That this House has considered rail transport services for communities served by the West Coast Main Line.
I am grateful to those from both sides of the House who are here today for this important debate on the west coast main line. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate. It is on a cross-party issue, and the irony is not lost on me that many Members are only here because they could not get a train back yesterday.
The west coast main line rail service has been the subject of some debate in this House already over recent months. Since Avanti became the franchise holder, taking over from Virgin in December 2019, services have been cut, cancellations are rife, staff morale is at rock bottom, and passengers and communities are suffering. Many have voiced their concerns and dissatisfaction with the service that Avanti has been running in questions, letters and conversations with Ministers. I have called this debate because this issue is important. It is important to our communities that we recognise and raise the issues we are all facing as a result of Avanti’s substandard service, and that our constituents know that we are working hard to keep the matter on the Government’s radar. My own community of Ynys Môn has been particularly badly hit, and I would like to give the House some background on why this matter is so important to my constituents.
Holyhead, as a port, has been a key point in the transport of mail from London to Ireland since at least the last quarter of the 16th century. In the early 1800s, the demand for faster delivery meant that mail started to divert via the port of Liverpool, which already had a rail link. It was the introduction of a new rail line in 1848 that saved Holyhead from becoming a backwater. From that point, Holyhead offered the fastest route for mail to Ireland. It was the speed of rail transportation that maintained Holyhead’s route as an important port and town. It remains the second busiest ro-ro port in the UK, with many passengers coming in by train and onward by ferry to and from Ireland.
As a terminus, the railway also brings Holyhead and the rest of Ynys Môn much-needed local employment. The island has one of the lowest GVAs—gross value added—in the UK, and Holyhead is home to some of the most deprived communities in Wales. Before rail was privatised, many local people worked for British Rail, either on the trains or as part of Sealink ferry services. Some are still employed by Avanti, Transport for Wales and Stena Line. Our local shops and services provide for passengers coming in on trains, bringing extra income into the town. Direct trains to London also offer an opportunity for local people growing up in rural north Wales to access the cultural and historic attractions of London, and experience the heady excitement of the big city.
So for Holyhead in particular, the railway is not just something that passes through the town. It has been part of the very fabric of life for 175 years. No one expected this way of life to suffer such a blow from the change of franchise. We all understand that our rail operators, including Avanti, went through very challenging times during the pandemic, and we understand that during it, it was necessary to cut the number of trains running at that time. The problem is that Avanti not only has not picked its game back up, but has allowed its services to deteriorate.
Our rail timetable has been shattered, with direct services between London and Holyhead hacked. Local ferry passenger numbers have been challenged by the lack of through train services from London. This has also stopped my constituents from accessing the cultural, political and historical collateral of the UK’s capital city. Those with mobility needs or travelling with children are particularly disadvantaged by cuts in direct services. Local people who commute from north Wales to other parts of the UK have been severely affected.
Some hon. Members will know from my recent Adjournment debate that Ynys Môn recently experienced another connectivity disaster, when the Welsh Government put in place an emergency closure on the Menai suspension bridge, having allowed the bridge to fall into disrepair. The bridge is one of only two physical links between the island and the mainland. As one constituent who moved to Anglesey to run his business told me,
“with the whole range of transport problems affecting Ynys Mon and the adjoining mainland I am starting to regret my decision to base the core of my business here and I suspect that many others share my view.”
Prior to the pandemic, the Trainline website claimed:
“It is possible to travel from Holyhead to London Euston without having to change trains. There are nine direct trains from Holyhead to London Euston each day.”
But in February this year, we had just one direct train running each way between Holyhead and London. When I wrote to Avanti to raise my concerns, its response was:
“We are currently working closely with Government, Network Rail and industry partners to update our timetable which we hope to move forward with in the next few weeks—this will include the reintroduction of further services to North Wales.”
In June, Avanti said that we would have six direct trains a day in north Wales. That did not materialise, and by August it was axing trains across the whole network and introduced a significantly reduced timetable. As Transport Focus put it,
“The primary aim of introducing a reduced timetable is to ensure a reliable service is delivered to passengers so they can travel with greater certainty without the frustration and inconvenience caused by short-notice cancellations.”
However, in the second half of this year, complaints that I received about Avanti’s rail service from both passengers and staff increased by over 600%. A recent report from Transport Focus found that 28% of Avanti passengers said that they had experienced a change, cancellation or delay to their journey. Just over four in 10 passengers rated Avanti’s communication about delays as good. A quarter of Avanti passengers said that the level of crowding was poor.
