I appreciate my hon. Friend’s comment. I think that on the day of the Budget, it would be a foolish Minister who committed to longer-term spending, but my hon. Friend has my assurance that I will listen to him and his constituents on this important matter.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs for his kind comments about my involvement. I think the hon. Member for Nottingham South is possibly the only member of the shadow Transport team who is actually interested in transport. She shows up at every debate; her boss is too busy running various leadership campaigns. She knows the issues on the railways well, and I look forward to continuing to work productively with her, but this is not about the Department getting involved and Ministers trying to drive change. As has been said today, what we want is the industry to be able to do this itself, so what are the levers that we need to use?
It is reassuring, I am sure, for hon. Members to know that the chief executive of Network Rail, when he gave a presentation to the Department for Transport board, said that the recovery of the area of the country that we are debating was one of his top five priorities for this year. It is obvious to everyone that the system is creating millions of hours of misery for millions of people in one of the fastest-growing areas of the country. That is simply unacceptable, and it is not good enough to have one-off interventions, despite the fact that we have unprecedented levels of work going on. The industry has to learn how to do things differently. The challenge, in thinking about Euston, High Speed 2 and connectivity into London, is to learn the lessons now to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.
I think the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood may have made a point about the existence of current passengers not being valued enough in the overall process. I cannot remember whether it was her, but that point came from the Opposition Benches. I agree. Understanding what matters to people now is crucial, so let me outline some of the things that are happening and will happen. I invite my hon. Friends to be part of the process.
The merger is happening, and that will bring in a raft of new performance measures that will hold to account those responsible a fair amount. Hon. Members may know that the franchise is currently in breach of some of its performance measures, and there has been a conversation with the Department about the implications of that. Performance improvement plans were presented back in the spring—I know that hon. Members saw them—and are already starting to be implemented. That is driving the slow and steady improvement in performance.
Beyond that, there are three main problems. The first is that delivering the London Bridge improvement programme will not solve all the problems on the lines in question, particularly the Brighton main line. The second is that although the public performance measure is improving, recovery from delays and the volatility of the service remain real challenges. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is no longer in her place, some trains are always late, and that is simply not good enough. The third point
is that rail customers—those who are paying for the goods and services—are consistently unhappy. They have lost trust. They do not see the improvements, and they do not think they will be sustained.
So what has happened? Network Rail brought in its chief engineer to do a deep dive on the real, underlying problems on the line, from both an operations and an infrastructure point of view. That has been turned into a short-term and long-term plan for real recovery. I know we talk a lot about plans, recoveries and summits. There is a war room at London Bridge station that all hon. Members are invited to visit with me on the 20th. I would be delighted if the hon. Member for Nottingham South would join us. It is a cross-party invitation, which I believe she has already received, to see the depth of planning and understanding that is going on on a joined-up basis between Network Rail and the operator.
I can confirm to my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs that I chair the weekly meeting. We have also invited in Transport Focus, because I am keen for improvements to be seen and felt by passengers. We are not just telling ourselves that things are getting better. We are tracking social media sentiment and how people feel about their journeys. We are tracking what matters to people and what is actually improving for people.
I want to mention some of the points that have been made about compensation. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) made a valuable point. Compensation should almost never be paid, because we should have a system that delivers people to their destination on time. Members are right that it is estimated that only 12% of people claim compensation. We have a manifesto commitment to deliver better compensation—and part-time season tickets—right across the industry. I continue to look at the problem of giving compensation to passengers from London Bridge. It is difficult, because it is hard to target those passengers in a fairly open network, but we continue to work on it.
Of course, there are already companies, such as c2c, that are delivering compensation automatically to people’s phones if they are more than a minute delayed. That is the sort of model that we want to see. I will also refer to DelayRepay.net, which is a way to take all the paperwork out of claiming compensation. There are already some important innovations in the industry.
Ultimately, we have to have an unswerving commitment to and focus on passengers—customers—in the industry. The industry does so much right, but when things go wrong, the fact that we have capped fares at RPI for the remainder of this Parliament almost does not matter, because people are frustrated about their journey. So I am determined, and the Department is determined, to hold the industry to account. I am agnostic on the structure—whether this is done through an alliance or in another way. Whatever the structure happens to be, I just want better services to be delivered. I believe that the best way to do that is through transparency, a continued focus on quality in the franchising process and all of us being involved in holding the companies to account.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the performance of Southern railway.