It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Hollobone, especially as you are fresh from your doughty defence of parliamentary prerogatives in the main Chamber yesterday.
My constituency is home to a large number of commuters. Every day, more than 22,000 residents of Elmbridge commute to London for work. That represents roughly 38% of the borough’s work force—no small proportion. Many rely on the rail network, which means travelling with South West Trains. As a commuting MP, I know first hand what the service is really like.
The number of people using the railway has increased sharply in recent years. Reflecting national trends, the number of recorded journeys to and from stations in Elmbridge rose by 78% between 2002 and 2010. The most recent figures from the Office of Rail Regulation reveal that, in the financial year 2010-11, 11.6 million passengers used the various Elmbridge stations.
With that in mind, the quality of the service provided by South West Trains is an important issue for local residents. The latest figures published by the consumer watchdog Passenger Focus are disappointing. In autumn 2012, it received 31,500 responses to its national passenger survey. South West Trains was rated the joint-worst train operating company for providing value for money, with just 37% of respondents expressing satisfaction. By contrast, Merseyrail achieved a 70% rating for value for money, and Grand Central achieved 73%.
There are various reasons why so many passengers do not feel they get value for money. For one, overcrowding has worsened. In 2011, the most recent year for which information is available, the company’s morning services ran at 4.1% over capacity, up from 2.8% in 2008. In the evenings, they ran at 2.4% over capacity, up from 1.7% in 2008.
Some services are much worse. According to Department for Transport data, the South West Trains 7.32 am service from Woking to London Waterloo, which I regularly take, is the second most overcrowded service in the whole country. It normally runs at 64% over capacity, carrying 471 more passengers than it is meant to.
The punctuality of South West Trains services has stayed flat over the past five years. On average, a commuter will experience at least one late train per week, and far more at certain times. On top of that, a spate of signalling problems has caused longer delays. The service is also often unable to cope with what must be described as relatively minor snowfall. Of course, some of that is Network Rail’s responsibility. Unfortunately, Network Rail is pretty hopeless too.
It remains to be seen whether the new alliance between South West Trains and Network Rail—the train company and the infrastructure operator—makes a significant difference in practice. I hope it will. We should bear in mind that, in 2012, 4,232 trains were cancelled, up 39.5% on the previous year.