For months, Avanti’s own travel tracker has shown a plethora of delayed and cancelled trains, many of which it has blamed on staff shortages, broken down trains or trains diverted to cover previously cancelled services. Data from the Office of Road and Rail shows that, between July and September, even though it had already removed thousands of services from its schedules, less than half of Avanti West Coast trains ran on time. One in eight was cancelled. That is nearly twice as many cancellations as the UK average. Many of us will recognise the reality of the situation all too well. Travelling with Avanti has become a lottery. A good, pain-free, on-schedule journey is such a novelty that my team celebrate when it happens.
We have been told by Avanti West Coast that the service will return to pre-pandemic frequency. However, a look at its timetable released this week for 11 December to 20 May next year shows just five direct trains each way between Holyhead and London Monday to Saturday, and three on a Sunday. The timetable for today, sitting as it does immediately after a strike day, offers four direct trains from London to Holyhead, with three making the return journey. That was this morning. Even I will admit that five, four or even three direct trains is better than the one we had earlier this year, but planning journeys is still a nightmare. Although Avanti has apparently committed to give us reliable timetables six to eight weeks in advance of travel, when I looked earlier this week, its website still showed no train timetable for some dates in January.
What worries most of us now is not what it says on the timetable but what happens in reality. After months of listening to Avanti’s promises and then suffering when it fails to deliver, I do not view the timetable with a great deal of optimism. How has this come to pass? What has turned a once reasonably reliable train service into what we have today?
Like other operators, Avanti was impacted by the pandemic. It has also been impacted by the nationwide RMT strikes and actions by other unions. However, its problems largely stem from staffing issues. For years, train operators have used staff working overtime to keep all their services running. They have relied on workers doing extra shifts on their day off to help crew trains. Avanti is blaming its problems on staff withdrawing their support for this arrangement, but according to staff, Avanti’s actions since taking over the franchise have led to this point. It has cut staff without replacing them and reduced morale to such an extent that workers have stopped volunteering for extra shifts.
On the hon. Lady’s point on staff, my understanding is that since Avanti took over the franchise, it has got rid of 175 catering roles. That is having an impact on the service provided on board in standard class as well as first class. The service that Avanti is providing is significantly worse than what Virgin, the previous franchise holder, provided.
I thank the hon. Member for that important intervention. He makes a clear point about the services that are being axed. They affect not only the people using the transport but those who are trying to work on the trains and offer a good service.
Mike Whelan, the general secretary of ASLEF, said earlier this year that Avanti
“does not employ enough drivers to deliver the services it has promised passengers it will run. In fact, the company itself has admitted that 400 trains a week are dependent on drivers working their rest days.”
Avanti says that it is working hard to address the problems by recruiting more staff. It says that by the end of December it will have 100 more drivers than in April. But Avanti staff are deeply unhappy and sceptical, as anyone who travels regularly will know.
Many Avanti staff have been working on the route for years. They moved to Avanti from Virgin when the franchise was changed. They have experience of working on the route when it was not perfect but at least functional. Earlier this month, the RMT carried out a survey of Avanti staff that showed that 92% of respondents are either not very confident or have no confidence at all in Avanti’s ability to deliver the improvements that it has been told to make to its services. More than 80% agree that their working lives have got harder since Avanti took over, there are not enough staff on the route and Avanti is mismanaging the workforce.
Avanti’s own staff rated service to passengers at just 22 on a scale of zero to 100. One respondent stated:
“the staffing issues started way before July. Jobs haven’t been backfilled for a long time”.
Another said,
“staff shortages have been an issue for months…Poor management of key contracts have made working for Avanti unpleasant and embarrassing.”
My hon. Friend is making some very good points. Would she, for the record, agree that the staff who are there, despite feeling undervalued and demoralised, do a wonderful job in being cheerful, trying to be as upbeat as they can and delivering the best service they can in the face of such difficult conditions? The staff are doing their best in trying circumstances.
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Personally, I am looking forward to getting on that train today. Some of these people are my friends—they light up my life—they are important and they are trying to do an important job in challenging times.
As one staff member said:
“The company has been run into the ground by Avanti…and the frontline are the ones taking the brunt of it. In my 15 years’ service I have never seen such a shambles.”
