---

Kent Coast Railway Line

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) on securing the debate. In our part of the world he is regarded with great affection and respect, and on the evidence of this afternoon's debate it is easy to see why. My constituency is in effect two smaller constituencies—the Faversham end and the mid-Kent end—and is bisected by three railway lines. In the south there is the Headcorn line, which has recently had a considerable increase in the number of complaints. I went to see the Minister about the Maidstone to Ashford line, with my right hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). The issue in that case is the impact that the high-speed line has had on services. I have many constituents who live in Bearsted whose lives have been completely altered, to their detriment, as a result of losing services that got them home in time to pick up children from school, and the rest of it. In the north of the constituency is the north Kent line, which is the subject of this afternoon's debate. I should say at the outset that I am not one of those people who take a remorselessly negative view of rail services, and I always thought that it would take some time for the high-speed train line to settle down, when it arrived, and that we would need time to see the benefits or otherwise of the new service. However, just like my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet, I have been staggered by the number of complaints that I have received, relating to all three lines but most noticeably the north Kent one. In nearly a decade as a Member of Parliament I have never received as many complaints about the railways as I have in the past six months. Those complaints are not only in the letters that I have received, which I have passed on to Southeastern; also, everywhere I go, I get buttonholed by constituents who want to complain about what is happening. For example, last Friday night I was at a goodbye party for a local solicitor who was retiring after 30 years, and in that half hour I was buttonholed by two people. One of them said he had taken the train from St. Pancras back at rush hour the previous week, and had been the only person in his carriage. Then, lo and behold, across the room 10 minutes later I received exactly the same complaint. This is serious. It is not just a disruption caused by a new service. In essence there are three issues affecting the north Kent line, and they mirror many of those already raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet and the hon. Member for Dover (Gwyn Prosser). The first and most important is the disruption that the new high-speed train has meant for what people in Faversham call the classic service—the existing service. The people concerned are those who moved to Faversham and bought houses, taking the decision to raise their family there, generally on the basis of the rail service. The lives of many of them have been completely disrupted by the arrival of the new services. They cannot get connections, they cannot get home in time, and there are not sufficient numbers of trains going to Victoria and Cannon Street now. For those people there has been an immediate impact. A second, associated issue affects that category of people, concerning a little station called Selling, which is on a line between Faversham and Canterbury. Because of the knock-on effect of incorporating the new service, a considerable number of services have been lost to the station of Selling, and that has completely disrupted people's lives there. Selling is the point to which people would come from many of the surrounding rural villages. Those people now drive to Faversham, clogging up the roads and causing extra congestion, and of course having to pay car parking fees. Selling, without doubt, is the place that has suffered most from the introduction of the new service. The second main batch of complaints is about a bit of a Faversham-specific issue—the parking and berthing of the high-speed trains overnight. They are berthed in the sidings at Faversham, which are right next to a new-build housing complex. Because the fans turn on and off in the early hours of the morning, people report regularly having a disrupted night's sleep. It was suggested over Christmas, when Swale borough council did some investigation, that the sort of noise disruption that people were suffering was considerably above the World Health Organisation recommended limit. I shall not take the Minister through the technicalities of that this afternoon, but it is apparent to me that it gives rise to a considerable issue. When the matter was first raised it was suggested that people who bought a house next to a railway line should expect a train to be parked on it overnight. There is an element of truth in that, unsympathetic though it is, but that should not be the expectation if the noise being generated is unreasonable. I am sure that everyone would agree on that. The third point, which echoes one that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet made earlier, is about the fare structure of High Speed 1. I had not heard the Passenger Focus figure about the 15 per cent. take-up, but apocryphally I had heard a number of constituents complaining about it. The problem with High Speed 1, which is already well documented, is that it takes existing residents into what they see as the wrong part of London—St. Pancras—when archetypally they want to get to the west end or the City. To make use of the service they must pay a much higher fare and an underground fare to get back to where they wanted to go in the first place. The justification, clearly, was that the service would open up connections going north to people who lived in east Kent, but having looked at the issue for a few months I suspect that the number of people who are benefiting is relatively small and the number who are suffering disruption to their existing trip is pretty extraordinary. What do I want to be done about all of this? What do I want the Minister to say he will do? First, Southeastern has pointed out time and again—it is becoming a mantra—that the timetable is set by the Department. I ask the Minister if, indeed, he promises us a review this afternoon, to make sure that the timetable is rebalanced, so that it better reflects the demand of existing users. Secondly, on the Faversham-specific issue, I would like some reassurance that the overnight parking problem will be looked at seriously. It is simply not acceptable in this day and age for someone who buys a new-build house next to a railway line to have their night's sleep disrupted night after night, as two of the constituents who have written to me have claimed. They are nurses who work in the health service and have to go to work at the Kent and Canterbury hospital the next day, having had two or three hours' sleep. I would like some reassurance from the Minister either that properly sound-proofed sheds will be introduced or that the trains will be parked further away. In addition, for the good of the high-speed train service, I hope that the Minister will be able to promise us some sort of review of the fare structure. Clearly, the concept of pricing the high-speed service higher than the ordinary fare does not appear, on the evidence presented thus far, to be working. In conclusion, I would like once again to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet on initiating the debate. Above all, I do not want the Minister to think that this is some sort of pre-election heist on him or that the issue is being driven by press releases. There is very real problem here. I promise him that, in my nine years as a local MP, I have never come across such consistent anger over the rail services. I hope he will take the matter seriously and that he can promise us this afternoon that he will look into it.