Rail Passengers’ Charter

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a Rail Passengers’ Charter, setting out certain guarantees and targets in relation to the provision of passenger rail services; to make provision for penalties for failures to comply with the Charter; and for connected purposes.

Our railway network is relied on by millions of people every day, both as passengers and as beneficiaries of rail freight. The Railways Bill currently making its way through Parliament will make the biggest change in over 30 years. It is therefore right that we seize this opportunity to bring our experience of using the railway into line with 21st-century expectations and challenges.

Passenger charters are not new. I have further burnished my credentials as a dull dinner party guest by reading a few of them in recent days. Every train operating company has one, but this Bill would introduce greater consistency, cut the gap between good intentions and reality and, critically, create a charter with the teeth needed to truly put passenger experience and value for money first.

All of this is not to deny that aspects of our railway have improved. The route I frequently take to travel to this place, between Didcot and London Paddington, has a far more generous off-peak train service than 30 years ago, with four fast trains per hour compared with one back then. Trains are more frequent on most routes across the country than they were, and online and digital ticketing brings convenience for many. However, problems remain. With the exception of tickets with seat reservations, standard class tickets do not come with any guarantee of a seat, many trains lack the necessary space for storage of luggage and similar bulky items, and usability of wi-fi and mobile phone signal reception is highly variable.

Perhaps the gravest issue is that of overcrowding on trains and its unpredictability. Overcrowding is sometimes understandable, and perhaps even forgivable, for example if there is extreme unforeseen disruption, for a major sporting event where efforts to increase service provision have not matched demand, or for short commuter hops at peak times. However, much overcrowding in recent years seems to have been the result of a conscious decision, made not by frequently demonised private train operating companies but by central Government tightly managing post-pandemic contracts with those train operators.

There are, alas, examples from Oxfordshire, home to my Didcot and Wantage constituency. My wonderful parliamentary assistant, Hayleigh, is now on maternity leave, but for many months, she commuted while she was pregnant. Such was the frequency of five-car intercity trains operated by Great Western Railway, including on long-distance routes, such as those between Swansea and Cardiff to London, even at peak times, that she frequently opted to delay her journey to work by 90 minutes, until a more suitable nine-car train was shown on websites to be running.

The issue she faced on such five-car trains was not the willingness of other passengers to give up their seat for her, but the fact that she could not even get beyond the vestibule area, next to the doors, into the main saloon of the train because it was often full of people who were having to stand. The commonness of five-car trains on the GWR network is partly a result of retiring older trains in the west country without immediate replacements, leading to the fleet needing to be more thinly spread, which is now gradually being rectified.

Another example is CrossCountry, which still runs a timetable well below pre-pandemic levels half a decade on from those difficult times. CrossCountry is acquiring more trains, which will reduce crowding problems, but for many years it has been common for trains of just four or five carriages to run only once per hour between Reading, Oxford, Birmingham and beyond, including at peak times. My own experience of trying to board the 17:40 from Oxford to Manchester resembled the railway version of “The Hunger Games”.

Punctuality and getting a seat are core expectations, but rail passengers rightly expect more, particularly for longer-distance journeys. Intercity trains introduced this decade on the east coast main line, between London and Edinburgh, lack the dedicated vehicles of their InterCity 225 predecessors for surge luggage capacity, which is badly needed during the summer and the Edinburgh festival. Elsewhere, provision for pushchairs and bicycles is often patchy, and sometimes in competition. Space for such items is not necessarily at the cost of seats, as it often stated. I have been on trains where carriage of additional bicycles was refused due to lack of flexible storage space, despite half the seats on the train being available.

Much of the network remains inaccessible to people using wheelchairs, and they find booked assistance services inconsistent and less reliable than they should be. Toilet reliability can also cause frustration, discomfort and real distress for passengers. There are train journeys of over three hours in duration, for example the South Western Railway service between London and Exeter, that lack provision of any on-board refreshments. That might sound like a trivial issue, and stations often have much in the way of a retail offer, but if, for one reason or another, people are held up on the way to the station, whether because of traffic or a last-minute delay on the tube, and they run out of time to get something to eat or drink, in the case of SWR on that route they are stuffed.

On-board wi-fi or the ability to receive a decent mobile phone signal suitable for modern working methods is often lacking, as my colleague Ruth experiences on her journeys between Northumberland and London. To some, these may sound like minor inconveniences and mere whingeing trifles. Indeed, despite the valiant efforts of many of those who work on the railway, it can seem that railway passengers are almost viewed as hostages, with no viable alternative, which reduces the focus on tackling these problems.

However, we live in changing times. Not only does public transport continue to compete with the car’s convenient, connection-free journey from A to B, the economics and operation of cars are changing rapidly. To what degree is the public transport of the 2020s ready for a possible future of widespread driverless and electric cars? An example of the changing economics of long-distance travel is that of my friends Mark and Kev, who live in Newton-le-Willows, halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. Their electric car now makes the journey to London significantly cheaper than it would be by train, and some suboptimal experiences of Avanti West Coast’s train service further push them in the car direction.

Critics of public transport may ask, well, if the car is becoming greener and cheaper, does it matter if the passenger railway gets left behind? It is my strong contention that it does indeed matter, as it is far from certain that the electric and driverless car revolution will benefit everyone. Nothing can match the train for its ability to convey large numbers of people efficiently, particularly in urban areas, or to offer an on-board environment conducive to work, sleep, rest, eating or listening to music, although in the case of the latter I would ask that everybody uses earphones.

High-quality and reliable public transport is essential for social and economic inclusion, so how can a 21st-century refresh of the railway passengers’ charter contribute to a better future? First, we must protect charter arrangements already in place, which principally take the form of delay repay. Perhaps because the UK’s delay compensation arrangements are more generous than elsewhere in Europe, I keep hearing murmurs about ideas to water it down. That would be the wrong approach. The best way to reduce delay repay costs is, of course, to prevent and reduce delays in the first place.

Secondly, a refreshed passengers’ charter should be used to learn from past mistakes, regarding design and specification of trains. It was an error on the part of the Government and the public sector, not the private sector, not to specify fold-down tables, comfortable seats, device-charging sockets or wi-fi for the class 700 Thameslink fleet, ordered in the early 2010s. Given that trains have a lifespan of 30 to 40 years, it is important that we get them right from the beginning, so let us now get this right, with a clear set of minimum and consistent standards for commuter, rural, regional and express passenger trains.

Once train fleets consistently have the amenities the modern passenger expects, charters should be expanded to include the principle that what is offered on a given train fleet, whether that is seats, toilets or wi-fi, should be working. The existing delay repay partial refund concept should be expanded to cover such amenities, with appropriate exclusions, such as the entitlement to a seat waived for journeys of under 30 minutes or during major disruption or special events.

The advancement of the charter concept brings with it the hope of a truly 21st-century railway, which will attract the patronage needed for the railway’s financial sustainability: a train service that even commuters may look forward to using, because instead of a daily grind, it will be a chance for a relaxed transition between home and workplace, and a long-distance train service that is less of a distress purchase, and more a comfortable, relaxing or productive alternative to a car, whether self-driven or otherwise. Our railway recently celebrated its 250th anniversary, so what better time to reset our ambition and ensure that we will feel even more proud of our railway’s achievements at the 300th anniversary, in 2074?

That Olly Glover, Edward Morello, Mr Will Forster, Helen Morgan, Steff Aquarone, Helen Maguire, Zöe Franklin, Daisy Cooper, Ian Roome, Martin Wrigley, Charlotte Cane and Liz Jarvis present the Bill.

Olly Glover accordingly presented the Bill.