From the passenger perspective, one constituent recently wrote:
“There is no shortage of people who want to use trains; ticketholders come from all walks of life and are prepared to pay for safe, comfortable and efficient journeys by rail. These services can and have been delivered at times but, overall, the Chester to Holyhead service is…a byword for rip-off rail.”
In October, despite requests from many of us to terminate the franchise, the Government granted Avanti an extension of six months to get its house in order. Two months on, we have a new timetable that no one, including the Avanti staff, believes is realistic, a service cancellation rate that has done nothing but increase over the past year, and a history of broken promises from Avanti. It has until March 2023 to sort this sorry mess out.
Avanti’s website calls the west coast main line:
“Britain’s premier long-distance railway, linking together towns and major cities to create a vital economic artery for the UK.”
It goes on to say that it is
“on a mission to run a railway that generates prosperity and pride, right across the nation…an iconic railway the country can be proud of”.
No one would be happier than me if it achieved that mission. My journey home takes four hours on a good day, and the thought of more miserable months waiting on cold platforms or rearranging meetings because of sudden service cancellations does not fill me with a warm glow of joy. So I am coming clean and admitting that, like so many of my constituents, I have a vested interest in Avanti getting it right.
I declare an interest and refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing the debate. This is an issue that impacts hundreds of MPs, because the rail service that Avanti delivers connects us all.
I agree with the hon. Member’s closing remarks. If we were to think of a company that symbolised rip-off rail, Avanti would be the first to come to mind. It has a habit of blaming everyone when it comes to its failure. Poor management, expensive tickets, an unreliable service and trains that are not maintained or cleaned properly are all issues. I hope to cover some of them. I will not take too much of the House’s time.
My inbox is often full of people complaining about cancellations, uncertainty, lost business and students unable to go to their university or college because of the poor service provided by Avanti. It seems that one unifying factor around Avanti is that it is pretty much universally disliked. Whether passengers, businesses, staff members who work on its trains or those who supply the trains, everyone seems to have something to say about Avanti and it is almost always negative.
I know the Minister on a personal level and know that he is a hard-working Member of Parliament. A couple of weeks ago, I raised with him that TransPennine Express, which is experiencing similar problems on the network, is owned by FirstGroup, which owns 70% of the Avanti franchise. The Government should hold FirstGroup to account for the failures on Avanti, which are being replicated on TransPennine Express, because this is simply not good enough. It is not acceptable. I have tabled a number of written parliamentary questions on the subject. The fact is that Avanti has damaged the economy in my constituency as well as the wider north-west region.
In my intervention, I referred to the 175 catering roles that Avanti has axed, but there are even more problems when it comes to catering on trains. The equipment is often faulty, so passengers cannot pay with a card. Sometimes, they only take card and not cash—it depends on the train and what equipment there is.
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on facilitating it. I guess that the debate is of interest to a considerable number of Members of this House, and I suspect that the reason the Chamber is not fuller today is that a lot of them are in Euston station waiting to see whether they can get a train home. Indeed, to be absolutely frank, the only reason that I am here is that I had the foresight to bring my car on Sunday—I did not want to take my chances with Avanti today immediately before Christmas.
The west coast main line is one of the most important pieces of transport infrastructure in this country, as it links the capital with major population centres such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Importantly for my constituents, as my hon. Friend said, it also connects to the north Wales main line, which links the capital to north Wales towns and Holyhead, which is the principal ferry port to Ireland.
For my constituents, the west coast and north Wales main lines are a lifeline to the capital city and the major cities of the north-west and the midlands. North Wales is an extremely important holiday destination, so it is vital for the north Wales economy that there should be good, reliable and frequent links to London and other cities. Similarly, north Wales businesspeople and travellers are entitled to have those links to the capital.
Sadly, the rail network is currently beset by strikes, but that aside, north Wales has not enjoyed a decent train service for quite a long time. For many years, as we have heard, the franchise was operated by Virgin Trains and the service was generally regarded as good, reliable and efficient. In 2019, however, the franchise was granted to Avanti West Coast, which is a joint venture of FirstGroup and Trenitalia, as we have heard. Since then, matters have declined considerably. It is ironic that an Italian company is involved, because it used to be said that the only decent thing that Mussolini ever did was make the Italian trains run on time.
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing this important debate today. Those of us who travel on this line sympathise with all the tales we have heard today and everything that she has said, because we are all suffering the same terrible journeys. As someone who has travelled pretty much every week from Wilmslow in my constituency to London since 2017, when I became the MP for the area, I have a wide knowledge of the service on which to draw and plenty of first-hand experience of the journey.
