmingham for business or pleasure currently have to try to tolerate the intolerable.
The easiest campaigning that I have ever done has been on the train service. People are more than willing to give their views, and the complaints are overwhelming: the trains are dirty and uncomfortable; they lack basic facilities, so that people cannot even get a drink of water, let alone a cup of the old British Rail coffee; and above all, trains run late or—even when they run on time—take too long.
My hon. Friend the Minister may say that Silverlink is the most improved train service—an average of 92 per cent. of trains arrive on time—but, like many people I know, I seem to spend much time travelling on the other 8 per cent. The most spectacular lapse in service that I suffered occurred when I was travelling to Northampton to speak at a press conference encouraging people to use public transport. There was a points failure on the main line before we got on to the Northampton loop. The train was diverted to Rugby and, by the time I arrived in Birmingham, the event was long since over.
My argument is not with Silverlink, even though, from time to time, I have criticisms of it; Northampton's train problems are much more deep seated. When the railways were built, Northampton was left out, as the Minister knows well—he has strong family links with the town. The canal owners refused to sell the land that would have enabled the main line to come through Northampton. The current franchise structure is wrong, and we did not benefit from the previous upgrading of the main line. Moreover, like the whole network, we have suffered as a result of the lack of investment under the previous Government and their failure to fashion a future in which public transport could become the mainstream of transport.
Complaints about the current service are short-term grumbles, however; they are as nothing compared to the long-term grievances that people have as a result of the plans to upgrade the west coast main line. Any improvement to the rail network is, of course, welcome, as are new ways in which to attract investment into that essential piece of infrastructure. Many towns on the line will benefit, although some—Milton Keynes is one—also have reservations about what is happening. My wish is that Northampton receives its share of the benefits, but I fear—indeed, I expect—that, unless the Government offer strategic direction, there will be a worsening of rail services to the town.
§ Mr. Brian White (Milton Keynes, North-East)Many of the constituents of my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Clarke) work in Milton Keynes, so it is in Milton Keynes's interests that the rail link to Northampton is improved. This is not a question of 379 Northampton versus Milton Keynes or Rugby; an upgrading of the service is in the interests of most towns on the line.
§ Ms KeebleMy hon. Friend is right to say that we have a common interest. As out-of-London development grows and more substantial employment and industrial centres are built up, transport links between our towns will become increasingly important, so I am grateful for the support of Milton Keynes.
The passenger upgrade scheme—PUG 2, as it is called—will affect both Northampton and Milton Keynes. It is an agreement between Railtrack and Virgin, which balances the need for investment with the need to protect the public interest. That is the tightrope that the rail regulator had to walk in his recent report and, although I see the merits of many of his arguments, I believe that many more public interest guarantees are needed, certainly for Northampton and possibly even for Milton Keynes.
Under the plans, the service to Northampton could become slower—I should say even slower. Eleven of the 14 slots an hour on the fast line will go exclusively to Virgin, and it seems that the remaining three slots will go to the highest bidder, with no assurance that Northampton trains will have a look in or be able to afford them.
The service to Northampton could become less frequent. The rail regulator has talked about maintaining the passenger service requirement, but that included only one train an hour during peak hours and one off peak. In contrast, Silverlink is to be congratulated on running three trains an hour during peak hours and four off peak. If we were to get the approved number of trains, as set out in the requirement, we would get far fewer than at present.
Silverlink is in a weak position to compete. Its franchise runs for only seven and a half years, as opposed to the 15 years given to other train companies, so it has no certainty that it will still be running the service after 2005.
No doubt my hon. Friend the Minister will point to the present review, ordered by the rail regulator, to consider faster services for Northampton, but I share the general scepticism about that review. There is no strategic direction on what it must achieve, and it is obliged to produce only a report, not results. It is being tacked on to an in-principle agreement between the rail regulator and the richest and most powerful transport conglomerate in the entire country. At the very least, it should have preceded the in-principle decision.
There is no commitment to extra money for infrastructure improvements; there is an obligation to include discussion of it, but no indication of where the money is to come from or whether it will be provided. There is no commitment to extending the franchise period or giving Silverlink the investment incentives that delivered the agreement with Virgin. The review is investigating how to get Northampton trains to travel faster on slow lines with loops in them. Some of us suspect that the loops could become parking bays.
The review team could simply say that it had fulfilled its mandate to review the position, but that it was not possible to get the trains travelling any faster. The review starts from too low a base and contains no vision or guarantees for the future of transport for Northampton.
