Contributions
939 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI am sorry for the experiences that my hon. Friend and her constituents have experienced, and that goes to all Members of this House, too. With regard to Avanti, from December it…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsThis shiny rail Minister will always happily meet the hon. Member. I have always enjoyed working closely with him in our previous roles, so I am happy to discuss matters with him.…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsMy hon. Friend is right that we need to ensure that the entire experience attracts passengers and brings them back. It is about not just the service level, but the station…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI will write to the hon. Gentleman and specify how those figures are calculated. I will also give him up-to-date figures from the methodology that we calculate. I am confident…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsMy hon. Friend is very kind. I have always enjoyed working with him, and I know he has a great passion for rail projects within his constituency, as we discussed last night.…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI agree with the hon. Gentleman. For too long we have worked in a manner that does not allow us to plan ahead and give certainty to the passenger or the workforce. TransPennine…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsOur plan, as signed off by the Office of Rail and Road, was always to see Avanti deliver the extra 100 drivers, change the timetable and then bring services back. As I specified,…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsMy hon. Friend is right. Of course, Northern is in the control of the operator of last resort, which is what would occur in the event that we took away a contract from one of the…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsThe Department is certainly not idling: our officials work incredibly hard, and we hold train operators to account to ensure they do everything they can. As I mentioned, the…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI thank my hon. Friend. I know she is a passionate advocate for transport in Dover as a whole; I am a fellow Southeastern user, so I experience some of what she has talked to. I…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsAs I said, I am keen to meet as many hon. Members as require it—no doubt my officials will be tearing their hair out—and I am happy to meet the hon. Lady. We certainly know that,…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI agree with the hon. Lady: we cannot continue like this. That is why we have set in place a series of talks and negotiations aimed at changing working practices so that train…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI thank the hon. Lady for her urgent question, which gives me the opportunity to set out the Government’s disappointment with the experience of many passengers, not just across…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI assure my hon. Friend that I do not just take the assurances that, “This is very difficult for us for all these third-party reasons.” We look at what every part of the system…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsMy right hon. Friend makes a great bid that is linked into this matter. I am happy to meet him and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) to discuss that…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsAgain, I pass on my disappointment with the experience that the hon. Gentleman has outlined. I want to be clear: we have been going on like this for years because we have a…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI thank my hon. Friend, a former Minister, who has great expertise in and policy knowledge of this matter. He is absolutely right to champion open access. When we can actually…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI thank the hon. Member, and she is absolutely right. We cannot be in a situation where we are relying on good will; we need to make sure we have enough drivers in the system. The…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsI had perhaps better not promise that the Secretary of State will sit down with my hon. Friend because that may be above my pay grade, but I certainly will, and I will certainly…01 Dec 2022HANSARD Rail Cancellations and Service LevelsWe are about to enter the next five-year control period where we will look at renewal. Where we have assets that have become tired, we will look at replacing them and moving away…01 Dec 2022