The west coast main line is one of the major routes in Great Britain, stretching 399 miles from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh via the west midlands and the north-west of England. The Department for Transport describes the west coast main line as
“one of our most important rail corridors.”
It links four of Britain’s biggest conurbations and serves all rail markets—inter-city, commuter, regional and freight—and there are 11 train operating companies using the line. However, I wish to keep my comments to the Manchester to London route and to Avanti. The train service between Wilmslow and London, on that Manchester to London line, used to be hourly, direct and took one hour and 50 minutes. Since the pandemic, the rise in industrial action and the start of Avanti operating the line, the service has gone shockingly downhill, ending now in the substandard service that we have today.
A few weeks ago, Bee Rowland, a rail traveller, caused a Twitter storm by posting a picture of her child whom she had stuffed in a luggage rack. I sympathised with her, because I had done exactly the same thing, only it was not a child that I had stuffed in the luggage rack—it was me, for the full two-hour journey. That was because people from several trains had had to cram into one train. Most people were standing, but, fortunately—I say fortunately, but it was ironically—I managed to squeeze into the travel rack and sat there for the full journey. Bee Rowland’s experience was on Grand Central, mine on Avanti.
3:06 pm
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on scheduling it.
Like so many colleagues here today, I am speaking on behalf of thousands of constituents who rely on their rail services, particularly the west coast main line, but are being thoroughly let down and deserve a far better service. As one of the major cities, and indeed the newest city, along the west coast main line, Milton Keynes is served by both Avanti West Coast and London Northwestern Railway. However, even if my constituents are lucky enough even to have a train turn up at all, the trains are often delayed, unreliable and overcrowded. I spend many a journey between Milton Keynes and London sat on the floor in between the carriages. It is a pretty miserable experience, apart from a few weeks ago when I was sitting in what is probably my usual spot on the floor just outside the toilet and I was joined by a bunch of lasses from Milton Keynes who were going to a Halloween party. We managed to strike up some conversation and they were good enough to share their cider. I had a nice journey down and arrived in London with a temporary tattoo, which is gone now. But we should not rely on generosity and community spirit to take the misery out of these journeys.
Many constituents have got in touch to share their poor experience, especially with Avanti West Coast. As Milton Keynes is one of the major community cities into London, my constituents need a punctual and reliable service to get into work, but often they just do not get one. The train service in Milton Keynes is often so bad that my constituents are resorting to driving to London stations such as Cockfosters, which is a 46-mile journey, and then taking the tube into London, rather than taking the train from Milton Keynes. In an extreme case, a constituent has shared that, due to the cancellation of two of the regular morning commuter services, they now pay more than £800 a month for a first-class ticket, just to guarantee that they will get a seat. Without paying for first class, they would face one of those overcrowded journeys that I end up on—and almost more often than not they are still paying for the privilege of being late.
Given Milton Keynes’s important and strategic location in the region, connected by rail to other major cities such as Birmingham and Manchester and well placed within that Oxford and Cambridge arc, any disruption in the rail service causes serious problems to my constituents’ everyday lives: not just difficulties in getting to work, but disruption and delays in visiting friends and family and getting to important appointments. In another case, a constituent has shared that they find the service offered by Avanti “abysmal”, with only one train an hour running from Birmingham and Manchester, down from three an hour. They have resorted to using the coach.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Department for Transport should conduct economic analysis of the damage that Avanti has caused to each constituency it serves? I tabled a written parliamentary question on that earlier this year, but the response from the Government was not helpful.
Ben Everitt
Far be it from me to direct my hon. Friend the Minister, but it does seem that the hon. Gentleman has an excellent point. What I assume he is getting at is that the growth of not just Milton Keynes’s economy, but economies around the country is being put at risk by these poor services. Potentially, there may be data out there that we can draw on, though I would not want to draw the Department’s resources too far from the clear focus on improving services, so I will leave that with the Minister to take forward.
The problem is that, while we recognise the importance of maintaining a good service on the line, we need to take things forward. We need to improve. I welcome the fact that the Government are putting pressure on Avanti to improve its services. We have heard in this debate about the short-term extension of the contract until April 2023—I note that there is no particular enthusiasm for anything more than a short-term extension at this point. That extension is not rewarding failure; it is a clear and urgent message to Avanti that it must improve its service and its performance or face losing the franchise.