380 I seek four commitments. The first and most important is a guarantee that the Northampton train service will have access to two of the hourly slots that are left on the fast lines on the west coast main line. Without that, the service could be consigned to the slow lane of history.
Secondly, if the company concerned—at present, Silverlink—cannot afford to pay the access fees for those lines, which will be extremely lucrative and expensive, the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising should consider providing financial support or at least facilitating arrangements such as those that have made the main line upgrade possible.
Thirdly, the franchise period should be extended, to encourage investment in the Northampton services, including trains of inter-city standard. I am well aware that my hon. Friend the Minister could say that many of the short-term grumbles, such as no tables and uncomfortable seating, are entirely matters for Silverlink, but if the company cannot look beyond five more years, it is unlikely to make the investment needed for better trains. I hardly need draw the political comparison about interest in long-term futures that stretch beyond five years.
Fourthly, we need a modest upgrade of the Northampton loop, so that it can take trains travelling at 100 mph, instead of their being stuck at the present 75 mph. As rail travel expands, and people see the standards that can be achieved in train services both here and abroad, they will feel extremely dissatisfied with a very slow train without amenities, especially with journey times that are proportionately far longer than, say, travelling from London to Paris, which used to be a huge journey and now takes only a few hours, while we could still take an hour to get to Northampton in—who knows?—50 years' time.
Those four commitments would ensure that train services from Northampton came in from the cold, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reply in some detail about them. We need those assurances, before a final seal of approval is given to the Virgin-Railtrack deal, if we in Northampton are to have confidence in our rail service. The benefits of the west coast main line upgrade will be felt only in several years' time and, given that there is likely to be disruption to the services as the work is done, we need to know now that we will share in those benefits.
The document issued by the rail regulator setting out his support for the Virgin-Railtrack deal talked much about the reasonable requirements and expectations of people in Northampton. It is not reasonable to expect people in Northampton to put up with inferior trains with no tables, fewer litter bins, and no possibility of even getting a drink of water, when the journey takes two hours instead of one—that is not even safe, let alone comfortable—and to wait longer for fewer trains to take them home from work or from a day out shopping in Milton Keynes, London or Birmingham.
Nor is it reasonable for people in Northampton to have to put up with journey times to London of an hour, when, in future, trains from Rugby, for example, will take just over half an hour to do a much longer journey. That is calculated to drive people off the trains and onto the ever more congested motorways.
Underlining all the work that the rail users groups in Northampton and in Milton Keynes have done is a real commitment to the future of the railways and to ensuring 381 that more people use them, to ease the congestion that snarls up the M1 and is especially bad south of Northampton. There is little prospect of any other measure to relieve the pressures.
Since my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced £2 billion extra spending on transport yesterday, I should like to put in an early bid for some of that money, to underwrite the cost of providing Northampton with a better train service. The people of Northampton have a right to expect a better train service, and I hope that the Government will give a commitment that, at long last, the town will get the fast, efficient and comfortable train service that people have a right to expect.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) on securing this debate and giving us the opportunity to discuss the west coast main line, and Northampton services in particular. As she knows, the subject is not within my normal ministerial responsibility, and I am replying on behalf of my fellow Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson), who is out of the country. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North will understand that I will not be able to give a full response to all her specific points, but I will ask my colleague to write to her on matters that I cannot cover.
I am sure that all hon. Members present will agree that the current state of the west coast main line is far from satisfactory and is a clear example of the previous Government's consistent failure to promote the vital rail links that are so important to industry and the travelling public. It is scandalous that the plans for the much-needed enhancement of the line have taken so long to put in place.
I know that hon. Members who use the line have had to endure a service that offers poor standards of punctuality and reliability. I find it hard to believe that Britain's busiest mixed railway, providing about 2,000 trains day, carrying both passengers and freight, linking London and the industrial and business centres of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, should still be running on infrastructure that was last modernised in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That is why I welcome the recent agreement between Railtrack and Virgin. I hope that it will provide for people who travel and live along the route a railway that is fit for the 21st century and will encourage those who currently drive between the cities that it serves to choose instead to make those journeys by rail.
Having said that, some aspects of the upgrading are not universally popular, and I applaud my hon. Friend's commitment to highlighting the concerns that exist over the deal. Along with my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr. Sawford) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Clarke), who spoke briefly in the debate, she has met my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to discuss those concerns, and she has also spoken to the rail regulator.
