I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Govia Thameslink rail service.

I had wanted to title the debate “The Woeful Performance of the GTR Service”, but the Table Office would not allow me to do so. Here we are—déjà vu all over again. It is no surprise to see on both sides of the Chamber so many hon. Members from south London and Sussex, who have a close interest in this appalling state of affairs, which is continuing to deteriorate.

Southern Thameslink goes from bad to worse. It cancels more trains than the whole of the rest of the network put together. Our constituents are losing their jobs, parents are unable to see their children because they get home so late at night and students are missing lessons at schools and colleges, and in some cases missing exams, as a result of the woeful incompetence of this train company, and there is no end in sight. This is embarrassing, pathetic, unsustainable and a national disgrace for Britain’s largest rail passenger carrier. The management, the unions and, frankly, the Department for Transport should all be thoroughly ashamed that we are in this state of affairs. I would guess that it is the single biggest issue at the moment for most colleagues in the Chamber—it will be even bigger than the issue of Europe in some cases. We continue to be inundated by correspondence from frustrated, demoralised and understandably angry constituents.

Last Thursday, by way of example, I was going home in the late afternoon on the Brighton line. I arrived a little early for a train. I actually got a seat on a Gatwick Express train—several other trains had been cancelled. Within minutes, that train became absolutely cram-packed. There were people who had missed other trains going to Gatwick airport. They were going on holiday, going travelling. Before the train left, it was so congested that someone in front of me had a panic attack and had to be helped out of the carriage. I gave up my seat to a pregnant lady, and we had to look after her for the rest of the journey. Passengers were swapping stories: “What time does your plane go? You’re more likely to miss it than this other person.” The situation was absolutely horrific. It was unsafe, unacceptable and a real joke—but a very dangerous joke.

The hon. Gentleman may find this experience familiar. My constituent Lucy Cooper emailed me on behalf of her daughter, Ellie, who is a Govia Thameslink Railway customer—I use that word advisedly. Ellie described being so packed on a train that the person next to her fainted. The woman was fortunately not hurt, because there were so many people crowded around her that she could not even fall down. Is that not shocking in terms of the level of unsafe practices that are now arising?

I completely agree. I am sure all of us in the Chamber have similar stories and have had similar emails and letters. Gatwick airport is the gateway to the ​United Kingdom. Some 40 million people come to Gatwick airport currently, let alone if a second runway is positioned there. What an impression they get of the infrastructure in this country when they have to get on a train in those conditions!

I have with me many emails. One says:

“Yesterday I saw one unfortunate gentleman who became very poorly and distressed after having stood, squashed, for over an hour and a half in full city attire, an older American woman in tears and several hugely upset elderly people and little children who became panicked about the heat and crush.”

There are other people who do not get home until after 9.30 at night, having left the City at 5 o’clock. Someone missed his wedding anniversary. He ended his email to Southern by saying that

“frankly guys it’s not good enough.

Please, give up the franchise.

Please, don’t spend £6m on taxis for execs—please spend it on me.

Please, don’t keep blaming staff shortages—they are equally blaming you and it’s me (and my fellow commuters) sitting in the middle.

Please, remember—until you give up/lose the franchise—you are a TRANSPORT company. So please—transport people!”

It goes on and on. Another email says:

“At the end of the day it would seem to me that Southern and the RMT”—

the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—

“are acting like two spoiled children. Both have their positions and both are refusing to move at all, neither gives a damn about customers. It is the customer that is suffering in all this—it would not be so bad if we had any choice about the train operator that we use (in which case Southern trains would be empty I’m sure)—the fact is Southern have a monopoly and we have no other options.”

Time and again, we are getting emails like that, with no sign of the situation getting any better at all.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although the current dispute has made matters markedly worse, in truth the reason why Southern should relinquish the franchise is that its performance has been lamentable over many years, not just recently?