I have spoken to Avanti recently. It is positive that it is getting the point because, importantly, it has apologised and accepted that its service is not good enough. I understand that changes are on the way, with nearly 100 additional drivers added to the service between April and December this year, so we could see slight but welcome improvements to the service. However, this is very early days and my constituents and I are incredibly wary. I urge the Government to continue to actively monitor the service on that line and, more importantly, to hold the company to account, so that if we do not see drastic improvements to the reliability, punctuality and frequency of the service, that contract is removed. If we do not make those changes, Milton Keynes and other stops along the west coast main line risk being left behind. With so many opportunities for growth and success coming to the new city of Milton Keynes, it would be a real tragedy if all those benefits were put at risk due to a failing train operator.
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing it. Earlier this year, following months of disruption to the rail service on the west coast main line, Avanti was put on notice to improve its service. As we have heard already from a great many Members, everyone who uses Avanti—including me, as I travel between the House and my Delyn constituency—knows that, sadly, it continues to fail to provide us with the service we deserve, or even one close to that.
But, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have to offer a little note of sympathy for Avanti. Over the past few months, the man who never met a microphone he didn’t like, Mick “Grinch”, the union boss stealing Christmas from millions of people, and his militant arrogance, continues to ensure major operational issues across the network, and untold misery caused by his love of striking, which apparently is a last resort—of course it is. That is after a two-year global pandemic, which saw family gatherings come to a grinding halt to try to control the virus. This is the first year when everything should finally be back to normal and we can be with our families again at Christmas, but RMT members have decided to cause untold misery to families and businesses. They should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
We have a settled situation of devolution in Wales, which means that for more than two decades the people of north Wales, and the people of Delyn, have grown used to being overlooked and underfunded. We just get on with it, and we do our best to cope with whatever challenges we face. Like all my colleagues in north Wales, many of whom we have already heard from, I am determined to secure the opportunities of the levelling-up agenda, which was at the heart of the UK Government’s manifesto. For so many across north Wales, levelling up is so much more than the investment, jobs, and opportunities it promises, but it is being undermined and made more difficult because of issues that we have heard so much about in this debate.
3:20 pm
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The survey details that frontline staff are on the receiving end of a high level of abuse from frustrated passengers. They say that management is chaotic, there is not enough information about services, and there are too few staff and too many last-minute shift changes. They say they feel disrespected, undervalued, demotivated, stressed and angry.
Looking at the timetables for today, I have absolutely no idea what time I will get home to Holyhead tonight—or if at all. All I can see are the words in red: “Delayed”, “Delayed”, “Cancelled”, “Not available to buy” and “Delayed”. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that the extension granted in October will be Avanti’s last chance, that it cannot keep blaming its failings on everything and everyone else and that, if we do not see significant improvements in service and a reliable road map to return the west coast main line to at least pre-pandemic levels by March, its franchise will be removed and the service put under the operator of last resort?
The trains seem to be frequently understaffed. We have heard about the issues with drivers on Avanti. Having spoken to many people who work for Avanti West Coast, the reality is that senior management are viewed as toxic by members of staff. I prefer to travel by train rather than drive to London. My experience as a customer is almost all negative.
The debate is about west coast main line services, so I will not delve too much into ticket office closures, but my views are on record about ticket office closures and the support that those offices provide to people with mobility issues and those who might need extra help at a station. We need a wider debate next year about the value of ticket offices at railway stations.
A lot has been said about drivers and people who work on the trains, and I want to reference the “Justice for Cleaners” campaign. Last week I was outside the Department for Transport when shop stewards from the RMT handed in a letter to the Department regarding extremely low pay, long hours and the difficult jobs that cleaners do on the railway. Avanti does not have a good reputation. Those who have travelled on its trains will have seen that often they are not clean, they seem to be unhygienic and the toilets are in a terrible state.
During the pandemic, we all were happy to clap for cleaners and key workers, because they kept us safe and did a difficult job. Sadly, many cleaners across the world lost their lives during the pandemic because of the exposure they faced. Atalian Servest has the contract for Avanti West Coast. It is well known for low pay and long hours. A friend of mine—I would not like to name her—lives in my constituency, and I knew her son. Sadly he is not with us any more. She works as a cleaner on the railway, and I often bump into her on the journey from Westminster back to Stockport. We need to make sure that they get decent pay so that they do not have to rely on food banks. Research by the RMT shows that one in 10 railway cleaners are using food banks. One quarter of cleaners are skipping meals, and one in three are reliant on credit cards to survive. A shocking 84% of railway cleaners are struggling to make ends meet. Those figures are staggering.
