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Kent Coast Railway Line

I am grateful for this opportunity to place on the official record something that has been the subject of a huge amount of correspondence and a lot of comment in other debates in the House. Before I start, it is also worth placing on the record that I intend to quote from correspondence from other Members' constituencies because I have become the focus of attention for a lot of complaint, much of which has been sent to me by e-mail. I have notified, I hope, every Member whose constituents I shall quote from to enable them to be present and to comment if they so wish. Given that that is the case, I am more than willing—I know that it may take a little time—to give way to any hon. Member who wishes to intervene. I make that plain now, and I shall seek your indulgence, Mr. Benton, if that becomes necessary. I have close to 1,500 reasons for raising the matter of the rail service—I use the word "service" loosely—between the towns of east Kent and central London via the Kent coast, or the north Kent line. The figure 1,500 represents the number of working men and women who pay very large sums of money to commute daily from Kent to central London to their places of employment. Those are people who have become so angered by the performance of Southeastern trains and by the failure of Ministers in the Department for Transport, including one Kent Member of Parliament, properly to understand and represent their interests that they found it necessary to send to the Prime Minister a petition calling for the restoration of a timetable that was in operation before December 2009 and the reappraisal of the vehicle that is less than appropriately named High Speed 1, the Javelin service. As long ago as March 2001, coincidentally in the run-up to that year's general election, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) was in the local press. The article stated:""A £70 million rail link from Ramsgate to London was announced this week promising journey times of less than an hour. South Thanet MP Steve Ladyman said a new company, Netrail 2000, would operate the high-speed service, which would be running by May 2002. but the sub-hour journey might not be available until 2007."" My description of this as a "pre-election smokescreen" was described as "utterly contemptible". It was not long, though, before it became apparent that Netrail 2000 was of no substance and that the ghost trains "to be built by Adtranz" had not been ordered and did not exist. The sub-hour journey from a Thanet Parkway station to London has, however, been not only a dream but a potential reality for nearly 20 years and I have myself done the Victoria to Ramsgate trip, on an engineering train, in one hour flat. When the domestic high-speed service using the channel tunnel high-speed link was mooted, I campaigned, with others, for that high-speed service to be integrated with the domestic franchise in the fond belief that those travelling from east Kent to London would at last get the 21st century railway that they needed and deserved. Let me make it clear that I support the provision of a high-speed service from east Kent to London. Tomorrow, the Government will make a pre-election announcement about the proposed High Speed 2 service, but it would be good to think that before HS2 is commenced the Department will complete the half-finished High Speed 1 project, carry the upgraded line and service through to a Thanet Parkway station between Minster and Cliffsend and facilitate the development of Manston airport and a truly integrated rail, sea and air transport system. That really would be an achievement of some value to the economy of east Kent. At present, however, instead of the fast train to central London that commuters should be able to enjoy, we have been asked to applaud a train that runs fast—sometimes—from Ashford to St. Pancras at considerably increased cost, of little benefit to travellers using the Kent coastal services and at very severe detriment to the conventional routes to Victoria, Cannon Street and London Bridge that most commuters wish to use. Just as a parentheses, I heard this morning from Passenger Focus, which knows what it is talking about, that the take-up of the high-speed link to Ebbsfleet from passengers on the Kent coastline and from east Kent is just 15 per cent. I would not wish the Minister present to fall into the trap of believing that concern over the arrangements introduced in December were not anticipated. Notwithstanding the failure of consultation to take proper account of the views of the real fare-paying and travelling public, I myself raised the concerns in an Adjournment debate on 20 January 2009. I agreed that the high speed trains might reduce travelling times from parts of Kent to St. Pancras. However, I stated:""My constituents are going to be made to pay higher prices to travel to a station that they do not want to go to and then pay a tube fare to get back to the place where they actually want to be"." With cuts to domestic services to clear paths for high speed trains, I predicted that""my constituents are going to pay more for less."—[Official Report, 20 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 715.]" That has been the case. Following that debate, the then Minister of State, now the Secretary of State, Lord Adonis, protested that there would be an increase in the services available to my constituents and that Southeastern fares would be capped at "RPI plus 3 per cent"—try telling that to my commuting constituents. He said that passengers from east Kent would experience benefits in savings and in journey times. He added:""I do not believe that any passenger will be obliged to switch to a high-speed service in order to reach their preferred destination."" Following my letter of 25 February 2009, in which I challenged some of his more careless assertions, Lord Adonis replied on 12 March 2009 and acknowledged that his assessment of the number of trains from Margate to Victoria during the morning peak was erroneous. He also said:""It is true that your constituents who currently use the direct services to London Charing Cross in the peaks will no longer be able to do so after December. However, the journey may still be made by taking a service to London Bridge and changing there."" He added that""arrival at St. Pancras International would be more convenient for other passengers wishing to visit, for example, the British Museum, the British Library, London Zoo or Madam Tussauds."" It may have escaped his Lordship's notice, but season-ticket holders commuting to work do not spend a great deal of time visiting caged wild animals or looking at stuffed dummies. I shall deal with the detrimental leisure aspects of this issue later. The immediate point that I wish to make to the Minister is that the problems that we are experiencing today were foreseen, forecast and ignored by both the train operating company, Govia, and the Secretary of State for Transport. In case we are in any doubt it is clearly with the Secretary of State for Transport that this buck must stop. On 16 February, in a response to a complaint from Mr. Daniel Sargent, Southeastern trains customer services officer, David Eustace, said:""As far as the timetable is concerned, we realise that some people are disappointed with the changes that were made in December. Unfortunately, all timetables are a compromise between a service specification set by the Department for Transport (DfT) the infrastructure and rolling stock resources available"."