Well, the franchise has not been going for that many years and of course we had all the problems supposedly attributable to London Bridge at the beginning of the year, when the situation was bad enough, but it has got hugely worse since then. I will come on to that in a moment—I know that many other hon. Members want to speak.

On Monday, to deal with the crisis, GTR introduced its emergency timetable. That came on the back of the increasing number of planned cancellations, presumably because it reduces the penalties that the company has to pay. It came on top of the loosening of the franchise agreement, which I read about in the newspaper. Hon. Members were given no notice by the Department for Transport or, indeed, the company itself. Given all the interest that had been shown by colleagues here today, one would at least have expected to have been forewarned about that by the Minister. That was, frankly, discourteous and disgraceful and has only compounded our anger with the way the whole dispute has been handled.​

When the new emergency timetable came in, what was the result? Last night, I got the figures for the public performance measure for 12 July. With the emergency timetable and 341 planned cancellations—341 fewer trains running—the PPM was 77%; it was barely three quarters on the second day of the emergency timetable. The position was that 2,800 trains ran, 2,172 were more or less on time, 620 were late and 122 were cancelled or very late. The result of the emergency timetable is that there is less choice for customers and more overcrowding, but presumably fewer fines. Extraordinarily, Charles Horton, the chief executive, in his appearance before the Select Committee on Transport the other day, said:

“We expect to see crowding levels evening out because of more regular intervals between trains”

as a result of the emergency timetable.

What sort of weird logic is that? There will be the same number of passengers battling to get a train to or from work, but more inconvenience because of the timings and surely more overcrowding because there are fewer trains to convey them. The extraordinary complacency of that attitude is absolutely baffling.

Specific problems have been caused by the change in the timetable. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) will mention the suspension of the Lewes to Seaford line in other than peak times—there is a replacement bus service—which includes the cross-channel port of Newhaven, which does not now have a regular daytime train service. It includes one of my local schools. We actually had the platform extended because, with the number of girls from Davison High School in Worthing using that station to go to and from school, it had become dangerous. Now, the only train in the morning arrives at East Worthing station at 5.35 or 7.16, with no further trains getting there until 18:24, and there is a similar lack of trains going home. Therefore, a station that Southern rail expanded to cater for the increasing number of pupils using it cannot be used as a stop for those girls to go to and from school. The crisis that this is causing is absolutely crazy.

The company cancelled 341 trains as part of the emergency timetable. We are told in the briefing note from GTR:

“The number of trains cancelled in the revised timetable is 341 which is broadly similar to the number”

that were cancelled on an ad hoc basis to date.

That is fine: the company is just making it official that it is rubbish—that now it is part of the official timetable that it is officially very rubbish. It is extraordinary logic, and apparently the company has done that without even having to get the permission of the Department for Transport, or so the chief executive claimed at the Select Committee the other day. We would like to know from the Minister how this works. How is it allowed to do this and get away with it, and still have its franchise as the largest passenger conveyer in the country? What are we going to have next? Why does it not reduce the timetable to zero trains and then it would have 100% competence in completing its timetable? That is the logic of where this is going, such is the ridiculousness of the situation.

This is at the heart of the problem. I do not believe that there is sufficient deterrent or incentive on either side, for the management or the unions who are party to these problems, to find a resolution with any sense of ​urgency. All this time, it is the passengers—our constituents —who are suffering and losing out. We listened to Mick Cash from the RMT in front of the Select Committee going on about how, “We couldn’t possibly, for safety reasons, have driver only operated trains,” despite the fact those already operate on 60% of Govia Thameslink services and 30% of trains on the whole of the network, and have done since 1985. It is not prepared to sit down and discuss that, and it is not prepared to acknowledge independent studies that have shown that there is not a major safety consideration.

