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East Coast Main Line

I wish all my debates were as productive as this one has been so far. I want to consider that reassurance more carefully afterwards, but, again, it sounds hopeful. Travelling to London, there is an enormous gap in the first draft of the Alnmouth service between 9 am and 3 pm. There are no direct trains from London to Morpeth at all in the draft timetable, whereas two evening trains currently stop there. I hope that that is covered by the reassurance that the Minister has just given. For the reasons I gave earlier, the direct service from Morpeth, although more limited, is extremely valuable and should be retained. One of the timetable's oddities is that it is almost impossible to travel between the stations in Northumberland. That is partly a consequence of something that I consider helpful—the sharing of trains along the line. Some trains stop at Alnmouth and not Berwick, whereas others stop at Berwick and not Alnmouth. I recognise that some of that has to happen, but the timetable planners should pay some attention to improving the possibilities for people to travel between, for example, Berwick and Morpeth, or Alnmouth and Dunbar. That is currently not a feature of planning. Indeed, one of our problems is that all the timetable planning is dedicated to services between major centres, such as London, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the stations in between seem to be an afterthought, which is not governed by an examination of what sort of service each station needs and how it can be provided. I should like another gap in the service to be filled in future. According to the new timetable, the last train from Edinburgh leaves at 8.30 pm. That is too early; there is almost nothing one can do in Edinburgh in an evening that will be over by 8.30 pm. I understand that CrossCountry is to run a late train from Edinburgh to Dunbar at around or after 11 pm. Perhaps that service could be extended to Newcastle or at least Berwick, instead of terminating at Dunbar. It is rather complicated to terminate a train there because of the track layout. Some years ago, a service ran through to Newcastle in the summer months. GNER ran it late at night and it was very popular among Edinburgh festival-goers and others visiting Edinburgh in the evening. The franchise document refers to increased frequency of services between Newcastle and Edinburgh, with no mention of Berwick, Alnmouth or Morpeth. Anyone from the latter places reading the franchise document immediately thinks, "There's nothing in this for us." There is no attempt to specify that there should be an adequate sharing of those trains among some of the stations in Northumberland. There is scope for a stopping service from Newcastle to Edinburgh. The Scottish Government have been interested in that for some time. They have been considering options such as opening one or two new stations on the Scottish side of the border at, for example, Reston, and having a service that would come through from Scotland and stop at Morpeth, Alnmouth, Berwick and Dunbar, and perhaps some of the intermediate stations such as Acklington or Chathill. I hope that the door is not closed to that possibility, although whether it can be profitable or would require subsidy is not clear. If there is a possibility of a decision in Scotland to offer some element of subsidy to a service, which seems necessary on the Scottish side, I would like to grab hold of the possibility for the English side, too. As I said, as far as train travel is concerned, people do not stop at the border—people who live in Scotland use Berwick station extensively and travel across the border is a great feature of life in our area. My primary aim in this debate is to get the Minister to make it his business to ensure that services to Berwick, Alnmouth and Morpeth are not reduced, and that they get a net improvement, in both the 2011 timetable and the franchise negotiations and specifications. The Secretary of State has taken a genuine personal interest in the future of the east coast main line, and I want him and the Minister to ensure that that includes the stations in Northumberland. I should like to talk about two wider issues that are part of the franchise document. First, on ticket prices, even regulated fares and many cheaper fares are uncompetitive with car and plane for many customers. I quite often get letters from customers saying, "I looked into the possibility of making my business trip by train, but then I found I could drive 50, 60 or 70 miles to an airport, catch a plane and pay significantly less than I would be paying even for a reduced-price first-class fare on the train." Many such offers are made, but the price has crept up in recent years. Unless we ensure that ticket prices are more competitive than air travel, we will continue to encourage people to make long car journeys, which they must do in my part of the world to get to an airport, which is inconsistent with general Government policy. Secondly, there have been significant station improvements over recent years, including to Berwick station—I had the odd experience of opening the lifts for the footbridge over the station a few years ago. Celebrating the opening of a lift with a glass of champagne is a variant on the many duties of a Member of Parliament, but the facility was much needed by disabled people and people with heavy luggage. The absence of lifts at Alnmouth has been a serious problem. People with disabilities have been told that if they arrive from London in the evening, when there are no staff at the station, they will not be able to leave the platform—they cannot use the bridge and there is nobody to supervise crossing the track. That serious problem is being dealt with, but it is long overdue. Such improvements are very important, as is parking, at both Alnmouth and Berwick. The county council is pushing ahead with plans for increased parking at the former, but the plans for Berwick have proved difficult. My original hope was that Network Rail would give up its land, because it could be stationed somewhere else—it does not have to be based right by those stations. That would open up more parking spaces. There is a possibility of getting more parking spaces, the need for which is obvious from the amount of parking in roads round about. I happen to live in one such road. I do not mind people from Scotland parking their cars outside my house to go to the station—I am glad they are using the train—but that has created some problems, and traffic management changes have had to be made to accommodate them. Continued station improvements are very important to the franchise and the future of the service. The oddity with Belford station is that the only local service that goes into north Northumberland beyond Morpeth goes twice a day to Acklington, Woodrington, and Chathill, and then turns round at Belford, but there is no platform there—there used to be years ago, but not now. Therefore, a train goes to Belford twice a day, but people cannot get on it. A great deal of effort by local people, with genuine co-operation from rail operators such as Northern Rail and from Network Rail and the county council, is enabling things to be moved forward, and I hope the Department for Transport will also co-operate. The executive of the county council is currently recommending that the council spend money on installing the platform. We have had many battles over how long a platform must be and the greatness of the risk of someone getting out of the wrong door and such things. At times those have seemed absurd, and they have perhaps led to higher costs than necessary. However, I believe we are in sight of achieving that objective, and I hope the Minister continues to offer his encouragement. There is a lot of scope for transfer to rail travel in Northumberland and a great need for rail travel because of the distances involved. Not many people have to travel 50 or 60 miles to get to a main hospital, to go to a theatre that is not a small local arts centre or to visit all the main chain shops, but that is the situation in north Northumberland. Rail travel is very important, so it is also important that we retain a good service. The timetable drafts left people very worried about losing the gains that we had made in recent years, when we should instead be improving the service, and I hope that the Minister's initial indications that some of those worries are being addressed will be backed up by more restoration of trains to the timetable and some additional stops.