Train Services (Maidenhead and Twyford)

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) on securing this debate and providing us with an opportunity to discuss train services in Maidenhead and Twyford. I accept that the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) feel extremely strongly about the issue, as they should. They have raised issues of serious concern to their constituents. However, such an important debate should be conducted in more measured terms than those being used in the right hon. Lady’s local media. Describing any rail service in the United Kingdom as comparable to those in the third world does not help us to get to the nub of the problem. Apart from the fact that such headlines are wildly incorrect, I suspect that their authors are invariably people who have never travelled on a third-world railway. After a number of difficult years, Britain’s railways nationally and in the south-east are a success story, whatever the right hon. Lady may suggest. Performance has improved markedly over recent years, with the renewed focus of Network Rail and the train operators on punctuality. The current franchise system is delivering. More than 1 billion passenger journeys were made last year—40 per cent. more than 10 years ago. Britain’s railways are the fastest growing in Europe, and that strong growth is expected to continue. The Government intend to support the growth on Britain’s railways by spending an average of £88 million a week on the network. Network Rail has embarked on a nationwide infrastructure renewals programme, worth more than £2 billion a year. Thanks to investment from the public and private sectors, Britain has one of the youngest train fleets in Europe. Increased investment in such initiatives as integrated control centres has improved punctuality to pre-Hatfield levels. On average across the country, more than 85 per cent. of trains have run on time over the past 12 months, as measured by the industry-standard public performance measure—the PPM. Further improvements are targeted for March 2008.