Then we had the management of GTR saying, “We have tried to sit down with them but they are being unreasonable and they are all going off sick deliberately.” There may be some truth in that; they may be cancelling trains deliberately in order to worsen the situation. Frankly, my constituents do not care whose fault it is; they just wanted it sorted. There is, “He said this”, “She said that”, “He did this”, “They did that”—it is absolutely ridiculous. Somebody—frankly, it should be the Government—should get the two parties together and metaphorically if not physically bang some heads together and tell them to sort it or else.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the way that he is dealing with this debate. It is clear from the statistics, which he will have seen, that it is suffering from a very high level of real sickness. Clearly, there is something very wrong, or else it has a very sickly workforce. Does he agree that there are ways that sophisticated companies manage things like sickness? Would it not be better if the management of GTR took a great deal more trouble and were more proactive in dealing with the sickness problem?

My right hon. Friend is right. As somebody who has been even angrier than me in the face of GTR on occasions, he knows that there are solutions to this problem that have not been properly pursued. We are told by GTR that before the dispute happened approximately 21 conductors were off sick at any one time. Overnight, when this dispute came in, that almost doubled to 40, with spikes at three particular depots. Something is clearly up but there are things that GTR could do, whether genuine sickness needs sorting out or it is a form of unofficial working to rule.

I have been trying to get to the bottom of the finances in this whole crisis. In the Select Committee last week, Charles Horton said that GTR’s turnover amounts to some £1.3 billion, with just over 90% of that coming from the fee, paid by the Department for Transport, for running the franchise. The amount of fine—it is really difficult to drill down into exactly how much fine it has paid—seems to be about £2 million. Less than 0.2% of its annual revenue is having to be paid in fines as a result of the incompetent way in which it has run this service. Is that a real disincentive or penalty? I just cannot see how it is.

This is an unconventional franchise. I have tried looking at the franchise: all 668 pages of it. It is the only one in the country where the rail company is paid a fee by the Department and where all the revenue from passengers’ tickets goes directly to the Government. It is difficult to see who loses out when it goes wrong. When the network fails, there is a points problem, a London Bridge problem or whatever, Network Rail pays a penalty ​to GTR as the operator. That penalty is only paid on to the customer if they actually get round to the complicated process of the compensation payments, so GTR makes a profit, potentially, from problems on the network.

We read in The Times a few months ago—as I said, we were not notified by the Department—that GTR had been in breach of its licence and could have lost its franchise, but instead the Department agreed simply to loosen the targets for GTR, allowing an additional 9,000 trains to be cancelled a year without it being in breach of the reconfigured franchise agreement. These are my questions to the Minister. Exactly how much is GTR losing and what is the financial impact on Government revenue? How much compensation is Network Rail paying to GTR that is not then paid out to customers? What is the impact of the planned cancellations on penalties payable? My understanding is that when there are planned cancellations it does not have to pay the ad hoc penalties when trains do not turn up, do not start or skip stations or whatever. Are there financial implications for the loosening of the franchise and the introduction of this emergency timetable? What this boils down to is how much GTR and the Government have to feel financially pained before they do something urgently to resolve this crisis—and this is a crisis of great magnitude.

The Minister has the power to intervene on behalf of passengers and has made various statements. In yesterday’s Evening Standard she was quoted as saying that

“the real solution is for the RMT to end this dispute and the high levels of sickness amongst its members…we are working with TfL and issued a prospectus earlier in the year for new ways to improve services in the capital.”

That comes after the Mayor asked for GTR to be stripped of its franchise. The Minister has also said:

“Historically the Government doesn’t intervene in industrial disputes.”But we are now told that a letter has been sent by the Minister to the unions offering some sort of deal. Perhaps she will comment on that and whether it is true, whether she is going to intervene, whether she can intervene and whether she is prepared to intervene. She has said:

“The union is holding commuters to ransom. Again if there was a legitimate safety concern or genuine job losses I would understand but this is a growing industry…This is not about job losses. This is about politics...What do you want me to do, get them in for beer and sandwiches?”

Frankly, that is not good enough and those sorts of sloganising headlines do nothing to get this problem resolved for our constituents. She has really got to get a grip.

