Railway Services: South-West

I beg to move,

That this House has considered railway services in the South West.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. The south-west is hugely reliant on the mainline railway—it is an economic lifeline. As I am the MP for Newton Abbot, which includes Dawlish, Teignmouth and Kingsteignton—all towns with strong railway heritage—the railway is a fundamental part of my life and community.

Devon and Cornwall are notoriously underserved by transport: there is one motorway and just two national roads. The road network in Devon is largely minor roads full of potholes. The mainline railway is the key economic lifeline for the entire region. Getting from Exeter to Paddington in a couple of hours makes a huge difference and enables many people to work part in London and part in Devon—including myself, even before I was an MP.

The value of the railway to the economy was demonstrated during the 2014 Dawlish storm incident. From a Transport Committee record, we know that the storms on 4 February and 14 February 2014 caused a 100 metre breach in the sea wall at Dawlish and a 25,000 tonne landslip between Dawlish and Teignmouth, which was exacerbated by a further landslip on 5 March. The incident closed the line for eight weeks. An immediate repair cost of £35 million, including 300 engineers—the much-lauded “orange army”—got the line running again, but the interruption cost the local economy an estimated £1.2 billion. It is estimated that the Plymouth economy alone lost £600,000 each day the line was shut.

Since 2014 a lot has changed, but the dependence on the railway has, if anything, increased. Please do not think of tourism as the only industry in Devon: remote working has blossomed, and it is clear from Office of Road and Rail statistics that the overwhelming majority of rail journeys from Exeter and the other main stations are to and from London.

Why do we need a debate on the topic? The answer is that this vital railway link is again under threat from a number of different sources. After the 2014 storm, the then Prime Minister promised that money was no object and that the line would be made resilient. A five-phase plan was drawn up and work began. The new sea wall was built, and Dawlish railway station had a rebuilt sea defence as well. The first four phases of that plan have been done and are now in place. One massive benefit was the new bridge at Dawlish, which made both platforms accessible without steps—something that we still need in too many other stations, including Teignmouth.

Many railway stations across the south-west remain inaccessible. Disabled people, unable to get support, have had serious accidents at railway stations in constituencies such as Yeovil. Will my hon. Friend join me in urging the Government to improve the Access for All programme, as well as holding operations such as Great Western Railway to account when proper support is not in place for disabled railway passengers?

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Accessible, step-free stations are vitally important across Devon.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. He is right to highlight the contact between the south-west and London in particular. It is disappointing that, even in London, almost two thirds of tube and other stations have no access for disabled people. If the Government are going to make improvements to railway movement for passengers, then accessibility for disabled people—and access to work for them—is key to that moving forward.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

When I met Network Rail in the autumn, it said that the design team for the fifth and final phase of the work would be reassigned if the funding was not forthcoming soon. That would put the project back, and significant extra funds would be required to get it back up to speed.

A few months ago, I asked the then Transport Secretary about the funding for the critical final phase of the Dawlish rail resilience programme, which is the largest piece of work. It deals with the landslips that caused the line to be closed long beyond the short time it took to repair the sea wall breach. She looked shocked to learn that the funding was not already there. Although she did not promise the funds, she indicated that the project would be a high priority.

The line has been closed on a number of occasions over the past years. The previous large cliff collapse was in the winter of 2000-01, according to the “West of Exeter Route Resilience Study”. I ask the Minister to reassure Network Rail and my constituents that that vital project will not be quietly forgotten, but will be completed to protect the economic wellbeing of the south-west and my constituents’ access to rail services.

However, there are other threats too. The Great Western main line not only runs from Paddington to Exeter, Plymouth, Penzance and the far west of Cornwall, but covers Swindon, Bristol, Cheltenham and Gloucester, to name but a few, not forgetting Cardiff, Swansea and south Wales.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He is well aware that the south-west and Wales are connected by the Severn tunnel, which is often closed—it is likely that the closures are in his region. Does he agree that that is impacting economic growth in south Wales, and is all the more reason for Wales to receive the consequentials from HS2 funding to invest in our own railways in Wales, including the Heart of Wales line in my constituency?