Clearly, not everyone along the route will benefit from the improvements offered by the upgrade. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that some services may deteriorate. 382 As we know, this is not a perfect world and, in making major changes to such an intensively used railway, it will not be possible to meet everyone's aspirations. In planning such a major upgrade, it is important that full account is taken of the needs and aspirations of everyone who has a legitimate interest in it. The arrangements that the previous Government put in place for managing the railway simply do not allow that. They certainly do not ensure that major schemes such as the west coast main line are planned as part of the strategic development of the railway system as a whole.
The agreement to upgrade the line involved two private sector companies, which planned an upgrade that would meet their own requirements. It appears that only after those requirements were met was thought given to the other operators on the line, or the wider needs of the community along the route. Indeed, early drafts of the agreement between Railtrack and Virgin—which were submitted to the regulator for approval—contained no provision for growth in freight services and proposed a deterioration in journey times between London and Northampton. It is not surprising that my hon. Friends who have taken part in the debate were incensed when they discovered that that was the implication of the proposals. I am sure that they and other hon. Members who take an interest in the subject will not be surprised because Virgin Trains—the company for which the upgrade is being produced—does not run freight trains; nor does it serve Northampton, so it had no interest in the concerns of the people represented by my hon. Friends in the Northampton area.
Only the intervention of the rail regulator and the franchising director, together with my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, ensured that improved capacity will now be available for freight and that services to and from Northampton will be protected. I realise that that may seem like too little too late, and I recognise that Northampton feels disadvantaged because of the shortage of fast services.
My hon. Friend has made the case eloquently on behalf of her constituents and highlighted the lack of easy access to fast main line rail services. She mentioned the history and the fact that canal operators opposed a direct line to Northampton in the early to mid-19th century, when lines were first being built. Another element, of which she may be aware, was the interest of the Duke of Wellington and others concerned with military factors that the main line served the Weedon barracks, rather than Northampton. It is a curious history in which all of us who are familiar with that part of the world take an interest, but, whatever the history, the result is that Northampton is poorly served for a town of its size and importance because it has no direct access to fast main line services.
The regulator has sought assurances that Railtrack will be able to provide, as a minimum, capacity that can broadly accommodate the existing rights of Silverlink services between London and Northampton including maintaining existing journey times for fast peak-time London-to-Northampton trains. In addition, Railtrack has agreed to undertake a strategic review of passenger services south of Rugby in consultation with key stakeholders, including local authorities. Railtrack is due to report in April 1999, and meetings have already taken place with representatives from the train operator Silverlink and Northamptonshire county council to 383 discuss those issues. I have no doubt that my hon. Friends will contribute to that review, if they have not already done so.
I am sure that all hon. Members here today would agree that that is not the right way to go about planning a £2.2 billion infrastructure project. The west coast main line is both a major project and a major step towards making the railways fit for the 21st century. The potential of the project for inter-city services, the potential impact on local services and the resulting need to achieve a delicate balance of interests illustrate the need for a more strategic approach to be taken to the provision and management of the railways. That is why the Government plan to create a strategic rail authority, which will have responsibility for planning Britain's rail network and ensuring that plans are put in place that take proper account of the needs of everyone who uses the line.
The authority will provide the leadership and direction that the industry needs. It will combine the functions currently carried out by the franchising director and some of those carried out by the Department. In addition, it will be responsible for balancing the needs of passengers and freight users, and it will play a major part in promoting and facilitating integrated transport networks.
In addition to tackling the need for better strategic planning of the railways, we have secured more than £100 million of public support for the rail industry in the next three years as part of the comprehensive spending review settlement announced yesterday. That is designed to lever in additional private sector investment aimed at removing capacity constraints and promoting modal shift to rail. Spending plans for railways, including the new money for rail investment, underpin the Government's overriding goal of attracting more passengers and freight on to rail. There will be further details in the integrated transport White Paper, which my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister intends to present to the House in the near future. I heard the early bid of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North on behalf of her town. She was certainly aware of the scope for that increased investment in improvements to the rail service. She will realise that I cannot give the commitment for which she is looking, but, as I said at the beginning of my speech, I will ensure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State writes to her about that and the other matters she raised.
I wish to reassure all hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North, for Northampton, South and for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White), who contributed to the debate, that we will continue to ensure that the west coast main line project is delivered by Railtrack and that the interests of all those who use the network—including Northampton passengers and freight users and people who travel between, for example, Northampton and Milton Keynes—are given adequate weight in the assessment of priorities. We know that that will be difficult under the current rules, but we aim to rectify the deficiencies that we inherited from the old system and work towards ensuring that the new rail authority will help to deliver a truly integrated transport system.