There are many other problems as well. Back in January we had a summit in Westminster Hall. It was a very useful meeting. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) was greatly aerated. We enjoyed his interventions at the expense of the GTR management greatly; they were heartfelt and passionate and we all agreed with him. At that summit we had GTR, Network Rail, Department for Transport officials, MPs, Transport Focus and others—there were about 22 or so hon. Members, many of whom are in this room at the moment. We made it clear at that stage that this could not go on. At that stage we were primarily looking at the fallout from the problems with London Bridge, ​well before these additional problems came along. We were promised a follow-up summit six months on in order to assess the situation. Where has that gone? We have one week to go before the recess and there is no follow-up summit to get everybody together and hold their feet to the fire—in my right hon. Friend’s favourite phrase.

What really struck everybody at that summit was that the head official from the Department for Transport, when asked about taking back the franchise, got up and said, “Well basically, if GTR were not running this franchise—a very large franchise, a complex franchise—I would be the one responsible for it in the Department for Transport, and you don’t want that.” In effect, GTR was told it faced little prospect of us taking back the franchise because we cannot really run it ourselves. What sort of incentive was that for GTR to get its act together if it knows it can get even worse and even then the Government will not intervene and do something about it? I am really angry about this on behalf of my constituents.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and I absolutely 100% agree with him on behalf of my constituents that use East Dulwich, Peckham Rye and Queens Road. They will identify completely with the level of total exasperation and frustration. He has diligently gone through all this and has done all the right things, but his constituents’ situations are simply getting worse and are set to get worse still, with disruption to family and working life and downright safety issues. I simply lend him my support and say that my constituents are every bit as desperate as his. We have no tube and we have congested roads, so they cannot go by bus. People cannot lead their lives like this. I agree with him that it should be stripped of the franchise.

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for that short intervention. She echoes the words of so many of our other colleagues who could not be here, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who texted me to tell me that he was stuck on a train somewhere, otherwise he would have joined our deliberations.

Many other problems affect this railway; it is not just the unreliability of when the trains actually run. There is overcrowding, safety is an issue and, at the same time, Southern is trying to close down all our ticket offices. It has only given a temporary moratorium on that—what a stupid thing to do. When the company cannot even run the service, it tries to threaten the easiest way of selling tickets for it. We have the antiquated rolling stock on the west coastway line—the class 313 rolling stock is 40 years old, and has no loos or any other basics. Female constituents have real problems when stranded late at night in stations far from home because a station has been skipped or the last train has been cancelled. It is not just inconvenient; there is danger attached as well.

I see that just two of us are here from the northern side of the Thameslink line. Is my hon. Friend aware that yesterday, the 7.34 am Brighton train from St Albans, which was a ​brand-new train—one of the class 700 stock—broke down, so this is not just about old rolling stock, but about new rolling stock?

I fear that that is right. Again, we were promised that everything would be so much better because of the investment in rolling stock—that it is all coming in and it is all going to be fine.

Finally, there is the issue of compensation. We are constantly told by GTR, “We have this compensation scheme, which is not easy to administer,” but the amount of compensation that people are getting back for the huge amount of aggro that they face is paltry. Frankly, my constituents are not primarily interested in compensation. They just want a reliable service with a better than evens chance of them being able to turn up at the station and get on a train at about the time they want to catch it, to arrive at their destination within about five minutes or so of the published times, and go about their work or education as normal. That is what they want.

Given the extended, prolonged, intense aggravation there has been, season-ticket holders in particular should get serious discounts. When they renew their season tickets, whether or not they have put in for individual compensation, they should get a serious discount and a very large apology to go with it.

On compensation, I had an email from a constituent who is losing earnings day in, day out. They noted

“I was unable to travel…due to no trains running between Polegate and Haywards Heath. I was compensated £19 for my daily loss of earnings of £350.”