I thank my hon. Friend for that valuable point. He is absolutely right that Wales has been seen off, in terms of funding.

I sympathise with hon. Members speaking on behalf of Wales. I represent commuters using Bedwyn station, and I want to point out on behalf of Wiltshire that in 2022 we lost three of our inter-city express trains in order to support the Cardiff to Penzance line. Commuters using Bedwyn no longer have the same off-peak service into London that we had before. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as the Government look to commission a new fleet of inter-city trains for Great Western, it would be good to see the rightful return of a proper off-peak service that supports commuters in Wiltshire?

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we need more services on all these lines to support our constituents.

However, everything I have outlined will be interrupted by the creation of the HS2 link to Old Oak Common. High-speed rail is a welcome improvement to our nation’s infrastructure, but the implementation of that project has been handled poorly in the past. It has ignored the largest benefit—connections within the northern powerhouse—and the focus on delivering faster rail between London and Birmingham has delivered unwanted side effects. The decision to terminate the HS2 services at Old Oak Common, three miles west of Paddington, was quickly overturned by the incoming Government. Their announcement of a resumption of the project to tunnel to Euston is to be welcomed, but the 14-platform station at Old Oak Common—eight platforms on the surface and six for HS2 underground—will impact south-west rail services for another six or seven years as it is constructed.

My constituents in Frome and East Somerset are still shocked to learn about the implications of Old Oak Common. Does my hon. Friend agree that the consultation on that huge change, which will have a major impact on the south-west, was insufficient, and that we still need to have some kind of impact survey or study of the potential impact on tourism and business and the other effects of the works at Old Oak Common?

I agree entirely that the impact of Old Oak Common is immense, and will not be just during the construction phase.

The six or seven years of delays and cancellations at weekends and Christmases have been covered in this Chamber before, so I will not repeat the list of weeks and weeks of diversions to Euston and significantly reduced services.

I have already started to receive complaints from my constituents about the inability of Euston station to cope with the volume of passengers when the trains cannot complete their journeys to Paddington. But the piece of the plan that adds insult to injury for the millions of passengers from the south-west, is the idea that every Great Western Railway train will stop at Old Oak Common, even after construction is completed. It has been somewhat unclear—some misleading averages have been quoted—but having met with GWR and Network Rail, I understand that stopping at Old Oak Common will add some five to 15 minutes to every single journey. Adding 15 minutes on to the fast train—of around two hours—from Exeter to London is significant, and even more so on the quicker trains from Cheltenham or Bristol.

Travel to Birmingham is already available via Bristol. Looking at journey times, it will usually be faster to go to Birmingham via Bristol, unless users are further east than Swindon or Westbury. Stopping at Old Oak Common will bring little or no benefit to the majority of the long-distance rail users of the west, south-west and Wales.

Can the Minister confirm that fast trains from the south-west should be able to go through Old Oak Common without stopping?

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Penzance, west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are all in my constituency, so I know that if there are problems on the link at Dawlish, that can multiply the impact of those disruptions for people in the far west of Cornwall. Does he share my concern that it seems that with this multi-billion pound HS2 project, people in Penzance, in west Cornwall, and no doubt in his constituency as well, will experience all the pain but none of the gain? If it is two hours to Exeter, it is another three hours down to Penzance. It needs to be considered that we want to avoid the unnecessary disruption to people’s lives for the next seven years.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is even harder for those down in Cornwall than it is for those in Devon.

Both of these significant impacts are examples of the historic lack of investment in the railways in the south-west. In the south-west, we can often feel like second-class travellers—watching our services get worse so that other services can be made better. Local rail services in Devon are few and far between. Rather than a few minutes between services—as we enjoy here in London—we are lucky if we have one or two trains an hour.

Trains are often made up of fewer carriages than planned due to faults or breakdowns. Schoolchildren travelling locally between towns have been unable to get on to services because they are too full, due to their having only half the expected number of carriages. A constituent told me that her young daughter was left in tears, having been denied access to a train with her group, which triggered an anxiety attack. On the London services, mobile phone coverage is barely useable for much of the journey. While for some that may be a blessed relief, it means that wi-fi connections are not reliable—a huge issue in a world where so many people rely on good connections to usefully work on the train.