A lot is said about collective bargaining, but if we look at the staffing model for the railways, we see that cleaners often tend to be some of the lowest-paid people. Inflation is at almost 11%, thanks to economic mismanagement by the Government, and those people are often on zero-hours contracts or low pay. We need to make sure that they are on a minimum of £15 an hour and get proper sick pay, travel facilities and a decent pension. It is not much to ask for in one of the richest economies in the world that people who clean our trains are paid a decent wage.
I noticed that earlier this week during Prime Minister’s questions, there was a question from a Conservative MP about the shocking state of the Avanti West Coast franchise. The Prime Minister said:
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the unacceptable deterioration in the quality of Avanti’s service.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 898.]
I am glad that the Prime Minister is aware of what is faced by the millions of people who have to travel on Avanti. I know that the Minister sent a comprehensive letter to MPs this afternoon. In my view, it does not go far enough, but I am grateful to him for that correspondence.
As I have the Minister’s attention, I highlight the fact that I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport on 29 November with a series of questions. I have not received a response. I have tabled a written question seeking a response, so I hope he can help me get a response to that letter.
I will finish on the point that the root cause of the failures with Avanti, but also with TransPennine Express and other rail companies, is privatisation. These firms prioritise profit extraction over public service and connectivity. Avanti has terrible customer service, and it prioritises profit extraction over fair pay for its staff and the people who work on its trains, such as cleaners. Public transport is a public service. Having good public transport links is excellent for our environment, air quality, connectivity, economic growth other such issues. We really do need better.
This might be a rare occasion when I entirely agree with a Member on the Government Benches, but I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Ynys Môn that Avanti should not be allowed to run the franchise beyond April next year. We need to make sure that the Government do not extend the contract and that the franchise goes back into public ownership, so that it is run for people and the planet, rather than for FirstGroup shareholders to feed off. I will finish there. I could say a lot more, and I apologise for stepping out earlier—please forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. Once again, I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate, and I look forward to the other contributions.
It is no exaggeration to say that Avanti has performed deplorably for much of the year, and nowhere has that performance been more lamentable than in north Wales. For much of the time since August, there has been, at best, only one through train a day between Holyhead and London. Travellers from stations across north Wales have been obliged to change trains once and sometimes twice at Chester and Crewe. The north Wales main line has been reduced to the status of an inefficient branch line.
Complaints are legion. I will give the House a flavour of some of the complaints that I have received from my constituents. One said:
“The current North Wales to London service is the worst I have known in the 30 years that I have used it”,
and that that makes it “impossible” for them or their wife
“to hold UK-wide appointments which require our attendance at meetings in London.”
Another said that Avanti’s management of the west coast route is
“limiting our growth, because we can no longer rely on trains to and from London, as we did when Virgin ran the train line. As such, we have missed many business opportunities because we have had so many trains cancelled, resulting in our clients losing confidence in our service. We have also had return trains delayed, meaning we have incurred unnecessary expense and inconvenience as we have had to stay in hotels and lose valuable working hours the next day.”
I received one on Monday that said:
“I returned to Colwyn Bay on the 18:10 Avanti train from London Euston last Friday. The train consisted of only five coaches instead of the advertised 10 and effectively departed dangerously overloaded due to the number of passengers having to stand. The on-board seat booking system was absent, causing much confusion, no refreshment/buffet service available, and the service arrived over 20 minutes late to Colwyn Bay. In all, a very poor service, which, sadly, I have become accustomed to.”
I could regale the House with similar personal experiences, such as of my five-hour journey home last Friday that would normally take under three hours.
Those complaints are entirely justified when one looks at the empirical evidence. The website of the Office of Rail and Road reveals that the average rate of cancellations in Great Britain as a whole was 4.1% in the quarter from July to September 2022. However, in the same quarter, the rate of cancellations for Avanti West Coast was 12.1%—almost three times the national average. On punctuality, the percentage of recorded station stops arrived at on time for Great Britain as a whole was 67.7%; for Avanti, it was 38.8%—almost twice as bad.
As we have heard, Avanti’s operational problems have primarily been caused by a shortage of available drivers. It has pursued a business model of relying heavily on drivers undertaking overtime work as a matter of course. The short-sightedness of that approach is manifest in the dreadful service that north Wales rail passengers have endured, despite the best efforts of Avanti train staff, who I have no doubt are just as dispirited by the current situation as anyone else. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn, I highly value the work of Avanti train staff, who are always cheerful and efficient; it is just that they are trying to do their best while working for a really inefficient operation.