My hon. Friend also mentioned the situation being dangerous, and I point out that this is not only about people’s jobs being on the line. A constituent of mine said to me that they are so late picking up their child from nursery that they are worried because:

“It is standard procedure that most nurseries contact social services when parents are late.”

The situation is damaging people’s lives.

That is just another example of the extraordinary strength of the impact on our constituents.

In summing up, I really think, with the greatest respect—and I understand that the situation is complex and challenging—that enough is enough. The Minister has got to get a grip on this. If this has not been sorted by the beginning of September, after the impact of the emergency timetable—and we have had no clear indication of when it will be sorted—GTR should lose its franchise by the end of the year. There have been enough warnings and pathetic excuses about one thing or another going wrong—goodness knows what it will be by the time we get to September—and this has gone on for far too long.

I hope that in response to this debate, the Minister can give a clear indication of what it will take for the company to lose its franchise, if it does not get its act together. At the very least, our constituents deserve a proper and honest answer from her about how she will achieve this and when. We are fed up on behalf of our constituents, who have to take this flak day in, day out. It is not fair, it is not right, and she needs to do something about it—and tell us what—now.

I will put a five-minute limit on for all speakers now. I may have to reduce that to try to ensure that everybody gets the opportunity to speak on behalf of their constituents. I hope to move to the Front Benchers by 3.35 pm or so.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) not only on securing the debate, but on a very powerful speech; I agree with almost every single word. The fact that we see hon. Members from both sides of the House talking on a cross-party basis, along the same lines, illustrates the strength of feeling among our constituents about the joke of a service that they have been getting from GTR on Southern and Thameslink lines. I also take this opportunity to thank the 10 hon. Members—I think most are here—who have signed my early-day motion 298 calling for GTR to be stripped of the franchise.

I have to say that I laughed yesterday, when at about 5 o’clock, GTR tweeted:

“Don’t forget to plan your journey home this evening as there may have been a change to your usual train”.

There is nothing usual about the services that GTR provides. It has the worst record on cancellation and significant lateness, by some margin, of any operator, and it performs worst on the public performance measure.

As the hon. Gentleman said, we have had meeting after meeting and several debates on this issue. We get excuse after excuse, and our constituents have all reached the end of the line in their patience with what is going on—[Laughter.] See what I did there? The bottom line is that the company has not trained enough drivers. It is true that Network Rail has contributed to the situation and that GTR has to operate on an ageing infrastructure, but frankly, so do all the other train-operating companies. The delay figures show that Network Rail has caused more delays for the other train operators than for GTR, but the other train operators outperform GTR. There has been poor planning on a gargantuan scale and frankly, the management of GTR are absolutely appalling. We still have problems with basic things like information being provided when there is lateness.

The impact on constituents is absolutely unbearable. People have lost their jobs, which is a disgrace, as a result of the company’s poor performance. People who are still in their jobs arrive at work stressed and do not have the right mindset to start work, which will of course have an impact on productivity. Students and pupils have told me about the impact of the stress of getting to school to do their exams recently, as a result of the performance of that train operator.

So what do we want? I will probably not take up my whole five minutes, because I want to ensure that everyone else can get in. This franchise needs to end, and it needs to end now, or as soon as possible. I do not see why we should have to wait until 2020 or 2021 when it is up for renewal. I just cannot understand—I say this as somebody who professionally, as a lawyer, worked on a franchise agreement—how the company is not in breach of this franchise, such that it can be taken away from it. I understand absolutely that this is a big franchise. It is probably too big and, ultimately, I would like to see the ​parts of this franchise that cover London suburban routes transferred to Transport for London, which I believe could do a much better job of providing services to my constituents.

