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§ Mr. Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington)I shall keep my comments reasonably brief, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) would like to make a short contribution.
The timing of this debate is fortunate. As the Minister will know, negotiations with Connex and Govia, the two competitors vying for the contract to run suburban train services in south London, are in full swing. I am sure that the Minister appreciates the irony of Govia, which is part-owned by the French state railway, SNCF, bidding to run train services in the United Kingdom. Indeed, he might like to comment on that and on the fact that the Vivendi group, which owns Connex, part-owns Govia—a bizarre state of affairs. The Minister and the Strategic Rail Authority will have to be especially vigilant in assessing the bids to ensure that they are truly competitive.
Connex has both an advantage and a disadvantage in the negotiations. As it now provides the train services involved, commuters have first-hand experience of the service that it provides. To discover their views, I conducted a rail survey in January, to which 145 commuters responded. The survey was conducted before Connex's services were reduced as a result of the industrial dispute. Several people who responded to the questionnaire contacted me shortly afterwards to say that their responses would have been significantly different had they received the questionnaire during the dispute.
Passengers perceive Connex's performance as poor. Three quarters of those surveyed said that their trains were late on arrival and, perhaps most damaging for Connex, more than half did not want its franchise to be extended. Connex might argue, with some justification, that such a self-selected sample is not representative and that the survey was not scientific. However, it is clear that it must significantly improve the quality of its service both before and after any franchise extension if it is to receive the support of a vocal minority of its customers.
The survey also revealed some worrying statistics for the Government. An overwhelming majority of respondents—68 per cent.—opposed Government plans for the partial privatisation of London Underground. The Minister might like to comment on that.
Although the survey provided useful feedback, it was completed in January and I wanted more up-to-date information from commuters before today's debate. In the past few months, I have received a significant number of letters informing me of commuters'views. I see that the Minister has a copy of the leaflet distributed at Wallington station yesterday, asking commuters travelling to London this morning to join me to share their impressions of train services and their hopes for the future. On my journey this morning, I was joined by no fewer than three Connex employees, too—the station manager for the stations in my constituency, her deputy and their commercial manager. I was met at Victoria by a further two Connex employees, including Geoff Harrison-Mee, the managing director. I had until now underestimated the power of the humble Adjournment debate.
22WH I shall detail some of the points that my fellow commuters and others made. Some matters will require substantial investment. Others require a different attitude or better staff training. I welcome the fact that Connex has established a college of environment and transport, as it is clear that some problems are the result of a lack of training or awareness.
Another common theme is anxiety about communication. On Friday, I drove to one of my local stations, Carshalton, to find that my train had been cancelled. I spoke to the person in the ticket office, who advised me that a train that I could catch instead would leave shortly from Carshalton Beeches—a station on a different line. When I arrived there, I found that that train had been cancelled. The person in the ticket office told me that staff there were not informed about cancellations on other lines. It is hard to believe that employees of the same company, working in ticket offices just a mile apart, do not know about cancellations on other lines run by their company. That communication problem seems relatively easy to solve.
The electronic displays are definitely an improvement, which I welcome, but they must be supplemented by verbal communication so that when information about a train disappears from the display because it has been cancelled, as occasionally happens, passengers are told what has happened and why. At the moment, information about the train appears until the last moment and then disappears, to be replaced by information about the next train, which is due to arrive in 15 or 20 minutes'time. The display must provide real-time information. Connex is working on that—the sooner it manages to resolve the problem, the better.
I have received many complaints about late-running trains. This morning I raised with a commuter, Mr. Williamson, the unwillingness of train operating companies to pay compensation for delayed journeys and consequent loss. Mr. Williamson is a professional musician who has suffered consequential financial loss because of train delays. The train operator—not Connex in that instance—was not able to help. Reliability is also affected when trains run early. I have on several occasions arrived at the station dead on time to find the train that I was expecting to catch just pulling out of the station, 30 seconds early. Therefore reliability at both ends of the spectrum needs to be addressed.
Frequency is the major concern expressed in correspondence and is an area where results would have been significantly different had the survey been carried out a couple of weeks later. Since the drivers'overtime dispute, an adequate timetable has been replaced by a frustrating one. For commuters using stations such as Hackbridge, there are enormous gaps in the timetable at peak hours. In some cases, they have to switch to a slower line so that they can get a seat. I spoke a couple of days ago to someone who no longer commuted from Carshalton; he had had to change to Wallington, which is further away and involves a longer journey, because he wanted to guarantee getting a seat in the morning.
