First Great Western Franchise

: I am not going to make any comments on that at the moment, but the point will be noted by the Minister and by my colleagues. I come now to the number of trains from Totnes to Exeter and from Totnes to Plymouth during rush hour. The roads around Totnes and the A38 are jammed as people travel to and from work by car. If regular trains travelled in both directions at the right price, a great number of people would go by train rather than use fuel and park their cars in the town centres. Why do people not travel by train? Simply because the number of trains is being reduced, fares are too high and coaches are being crammed to the gunnels. Some trains that stop at Totnes have only one coach; others have only two. So full are they that schoolchildren are virtually swinging from the chandeliers. People understandably prefer their own cars. [Interruption.] I should say to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) that I do not think trains have chandeliers in his part of the world. Rural rail services have been cut, despite their growing popularity. Passenger numbers on ill-fated branch lines have increased by up to 40 per cent. in recent years, and the branch lines across the west country will lose up to half their daily trains. That list is borne out by the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) about the Barnstaple to Exeter line. She wished to talk about that today, but has not been able to come—mind you, she probably would not have got in. The Barnstaple to Exeter line is greatly used by commuters. The reduction in rural services has nothing to do with CO2 emissions or passenger convenience: it is simply about reducing the rail network's £5 billion annual subsidy. The cuts in rural services are as great as when Beeching axed the line in the '60s, and literally thousands of west country people use the roads and increase CO2 emissions because of them. It should be quicker and cheaper for such people to travel by train, but it is not. It is sheer madness to cut rural local services that are used by increasing numbers of local commuters when we should be encouraging such services to the maximum. I give the Government credit for one thing. I am delighted that we have managed to save the sleeper to Penzance. When I was Member of Parliament for Liverpool, Wavertree, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and I played a part in saving the sleeper service to London, which was going to be axed. I am only sorry that when I moved to south Devon in 1983, that commitment was not continued, and the sleeper service no longer exists. I pay tribute to Lord Freeman, then Transport Minister and responsible for the first franchise document for the west country. He took little persuading that the night sleeper to Penzance should continue. The only snag now is that as a result of rearrangements suggested by the Government, we have got rid of the Plymouth coach. One finds oneself at 5.50 am, having come down from London, standing on the platform with nowhere to go and nothing to do. In the winter it is very cold. The unreliability of the timetable is such that some say that there is no point in there being one at all, and that we should just go to the station and see what turns up and where it is going. Such jaundiced remarks come from regular commuters who despair of ever having a week free from catastrophe or delay; on the line there may be leaves, or cows or other animals that seem to have a fascination with train lines and have become the keenest train spotters of them all. It is convenient to blame First Great Western for unreliable service, but it is as well to remember that at least 50 per cent. of all delays are caused by track or signalling failures or a combination of both. Finally, I come to the question of the track. The situation of the infrastructure is a major cause of ongoing delays and is blamed on the fact that 78 per cent. of the rails were laid before 1970. The approach of Network Rail does not give priority to the needs of the travelling public. For example, after track repairs, temporary speed restrictions are unnecessarily low. Similar priority is given to two or three trains from the Mendips carrying stone each night, which prevents weekday night work on the entire Reading to Taunton track. Network Rail needs to be more flexible and more consumer orientated and to ensure that the speeds allowed after repair are much greater. For example, when the track was nationalised under British Rail, there was a 100 mph restriction after repair. Until January this year, the restriction was 20 mph after repair. That has been increased to 50 mph, and we should be grateful for that, but such restrictions knock the west country timetable sideways and throw it out of the window. The knock-on effects throughout the day mean that trains run unnecessarily late. The bulk of mainline repairs using modern equipment is done on weekday nights and at weekends, but not on the Reading to Taunton line. That means that on Sundays all passengers from Penzance upwards go via Bristol. I had such an experience on Sunday; I very regularly take five to six hours to get back to London by train. That is not acceptable on a Sunday, and the trains are packed as well. Network Rail faces an enormous problem, but enormous problems were faced when I dealt with British Rail and Railtrack in the ‘80s and ‘90s. There have always been enormous problems with the track, and although it is true that more money is being spent—£46 million this year and £53 million next—on the Reading to Penzance route and that there is a high budget for track renewals, it remains true that even with a revised timetable it will be progressively more unlikely that trains will ever arrive according to their scheduled times. That is the result not of breakdowns of engines or rolling stock, but simply of Network Rail commandeering sections of the track and forcing the railway to go on an alternative route. There are too many speed restrictions, they are too onerous, and more imaginative and progressive ways must be found to deal with engineering requirements. However, I am impressed by the spirit with which Network Rail is addressing such matters: the regional controller for the area is very enthusiastic and hopes that he can deliver—but there have been such hopes for the past 25 years. The centrality of the track problem to the whole issue is illustrated by the fact that if the engineers upgraded the track from Reading to Taunton so that high-speed trains could travel at 125 mph rather than 110 mph, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance could be reached much faster. As the programme of track replacement proceeds, with a quarter of it having to be relaid in the next three years, it is important that deeper and thicker rails should be laid and not cheaper ones from eastern Europe. Will the Minister confirm that the best steel will be used and that the general quality and design will last for years to come? There are further obstacles that will have to be surmounted, given the entire refit of Reading station and the introduction of Crossrail. Those two developments must not be used as an excuse for further delays, but inevitably they will. I am doubtful whether we will be able to go from Plymouth to London by train in three hours; it will be nearer four or five hours—that is why people take to the road. Last but not least, I turn to the track at Dawlish. Climate change is already adversely affecting it: raised sea levels are causing more regular spray on to the track and halting services. On a recent visit to the Met Office in Exeter, I was left in no doubt by the forecasters that in the next 50 years rising sea levels will mean that the line beyond to Penzance will be closed for more days each year. Yet Network Rail and the Government continue to reject any suggestion that I make about providing, or even preparing for, an alternative route. An Exeter to Plymouth line along the A38 would, of course, solve that problem, as well as having other clear advantages. The west country has only one line each way from Exeter to Penzance, and we have an outdated line, which is too slow, between Reading and Exeter. Major repairs are afoot. Reading station is to be brought into the 21st century—thank you, but at what cost?—and Crossrail is to bring trains from all over the north of the country straight down to the channel tunnel and the south coast. All in all, there is a massive programme for change, but today, public train services to and from the west country have in no way improved and in many cases have dramatically declined. No wonder more and more people are taking to the roads in droves: their journeys are faster and cost dramatically less. This debate is an indictment of the Government's commitment to public transport and a reminder to those of us who live in the west country that they have little time for us and little regard for how we live our lives and the economic prosperity of the region. The Government could do a great deal to put things right. If the Minister has the will. there will be a way—but has he the will? There are appalling delays on the railways, overcrowded out-of-date rolling stock and a railway company desperate to see things improve but hampered by the lack of basic requirements: a first-class track, reliable signalling and good communications systems. That lack will lead to ever greater congestion on the roads and ever increasing CO2 emissions. I have delayed asking for a debate on this issue for 20 years, because each year I hope that things will get better. However, the situation has got worse. In its original state, the new franchise timetable would have been an unmitigated disaster. The only chink of light is that First Great Western has won the new franchise and is as determined as I am to see, in my lifetime, improved, reliable, fast, comfortable and reasonably priced public rail travel.