I consider myself fortunate, going to Devon. If I were to continue the journey in Cornwall, the train speed would slow down considerably—as my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) just mentioned. Journey times could be significantly reduced by even partial electrification, as hybrid trains on the line could speed up faster and climb some of the hills quicker. I am sure my Cornish colleagues could elaborate.

I ask the Minister to consider what might be done to show my constituents, and the population of the wider south-west, that they have not been ignored. I am asking for us to receive some benefits from new investment, not just delays to accommodate fast access for others to the midlands and the north. I am specifically asking for more train carriages for more local services; full metro services with no greater than half an hour between scheduled trains; monitoring and accelerating the roll-out of the Access for All programme; reliable wifi across the entire route; electrification to improve journey times to Cornwall; fast trains from Wales to the west to the south-west not stopping at Old Oak Common; and commitment to complete the Dawlish rail resilience programme.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing this important debate. We all know the importance of strong and effective railway services in the south-west.

I will give a bit of background on my constituency. As I mentioned in my maiden speech in the House—and continue to mention at every opportunity—improving the transport links in my constituency of Tiverton and Minehead is one of my top priorities. We are served by only one major train station: Tiverton Parkway, which sits on the Great Western Railway and CrossCountry lines, as well as the charming and historic West Somerset Railway—a heritage line that runs up through the shoulder of my constituency and along the coast, terminating at Minehead.

Those services provide the totality of rail connections in my constituency, but there is still no way to get from Tiverton to Minehead. Minehead desperately needs linking to the main line at Taunton, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) would agree, but there are much wider issues at play for rail travel in Tiverton and Minehead.

The latest available data from July to September ’24 lays bare the inadequacy of railway services across the south-west. The punctuality of CrossCountry trains is pitiful—more often tardy than not, just 46.4% of the time did the service run as scheduled. That is shocking, as the figure is over 20 percentage points below the national average for punctuality on the rail network over the same period. Meanwhile, the Great Western Railway service is understood to have operated in accordance with the timetable 60.2% of the time—still over 7 percentage points lower than the national figure. That is better, but hardly an advert for timeliness.

Not knowing whether a scheduled service will appear on time is far from the only issue for my constituents. Even when the service is scheduled, and appears to be all-functioning, there is always the risk of cancellation. Both of the major carriers for Tiverton and Minehead had cancellation rates above the national average from July to September ’24, and in both cases, the majority of those trains were cancelled as a result of not Network Rail, but the operator itself. That is not what the people of Tiverton and Minehead expect when they buy their tickets, and they deserve better.

I thank you for your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan, and I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing the debate.

The need to improve rail services across the south-west—particularly in Cornwall, which is at the sharp end of our problems—cannot be overstated. Connectivity is the backbone of our economy and our communities, yet our transport infrastructure still lags far behind what is needed to unleash their full potential. This summer, the Mid Cornwall metro will launch in my constituency, offering improved rail links between Newquay and other parts of Cornwall. Although that is a very welcome development that goes some way to undoing the damage inflicted on the line in 1987 by the then Prime Minister, for people outside of Newquay, the Mid Cornwall metro, despite its lofty name, will fall somewhat short of being the transformational project that the duchy needs.

That brings me to the wider issue of transport in my constituency. The road between our two major towns, St Austell and Newquay, is winding and unsafe. Given the absence of a direct train linking the towns—despite a track that runs relatively directly from St Austell, through Burngullow and up to St Dennis, falling short of rejoining the main Newquay line at Goss Moor by just a mile or so—large-scale capital investment in a transformative project is desperately needed.

We have a stunning stretch of line running from my hometown down into another town served by treacherous roads: Fowey, a town that has long shipped our white gold, china clay, to the world. I urge the Minister to explore the feasibility of such transformative projects in Cornwall—particularly on those magnificent branch lines, which have been ravaged over the years—to provide clarity on our clean transport plans and to make public transport in Cornwall a no-brainer rather than a chore, ensuring that our communities have the infrastructure that they need to thrive. If we are to build more homes, people in Cornwall must see that commensurate services and infrastructure are put in place.