The cleanliness of trains is also frequently raised and the problem is all too visible. Trains are awash with fast-food packaging. One's feet stick to carriage floors because people have discarded their Coke cans, depositing the residue on the floor. I am afraid that those are the travelling conditions that people face daily.
23WH What is the future according to Connex? It sets out its proposals in its document "20/20 Vision"; I am sure that the Minister will be aware of the content of that document. The future according to Govia is not yet ready for publication, which is disappointing as it will leave commuters—and Members of Parliament, for that matter—with little time in which to assess the viability of its bid. The Connex document contains many attractive propositions: immediate compensation of 50 per cent. of the ticket price if trains are delayed for more than 30 minutes and 100 per cent. if trains are delayed for more than an hour; replacement of the 600 slam-door carriages by 2003; and proposals to increase line capacity and speed up commuter trains. However, what the people who speak to me, and I as a commuter, want is an undertaking that services will improve. The mental leap required to imagine the service outlined in the document, compared with the present service, is too great.
Certain guarantees are needed. The first is that reliability, punctuality and cleanliness will improve and overcrowding decrease. Secondly, the service levels that customers enjoyed before the dispute will need to be restored. Thirdly, we will need a genuine metro-style service: one for which commuters can turn up and be reasonably certain that there will be another train in 10 or 15 minutes, so there is no mad rush to catch the next one on the timetable. Trains should not be bunched together. There is not much point in having four trains an hour if they arrive in pairs with a time delay of only five minutes between the two.
Fourthly, in the London borough of Sutton there is clearly a demand for more trains to run later on a Friday and Saturday night. At the moment, there is a desperate rush to catch the last train home when people have been out to see a show in central London or have been making good use of the facilities in Sutton town centre. We need a company with vision to deliver the services that we require.
Unless Connex and Govia can sign up to those four commitments, they will not be worthy of an extended franchise and the Secretary of State and the Strategic Rail Authority should reject their proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam and I offered Connex and Govia the opportunity to debate these issues in front of passengers and to a separate audience of businesses. I am pleased that both have accepted the invitation jointly, so passengers and businesses can directly compare the proposals on offer. My hon. Friend and I can assure Connex and Govia of a lively and well-informed audience at those meetings.
Rail privatisation was supposed to deliver rail services of quality with standards of customer care that were equal to those of the aviation industry. I am afraid that it has not done so. The franchise negotiations provide the last opportunity for train companies, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Government to convince passengers that significant benefits will derive from the privatised railway industry. For the sake of millions of beleaguered commuters, I hope that they succeed.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Nicholas Winterton)The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) obtained the permission of the initiator of the debate, the Minister and myself to participate.
§ Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam)I shall be brief, but I wish to add a couple of points. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake), to the Minister and to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to take part in this timely and important debate.
As I listened to my hon. Friend describing his journey to London today, I wondered whether he was being protected or whether various Connex managers were being protected by him from many of their customers. Certainly, on the basis of the heated correspondence that I receive from my constituents, it is the management of Connex that needs protection. I am impressed by my hon. Friend's journey, and I look forward to experiencing a similar quality of service with the managing director and others on hand.
My hon. Friend has already described the glitzy presentation and vision that we have received from Connex, but we are still waiting for the more detailed vision of Govia to be published. From my personal experience and that of many of my constituents, since it secured its first franchise Connex has been long on promises but poor on performance and delivery. My constituents regularly experience cancellation of services, short-running trains, late-running trains and overcrowding. Only last year, Connex was fined substantially for running overcrowded trains. It is vital that the two companies competing for the franchise understand that my constituents do not want a regime of penalties: they want reliable services. My hon. Friend was right to set out the four tests that should be applied, among others, to the two bids.
I wish to dwell on two issues. One is about station maintenance and management. Over the past two years, I have experienced an appallingly unsatisfactory service from Connex regarding the upgrading and maintenance of two of the main stations Cheam—and Sutton—in myconstituency. After almost four years of to-ing, fro-ing and buck passing, we have at last seen work commence at Sutton station, which we hope will lead to a major improvement in accessibility for disabled people and improved facilities for the travelling public.