In August, the vast majority of Avanti staff refused to work overtime, meaning that the company, instead of having the staff to run 400 services, had enough to run only 50. Avanti called this “unofficial strike action”. ASLEF disputes that, saying that drivers do not have to work overtime, and it is hard not to have some sympathy with that view. The fact is that if Avanti wanted to take on the franchise, it was up to the company to ensure that it could deliver on its obligations. Avanti says that all train operators rely on overtime to deliver services, but other, comparable train operators have not had the difficulties that it has experienced. For example, LNER, which runs the east coast franchise, has run a normal timetable since February. Avanti must therefore be incapable of cultivating good relations with its staff in such a way as to achieve an acceptable service.
Avanti formerly operated the franchise under an emergency recovery measures agreement, which fell due to be renewed on 16 October. Many of us fervently hoped that it would not be renewed; indeed, north Wales Conservative MPs wrote to the DFT urging it not to renew it. However, before the 16th, the Department announced that Avanti’s franchise would be extended to 1 April 2023 to assess whether the company could improve its services.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn, Avanti has introduced a new timetable with effect from 11 December, although that timetable still represents a reduction in the normal levels of service. Given the strikes that we are currently enduring, it is probably too early to say whether the timetable will hold. However, it is ominous that, as of yesterday, ASLEF has been balloting its members on strike action over new rosters.
Frankly, Avanti’s stewardship of the west coast franchise has been nothing short of appalling. It has not provided, and it continues not to provide, a proper standard of service to passengers on the west coast main line, and that failure must not be ignored by the Government. I have had a letter from my hon. Friend the Minister today saying that the Government are working with Avanti to try to improve the service. My suspicion is that, with respect, he is flogging a dead horse, because I do not think that Avanti is capable of improvement.
The current situation is not just inconveniencing travellers; it is damaging the economy right across the country, not least in the part of the world I represent. It is impossible to see any good reason why Avanti should continue to operate the west coast franchise. At the earliest possible moment, the Government should remove the franchise from Avanti and seek a new operator for the west coast main line. Avanti has had its chance, and it has failed. There is no reason why passengers in north Wales or in any other part of the country should be expected to continue to endure the consequences of Avanti’s sheer incompetence.
The travelling public are being taken for fools. We no longer have a rail service; it is a rail sufferance. It is an unreliable system that has gone backwards to such an extent that it is probably as bad as British Rail used to be when it was the butt of every comedian’s joke. Trains might or might not arrive. There are delays, staff shortages, staff late for work, or just random cancellations.
I have been a lover of rail travel ever since I was young when I travelled everywhere on trains with my granddad, who started work on the railways at Lime Street station in Liverpool, aged 12, as a bag carrier, and stayed there until he retired. I am a railway lover and I have been brought up on trains, so to see the rail industry in such a mess makes me want to weep. It is being made worse, without doubt, by industrial action and the excessive strike action. It is as if the unions want to push these private train operating companies over the edge to make them fail.
The RMT’s latest act of sabotage—48-hour strikes between 13 December and 7 January, wiping £1.2 billion off the UK’s economy over Christmas—is hurting travellers, businesses and local communities. I am not excusing the management of these railway companies—certainly not—but between them and the unions, they will force people to travel by other means. It will be anything other than the trains. The people who will suffer the most will be those who work on the railways.
Since August 2022, Avanti has cut the number of trains between London, Euston and Manchester Piccadilly from one every 20 minutes to one an hour “until further notice”. It said that it had acted in the wake of industrial action
“to ensure a reliable service is delivered, so customers can travel with greater certainty.”
I am still waiting for that greater certainty, as are my constituents.
Life is difficult enough, but not to be able to get to work, to school, or to see families is unacceptable, especially at the prices that we pay to travel by train. Looking at the cancellation figures between 4 November 2021 to 12 November 2022, it appears that the average cancelled by Avanti was 5.5%, and those cancelled by other causes 6.8%—so, about 12% altogether. However, that is not the full story, because 33% of our trains have already been cancelled and so what we are saying is that 45% of trains have been cancelled. I often get to the station and find that even the guards do not know whether a train is coming or not. Then, I jump on the train to Crewe and perhaps on another one to Stafford and then I go on to London. Instead of a one hour 50 minute journey, it can take four and a half hours or even six hours, each way.
