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Kent Coast Railway Line

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Benton. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) was surely right when he said that our hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) is not only liked, but respected in his area. He put one of the most eloquent cases on behalf of constituents that I have had the pleasure to listen to in my short time as a Member. I, too, have been contacted about that issue by some of his constituents, as he will know, and by those of other Members in Kent served by that line, and about the concerns my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent raised about the other line. Having listened to the case put by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet, I do not think that anyone could be anything other than utterly impressed by its strength. He started by saying that there were 1,500 reasons why the line needs improving and, with all due respect to him, at one point I thought that he was going to go through them all. His stop-by-stop tour of the misery line, including the stop in the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark), was a powerful evocation of local people's concerns. One of the key roles of MPs, which we should never underestimate, is our ability to bring those concerns to the forefront in the House and in other places. My hon. Friend was also right to talk about what he considered to be the failures of consultation. In a letter he received on the consultation, the concerns of so many people about the introduction of the timetable were dismissed in a statement that simply acknowledged that some people would be disappointed. That might strike some as complacent, and others as extremely condescending. Indeed, it is a telling point that the managing director of Southeastern, Charles Horton, when my hon. Friend met him, was clear about where much of the blame was attached, and I want to address that point in a few moments. Clearly, Mr. Horton thought that the Minister's response that people were well served by the services in 2009 was not necessarily right and that, had he had the opportunity to do so, he would not necessarily have put that into his franchise. The failure of the specified franchises is at the heart of the matter we are debating today. My hon. Friend also quoted the Secretary of State, Lord Adonis, and was right that the message that the service is working successfully must cause a hollow laugh in his part of the country. Again, the operators are restricted from pursuing sensible timetabling and ending short trains. They must have the chance to look at exactly which stations might be better provided for at better times of the day. That is what needs to happen, rather than the huge over-specification of the timetable, which the Department for Transport has got itself into, as its franchising policy has failed and is failing. The move to longer franchises, which I recognise, will offer no reassurance unless it is accompanied by a move to less specified franchises. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent identified three concerns and also referred to the Adjournment debate, secured by our right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), on 6 January on another train service in Kent. My hon. Friend was right to end his remarks by pointing out to the Minister that there is a genuine concern. It is not electioneering, but the genuine and honestly-felt concern of a huge number of people. Like the hon. Member for Dover (Gwyn Prosser), I am in little doubt that the new high-speed trains that run on High Speed 1 represent a great leap forward for our railways. This country has waited a long time for high speed to come into operation, and it is clearly an achievement that it now is in operation. The UK has 68 miles of high-speed services, compared with 3,480 miles on the continent. The Minister knows that an incoming Conservative Government would address that, but we will also ensure that any development of the high-speed network is integrated with the classic network, that the cost of travel is affordable and that it is not just a premium network, and that it sustains economic growth. I suspect that several Members will be looking to the test tomorrow—maybe—when the Secretary of State might talk about high-speed rail and the development of the network in the country as the Government see it.