Understandably, local people faced considerable inconvenience as buildings around the station were knocked down. For months, hoardings were up but no action was taking place, despite senior management's claim that the project was on target for completion about now. In fact, the work will not be completed for many months to come.
Another project at Cheam station has not even started. On the up platform to London every day—and particularly on rainy days like today—a canopy, occupied by pigeons but with no glass or plastic in it, makes the experience of travelling to work sheer misery. I have received letter after letter promising me and my constituents that we will see much needed investment and that the canopy will be replaced—but it has not happened. Why not? My constituents do not understand how a company that cannot get some of the 25WH basics right can seriously compete for another franchise. I hope that it will take that on board, and that the Minister will assure me that some of those concerns will be reflected back to Connex.
We have a franchise that is working at the moment, and we are in the bidding process. One would have thought that the company that is running the service would want to put on the best possible service to guarantee that it gets the franchise back again. This company, however, has adopted a novel tactic: it is running a worse service than hitherto. If, as a result, it loses the franchises, as many of my constituents feel that it should, what will happen in the interregnum when it is the caretaker for a service that it will pass on to another subsidiary of its parent company? Will Connex immediately pass it over? Will it continue to run the service and, as many of my constituents would see it, run it down still further? My constituents were promised that the service would get better through the franchising process, but it has got worse. I hope that the Minister will give us some words of assurance about that. Like my hon. Friend, I look forward to hearing the answers from both companies in due course.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Keith Hill)I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) on securing the debate and providing an opportunity for the House to discuss the renewal of the Connex South Central franchise. I commend the hon. Gentleman for his assiduousness in collating and representing his constituents'concerns about these services. I welcome the news that Connex and Govia have agreed to debate such concerns with audiences of passengers and business people.
I listened carefully to the comments of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), especially about station maintenance and management, and intend to say a few words about the current worsening of the service provided by Connex as a result of a number of difficulties. I take a keen interest in this matter, both as the Minister with responsibility for transport in London and as the Member of Parliament for Streatham, whose three railway stations are served by Connex South Central trains. Indeed, the House will know how concerned I am about performance and service quality on the rail network. My mailbag shows all too well that passengers on Connex South Central services have first-hand experience of the frustrations caused by poor performance.
The latest performance figures rate Connex South Central in category C for overall performance, and the results of the first national passenger survey show that only 71 per cent. of Connex South Central's passengers were satisfied or very satisfied with their service. There is clearly considerable room for improvement. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam outlined his concerns about the current problems affecting Connex South Central's services. Over recent weeks, those services have been adversely affected by a dispute about working 26WH hours that has led to some drivers refusing to work overtime and on rest days. Without overtime and rest-day working, Connex cannot deliver all the services in the advertised timetable. In order to mitigate the effects of the dispute, and to provide as much certainty to passengers as possible, the shadow Strategic Rail Authority has agreed that Connex can operate an emergency timetable until the dispute is settled or the new drivers are fully trained.
Although the shadow SRA and I accept that the situation is not ideal, it is better for passengers to know in advance which services will run, so that they can plan their journeys and reduce delays to a minimum. The emergency timetable will not excuse Connex from its passengers charter commitments, under which it remains liable to compensate passengers for delayed or cancelled journeys.
As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington will be aware, the Connex South Central franchise was awarded in April 1996 to Connex Rail Ltd., a subsidiary of Vivendi SA, for a seven-year period that commenced on 26 May 1996. However, many considered those franchise contracts to be a potential obstacle to improvement. In view of that, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister issued new instructions and guidance to the franchising director last September, and asked him to deliver improvements through renegotiation of the franchise agreements.
When considering renegotiation requests, we ask the franchising director to give due weight to six commitments. First, he should consider current performance, customer services, innovation, investment and efficiency. Secondly, there must be new or earlier investment. Thirdly, better performance must be secured. Fourthly, there must be initiatives to promote integrated transport. Fifthly, we require a willingness to give passengers a greater voice in the level and standard of services. Sixthly, value for the taxpayer must be obtained.
In November 1999, the franchising director announced that the Connex South Central franchise would be one of the first three to be considered for replacement. That franchise, the Great North Eastern Railway and the Chiltern franchises were chosen because they were thought to offer great potential for improvements and developments, which could be delivered in a relatively short time scale. On 14 March, the franchising director announced that Connex Rail and Govia, the current franchisee of Thameslink, had been shortlisted for negotiations for the Connex South Central franchise.
