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South Central Rail Franchise

I am coming to that very point, which is the issue of capacity on the Uckfield line. The Uckfield line suffers because insufficient stops are made by particular trains, and because it is currently experiencing serious overcrowding due to of an insufficiency of trains, the reason for which I shall explain in a moment. Some people who commute every day now have to stand all the way from Edenbridge into London. That is simply not acceptable, given the distance that they are travelling and the money that they are paying for their season tickets. The reason for such overcrowding is a serious insufficiency of diesel units. As I hope the Minister knows, the Uckfield line is one of the relatively few left in the southern region for which the previously privatised rail companies—before they were nationalised after the war—must have run out of money and were unable to electrify various bits. One of those bits is along the Uckfield line. It is therefore necessary to use diesel engines on it. I put it to the Minister that it is particularly disappointing that, despite a demonstrable shortage of diesel engines, there is no requirement in the Government's franchise document for the winner of the South Central franchise to introduce or procure more diesel units or to deal with the capacity problems. That is a serious omission. I have referred previously to facilities for the disabled at Redhill, and I want to return to that topic tonight. On the Tonbridge-Redhill line, and at both the two Edenbridge stations, the facilities for the disabled are totally inadequate. Last year, a constituent of mine took part in paraplegic games on the continent in Europe. He came home to Edenbridge in his wheelchair, but the only way in which he was able to get out of Edenbridge station quickly was to be taken across the tracks in his wheelchair by his relatives. That is self-evidently pretty dangerous, and it is disgraceful that, in this day and age, disabled people should have to be carried across the tracks because of the inadequacy of facilities for the disabled. I am in no doubt that, in the South Central franchise consultation document, the Government have made a very serious error of policy in emasculating the use of the Tonbridge-Redhill line as far as services into Gatwick airport are concerned. I can only urge the Minister in the strongest terms to scrap that policy and start again. As the stakeholders said in 2004—it holds good today, just as it did then—the point from which he should start is with a"““new fast service from Gatwick to Tonbridge, Ashford and the Kent coast.””"