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Kent Coast Railway Line

I hope that the Minister agrees—I believe that this was certainly a priority at some point for the then Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott)—that we should encourage more people to use public transport. In fact, on a camping trip to Italy, I recall coming back from a day out to find that a fax had been slipped under the tent door asking me to comment on the fact that it was five years since the Deputy Prime Minister had pledged that, if more people were not travelling by public transport in five years' time, he should be called to account. I had been tracked down to that campsite in Italy to comment on the fact that the target had clearly not been achieved. Yes, it is true that people's incomes have increased, but it is also true that the price differential between trains and cars has grown significantly, which has put people off travelling by train. A final statistic I shall mention relates to overcrowding. The industry standard for PIXCs—passengers in excess of capacity—is currently set at 3 per cent. or an acceptable level. That is now being exceeded, which leads to substantial overcrowding on some of the train services that have been mentioned today. That is certainly the case on the train services I use as a commuter, and many commuters in the London suburbs have to deal with daily overcrowding. In the Prime Minister's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, he referred to an announcement to be made tomorrow, which we presume will be about high-speed train services. The experience of High Speed 1 has set an unfortunate precedent. As the hon. Member for North Thanet and other speakers have made clear, if a consequence of high-speed trains is that it costs people more to travel to a destination that they do not actually want to get to, and that is how people perceive the impact of new high-speed train services, the support in my party—and I am sure in other parties—for extending those services, particularly so that they can compete with short-haul flights, is likely to evaporate. The Minister will have to deal with that issue when he responds. Notwithstanding his interventions, there will be significant time at the end of the debate for him to set out how he will address these matters. As we know, the new timetable was introduced on 13 December. The promise then was that high speed would provide an extra 200 trains a day and that capacity would be boosted by 5 per cent. However, many commuters' experience appears to have been the opposite of that. There are fewer options, longer travel times, more overcrowded services and people have to pay a substantial premium if they want to travel on the high-speed link to a destination that, as other hon. Members have said, many people do not want to get to. Who is responsible for the issue? Other hon. Members have made it clear that, in the correspondence they have received, Southeastern does not accept responsibility for the new service and has clearly fingered the Government—the Department for Transport. If the Minister believes there was any flexibility for Southeastern to implement anything different from what it has been required to implement, I am sure he will make that clear when he responds. Forecasts were apparently carried out to determine which services could be reduced or cut entirely, so will the Minister tell us whether those forecasts were correct? The fundamental point about what has happened to the service, and about what risks happening to other high-speed services, is that there is a lack of vision and commitment from the Government on ensuring that high-speed train services are properly rolled out and implemented up and down the country. We need to hear from the Government precisely how they will fund an expansion of the programme. We believe that there is a case for setting up an infrastructure bank to raise funds for public transport schemes. We favour the idea of supporting local improvements, for which people often clamour, rather than the high-profile schemes. In a time of constrained budgets, we should look at the roads budget and take money from it to invest in small rail improvements, such as signalling changes at pinch points, which the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) mentioned. That can make a significant difference to local commuter services. We must hear something from the Minister on his vision of how to address the matter. It is clear from other Members' contributions that the concern is not a cheap trick being pushed a couple of weeks before the starting gun for the general election is fired. The matter has had a direct and significant impact on people, has worsened their quality of life and made their journey to and from work considerably more difficult. Therefore, we require a considered response from the Minister and clarity on how he will roll back some of the changes that have been made while maintaining the high-speed link, giving back to commuters the services they have lost after using them for many years, and ensuring that they have the required standard of service.