The franchising director will look for evidence that bidders are committed to a step-change improvement in service quality. In particular, he wants early achievement of high performance standards, including cleanliness of trains—the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington made a point about that—as well as provision of information to passengers and demonstrable benefits to passengers throughout the door-to-door journey experience. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that we will expect the Govia and Connex bids to meet all necessary competitive criteria.
§ Mr. BrakeI am happy that the Minister has confirmed that the bids must be competitive, but could 27WH he explain how the process will work? How will he ensure that Vivendi and Govia do not talk to each other behind the scenes?
§ Mr. HillThat is the franchising director's task. We have total confidence that he will be aware of the links to which the hon. Gentleman alluded, and we expect him to scrutinise the detail of the bids carefully. I hope that that goes some way to reassure the hon. Gentleman.
The franchising director has made it clear that proposals will need to be far more ambitious than Connex's initial submissions. Passengers will rightly look for signs that potential operators are serious about making improvements. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the contents of the proposals from Connex and Govia cannot be disclosed at the current stage of the franchise replacement process. However, we are determined that passengers should be given a say in their rail services. When considering proposals for franchise replacement, the franchising director will consult local authorities, passenger transport executives, rail users consultative committees, regional planning bodies and regional development agencies, among others. He will encourage rail users consultative committees to talk to a wide range of individuals and local groups, and conduct his own national passenger survey.
Anxiety has also been expressed about several weaknesses identified in current franchising agreements, which the franchising director will seek to rectify in the new contracts. He will try to strengthen requirements in several key respects: on performance, for example, there will be higher penalties and lower breach thresholds, with more robust operating plans for a consistently more reliable service.
Improvement is also needed to tackle overcrowding, which is a serious problem. There will be a new demand limit, which will reflect the capabilities of trains and infrastructure. It will be increased when capacity is increased as part of the replacement franchise agreement. There will also be regular surveys to show satisfaction ratings for each company, with penalties for those companies that fall below benchmark levels.
Passenger service requirements will be protected, and the present higher train mileage will be written into the replacement franchise agreement. The passengers charter will be revised every five years, with standards continually improving. The shadow Strategic Rail Authority will also aim to improve compensation for passengers. The new and improved passenger 28WH performance measure will include all trains, every day. including weekends, with no allowances for void days, unlike the current passengers charter measurement.
§ Mr. BurstowCan the Minr reassure us that there will no longer be an incentive to run short, and therefore overcrowded, trains so as to claim to have run a train?
§ Mr. HillWe expect that phenomenon, with which I am familiar, to be avoided under the terms of the new franchise agreement.
The importance of safety cannot be overstressed. Franchisees will be under an obligation to produce plans continually to drive up standards and to develop transport integration. New rolling stock will need to include space for bicycles, which is always a matter of concern to Liberal Democrat Members.
The franchising director's objective is to replace the shorter franchises expiring by 2004 within about two years. However, it is important to remember that the franchising director is not committed to accepting Connex's proposal or any other. If an application is to succeed, it will have to guarantee better performance, more investment, expansion of network capacity, improvements for passengers and value for taxpayers'money. If applications fail to deliver those improvements, the franchising director may decide instead to allow the existing Connex South Central franchise to run its course until it expires in 2003. That would be the second-best solution, but it is preferable to agreeing to a new, longer franchise without having secured additional passenger benefits.
The franchising director has already shown that he is prepared to refuse an earlier bid from Connex for a franchise extension. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington will recall that the Connex South Central franchise agreement incorporated a clause that gave Connex the option to bid for an extension of the franchise term from seven to 15 years, subject to the franchising director agreeing the terms of the extension with Connex and being satisfied that it represented value for money. In July 1998, the franchising director received and considered proposals from Connex. He concluded that they were not sufficient to justify extending the franchise and refused to extend it.
I trust that the hon. Gentlemen will be reassured that any decision on the replacement of the Connex South Central or any other franchise will be taken only after the most careful consideration of the benefits that replacement would bring, and after consultation with passengers and other interested parties. Only companies that guarantee better performance, more investment, expansion of network capacity, improvements for passengers and value for money for the taxpayer will succeed.