Let us look at the other side of the coin. Only last week, I had an insufferable journey to Crewe, only to find that a direct train from London had been put on at the last minute, which nobody knew about. So an empty train pulled into Crewe to give me the last leg of my journey to Wilmslow. We call these ghost trains; they are empty trains that travel up the line, pretending to get the numbers right, which they are not because nobody is on them. Sadly for its customers, Avanti West Coast had the fewest trains on time, at just 38.8%, making it the least punctual operator in the country. As for the part that runs through my patch, Avanti says that 87% of its trains from 16 October 2022 to 12 November 2022 were 15 minutes or more late. That is a huge amount that are unreliable.
So I guess there are a couple of messages for the Minister. Avanti has to get its house in order or lose its contract to somebody who can run a better rail service. We need to get our rail system back up and running. It has been knocked sideways during the lockdown and it is being battered now by industrial action, but we do not want any more excuses. We need to get our rail system back on track. So here is an idea to make our railway system reliable, regular and well-maintained: let us stop wasting those billions of pounds that are going into HS2 and get a proper train system working right across the country, locally and nationally, for all of the citizens of this country.
The problem is more than a lack of timing and reliable trains; there is also a lack of accessibility. Another constituent has been in touch, a wheelchair user who shared that, shockingly, the rail service is completely inaccessible to him on his own and often there are no staff available to help. In 2022, it is unacceptable that wheelchair users are left abandoned with no support to use the rail service.
The situation simply cannot continue. Not only does it impact my constituents, but it poses a risk to the growth and the economy of Milton Keynes as a whole. Year on year, Milton Keynes has consistently been ranked as one of the United Kingdom’s fastest-growing economies. In fact, a recent study named Milton Keynes as the fourth fastest-growing economy by the end of 2022, increasing year on year by 3.3% and adding £500 million to the local economy.
However, one of the major factors in that growth is our location and our transport connections. That is why huge local employers such as Santander move their headquarters there. But why would Santander continue to invest in our city, and why would talented people continue to choose to work, live and set up their businesses here when they cannot rely on the train arriving on time or with the capacity to take them on their journey?
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) said, the west coast main line is a critical piece of UK infrastructure. It is essential cross-border infrastructure linking England to north Wales and Scotland, as identified in Sir Peter Hendy’s connectivity review. The north Wales coast line runs from Holyhead via Chester to Crewe, where it joins the west coast main line and connects directly to London. It is also vital in connecting us to the island of Ireland, and in connecting Northern Ireland with the rest of the United Kingdom through the port of Holyhead, which is the UK’s second busiest roll-on roll-off port, and vital for the infrastructure of north Wales.
When the trains between Holyhead and Euston do run, which is relatively unusual in itself, there are daily frustrations, which we have heard about many times. These are things that aggravate me and other passengers: the shop is not stocked, the card machine does not work, the wi-fi does not work, the carriages are overcrowded, and people have to sit on the floor—tattoos or no tattoos, sitting on the floor is never good. Recently, people have at times been unable to book train tickets in advance, because they show as fully booked even when they are not. Many colleagues have rightly asked whether Avanti could run a bath, let alone a rail service—although I would never resort to that type of rhetoric.
Just one train per hour goes from London to Manchester, instead of three per hour, as it was before. There is one train a day from London to Chester, instead of an hourly service, and a shuttle service from Crewe to Holyhead instead of what used to be nine direct trains a day from Holyhead to London. It is astonishing.
I regularly meet and speak to Avanti’s regional management. It has been reassuring to hear that they are committed to improving services and that they admit that a lot of their promises have simply not been delivered. That has led to job losses, including in some of the most senior positions, but it is now time to deliver. A new timetable is out, with a massive amount of new services on it. That is very welcome, but trains running to the old timetable were constantly delayed, cancelled or unreliable, so I am baffled as to how Avanti will offer the extended service it has promised when the pared-back offering was so shambolic in the first place. Time will tell. I am certain that Avanti is watching this debate very closely, so I say again: it is time to deliver.
I have stayed out of these debates in the past. In the face of a lot of criticism from colleagues about the service, I have stayed pretty positive, because pressures on the train operating companies have been significant. I try to stay as reasonable as possible and be as patient as I can with them, but I am afraid that I have come to the limit of my patience. If things do not improve now, swiftly, I will be first in line to tell the Minister that the franchise should not be renewed any further, because it simply does not deliver.