East Coast Main Line

Question

14:54:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what consultation will take place with rail users on the latest version of the proposed East Coast Main Line timetable.

My Lords, the east coast main line timetable change is putting into effect the fruits of a £4 billion investment into the route since 2019. The timetable was consulted on in 2021, and feedback from that was incorporated. After a lengthy period, and following an industry task force review, the Secretary of State and I have agreed to the delivery of the timetable in December 2025.

My Lords, what in the consultation process was done about the fact that the most savage cut anywhere on the network applies to people from the Scottish Borders and Northumberland? They use Berwick-upon-Tweed station, where LNER’s hourly service will be reduced to a two-hourly service. Passengers will also probably find that, if they try to use any of the other operators, LNER tickets will not be accepted by them.

Constructing a railway timetable on one of the busiest routes in Britain is very difficult indeed. The benefits of the east coast main line modernisation are significantly faster journeys between London and Scotland, and an extra hourly London to Newcastle service. There are other improvements all the way up and down the line from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. In total—including CrossCountry and TransPennine services—the number of trains calling at Berwick and Alnmouth stations are the highest they have ever been. The noble Lord is right that there is some reduction in through trains from Berwick, but it is offset by an increase in CrossCountry, which has already taken place, and a further increase will take place on TransPennine in December 2025.

My Lords, will the Minister give the House a commitment that the new timetable will remain as it is now, that the same number of direct trains from Northallerton and Darlington as at present will be maintained and that it will not follow the 2021 timetable? There are a number of businesses that rely on taking the trains from Northallerton and Darlington and having a direct service.

I understand—and I am sure that people who run the railway also understand —that there are some trade-offs to be made in the execution of the east coast main line upgrade. I know that there have been some improvements in the proposition of services in Northallerton as a result of local representations. I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness to explain what they are and what the pattern of service will be from December 2025.

My Lords, as a regular user of the east coast main line—and acknowledging the fact that it is already in national hands—and despite the comments of other noble Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate David Horne, the chief executive of LNER, on providing, in general, a very good service on that line. Can the Minister confirm that, in the Great British Railways development, no extra impediments, regulations or obstacles will be placed in the way of a business such as LNER in developing that business on the east coast?

I welcome the noble Lord’s favourable views about the management of LNER and I agree entirely with him that the direction of that company under public ownership has been very good. The instigation of Great British Railways, following the successful passage through this House and the other place, is definitely not intended to impede those people managing the railway on a route-operating and train-operating company basis. I say to the noble Lord that the whole point of Great British Railways is to give those people some real power in delivering better services for passengers than the fragmented railway does now. After all, it took four years to institute this timetable because it was so difficult to get agreement between all the parties, and this shows, more than ever before, that a guiding mind for the railway is absolutely what is needed to institute improvements for both passengers and freight.

My Lords, in the spirit of railway consultation, I met with the noble Lords, Lord Snape and Lord Bradley, and we are inviting the managing director of Avanti trains, Andy Mellors, for lunch. So my question is, would the Minister like to join us?

Colloquially, “you’re on your own with that one”. I meet the managing director of Avanti trains more often than I should have to, and the fact remains that Avanti’s performance, in stark contrast to that of LNER, still needs improvement. Actually, the service on the west coast ought to emulate the service on the east coast.

My Lords, as a regular passenger, along with the noble Lord, Lord Beith, on the 9.30 from Edinburgh on the publicly owned LNER, I can say that it is a regularly efficient service. Unfortunately, yesterday, I had to travel on the west coast, on Avanti, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, who will confirm that the 9.36 train was cancelled without any explanation. So when are we going to bring Avanti into public ownership so we can have a decent service on the west coast as well?

I am afraid that I do not have the time or facilities to give each Member of this House the train information that they need on their daily journeys, although I will do my best if they ask me. Of course, there is a serious point to this. The House will have heard before that, actually, Avanti has not breached the contract that it was awarded when the original contract was extended. That is why I meet Mr Mellors and his management team on a regular basis, because I am exhorting them to perform the contract that the Government contracted them to do. The noble Lord is right that sometimes the service is not very good.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, as well as the detail of the timetable, its accuracy is at least as important?

I certainly would agree. It is a real skill on today’s railway to fit so many trains in, with so many different station calls. There is a serious point to the original question that the noble Lord asked, which is that there are some compromises to be made. The strange position that I find myself in after four years of saying, “Where is this timetable?” and “How are we going to put it in?” is that it had to come to the Minister for agreement to do it. I think there are probably only two other countries in the world where Ministers decide the times of trains: North Korea and Russia.

My Lords, open-access operators on the east coast main line have delivered significant benefits to passengers through increased competition, lower fares and additional journey options. So why have His Majesty’s Government rejected eight out of the last nine applications for new open-access services?

I have two points to make to the noble Earl. First, the improvements in journey time between London and Scotland—particularly between King’s Cross and Edinburgh—apply equally to LNER and to LUMO, which is the open-access operator. Of course, the Government have not rejected eight out of nine applications. They have analysed the effect of those applications both on the reliability of the railway and on the revenue of the railway, and hence the effect on taxpayers’ subsidy. Their recommendation to the ORR, which currently decides open-access applications, is that those should be refused; but it is the ORR’s independent decision and we await its decision on all those nine applications and others.

My Lords, since the train drivers were given a very substantial pay increase, what has happened to train drivers’ productivity and train punctuality?

The increase in pay given to both train drivers and other railway staff last summer was not very different from the offer made by the previous Government, which was not sufficient to settle the dispute. The additional 2% that was paid last July stopped the dispute, which had cost the nation nearly £1 billion-worth of lost revenue on the railways. The result is that passenger numbers are steadily growing. The productivity of train drivers is, of course, a function of the timetable. The more services you run, the more likely it is that they will be more productive. That is a matter for their current employers, whether they are publicly owned or not. It is interesting that, even if it had been decided by the Government last summer that they wanted to see productivity improvements for train drivers, in fact there were no extant proposals to allow that to happen, because many of the employers had withheld them pending the resolution of a dispute not about what the benefits of their productivity were but about who made the money out of the productivity, whether it was them or the Government.