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Kent Coast Railway Line

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), who might be surprised to hear that I agree with some, but not all, of the points that he raised. I am not here to speak for other MPs' constituents, but I certainly want to speak up for my constituents in Dover. I have been using east Kent trains occasionally for 30 years since I first went down to Dover in 1979, although I have used them more frequently since I became the town's MP 13 years ago. No matter what the deficiencies and weaknesses of the current service and timetables, let us not forget that they do not compare at all with the experiences that we all suffered during those early years. Right up until the late '90s, we were travelling on the old slam-door trains, which really rattled and were dirty, insecure and unreliable. We have certainly come a long way since then. I have fond memories of turning up at Dover Priory station in 2001 to officially name the first of the class 375 services. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that it was named "White Cliffs Country" and not, I am afraid, "Gwyn Prosser". However, those services really marked a turning point in investment in trains down to east Kent. The trains were brought in by Connex South Eastern, which was later to lose its franchise owing to poor performance—perhaps poor performance has something to do with geographical matters, rather than the train operator. The trains were subsequently renationalised for two and a half years—I would call them two and a half glorious years—and they ran under the name of South Eastern Trains. It is on the record that South Eastern's trains were more punctual and provided a better, more reliable service and that industrial relations were better than ever before. Along with my colleagues in the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, I campaigned hard, although unsuccessfully, to get Ministers to keep at least this rail operator in the public sector to provide a benchmark with which to compare private operators. We have seen some really dismal, sad stories from a lot of those private operators, large and small, over the years. As I said, it was well documented that the service improved under South Eastern, that punctuality got much better and that industrial relations were much better in that window of nationalisation. RMT and ASLEF fought hard to keep things that way, but it just was not to be. This afternoon, we are debating the timetables and the standard of service under the current operator, Southeastern trains. From a constituency point of view, I am pleased to put on record how delighted Dover is to be connected to the high-speed train service to London. That did not happen by accident, and it could easily not have happened at all. Some Members will remember the fight and the campaign that we undertook to ensure that the train came all the way down to Dover. The experts told us that there were safety issues at Shakespeare cliff and that there were technical matters and obstacles. For a long time, it looked as if the trains would terminate in Folkestone. I have nothing against Folkestone, and I should just mention that it is another east Kent constituency represented by a Welsh MP. However, one deficiency with the high-speed service is that the train stops twice in the little town of Folkestone, which has two stations less than a minute apart. If we took away one of those superfluous stops, we could easily cut the travel time from Dover to London to the magic one hour, rather than the present one hour and seven minutes; I just say that as an aside. Of course, if the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was here, I would see him outside afterwards. As I said, however, I have nothing at all against Folkestone. The campaign that we fought to get the trains into Dover has already had good results. Business people in the town say that even within weeks of the trains coming in, estate agents were reporting rising markets and more interest in commercial properties and general accommodation. We are therefore happy with the high-speed train as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough at present. That is why I have been pressing since the middle of last year for some high-speed trains to stop at Deal, which is an important part of my constituency. Its population is slightly bigger than Dover's, and there is huge potential for growth in the number of travellers from the town, so it deserves to have some of the high-speed trains stop at Deal station. The hon. Member for North Thanet made a number of complaints about the impact of High Speed 1 on domestic services. We have the high-speed train, but it impacts negatively on domestic services, and that is true at all our stations—I echo those complaints. It has a particularly bad impact on the town of Deal, where passengers have longer journey times and poor connections to Dover. Deal people, like quite a lot of others on that line, have none of the advantages of High Speed 1 and probably all or most of the disadvantages. However, I believe that that can be overcome. Last year, I started to talk to Southeastern, Network Rail and Ministers, to press the case for Deal. I met Charles Horton; we have all met him, and he is an amiable fellow. The chief executive of Southeastern acknowledged, I suppose, that there were some deficiencies, and promised a review, but wanted the present timetables and systems to settle down and wanted to get some service experience from them. However, I particularly pressed Deal's case. Since then I have discussed Deal with Lord Adonis.