Turning to the longer term, in Streatham, we have Streatham Hill, Streatham and Streatham Common stations, as well as Tulse Hill and Balham stations just outside, and our stations have been over capacity for some time. Our population is growing and we are not in any Government programme to upgrade our local transport to be fit for the future. That is why ultimately, what we would like to see—I think this may provide a long-term solution to our problems with GTR and this particular franchise—is Crossrail 2 routed through Streatham. That would alleviate congestion on the Northern and Victoria lines, which are nearby, because large numbers of people to the east and south of those lines would therefore not have to travel to Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway, Balham and Brixton and could use a Streatham Crossrail station. It would relieve congestion at Streatham Common, which is the sixth busiest station in the Southern network, and at Streatham station. It would cut congestion on our roads, too. Also, Streatham Action, a local group, and our local council have been clear that it would also provide an opportunity for growth and regeneration in our area.

I want to come back to where the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham finished. What we want from the Minister today is action. We do not want the warm words that say, “Yes, I agree with you about how awful they have been.” We want action, and we certainly do not want the Minister acting as an apologist for this company.

We have been here before. There have been at least two debates in this Chamber, one secured by me and one by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), in which we heavily criticised Southern and also Network Rail for failing to deliver a satisfactory performance for their customers. We welcomed the introduction of a performance improvement plan, then a year later got very annoyed that the self-set targets, already low in that performance improvement plan, had not been adhered to; and before Christmas I said that unless there was a significant and rapid improvement in the performance of the company, removal of the franchise should certainly be considered.

Let us be clear. The current performance, which is measurably worse than it was a year ago and has deteriorated rapidly, is due to new and different reasons, and we have to understand what they are. Before the strikes that were called by the rail unions, 26 train cancellations a day were due to train crew unavailability. Clearly, it is a major failure on the part of GTR Southern not to have recruited sufficient staff to be able to run the service. Nobody should resile from criticising the company for that.

After the strikes began, in the period 29 March to 25 June, 148 trains were cancelled a day—a remarkable increase. The figures produced by GTR tell us, assuming that they are reliable, that driver sickness since the start of the strikes has increased by about a third and the ​willingness to work overtime has reduced by about a third. It is that remarkable loss of labour that is causing the real disruption that so annoys our constituents at the moment.

The dispute turns on whether it is safe to introduce trains with driver-operated doors. The question for hon. Members of all parties, including all of us who rail about the performance of the franchise holder, is whether it is safe to introduce such trains. Do we think the unions have a case in mounting their industrial action or not? It is hard to argue that there is a safety issue when 60% of the trains currently operated by GTR already have driver-only operation of doors, 40% of them Southern trains. Are we all saying that those trains are unsafe? Are the unions saying that those trains are unsafe? That is the kernel of the issue at the moment, so let us confront it.

We have to decide whether the unions have a point. If we do not think they have a point—I do not think they do, because there will be no job losses, no reductions in pay, and there will still be staff on almost all the trains, including the drivers that currently have guards who operate the doors—why are we blaming Southern entirely for this dispute?

I have absolutely no compunction about criticising Southern. No hon. Member has criticised Southern more firmly than I have over the past year. I have been very clear about the failings of the company and its management. No hon. Member has criticised Southern more firmly—the record shows that—but I am sure that the current disruption is being caused by the industrial action. What I question is why we collectively—hon. Members of all parties—have been so reticent to attribute proper blame to the unions for what is happening. In my judgment, the unions are being very clever. They know that this dispute is effectively a work to rule.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate all those who have taken part in the debate. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it helped or hindered when Peter Wilkinson, the managing director of passenger services, said earlier this year:

“We have got to break them...They can’t afford to spend too long on strike and I will push them into that place...They will have to decide if they want to give a good service or get the hell out of my industry”?

I agree about the need for good industrial relations, but does the right hon. Gentleman think that that was constructive?

I am not defending Southern’s industrial relations. The question for the hon. Lady is whether she thinks the dispute is justified. If she would like to tell me that, I will sit down and give way to her now. Is the dispute justified or not?

Clearly, there has been a breakdown in communication between staff and management.

Answer the question.

The only way in which a dispute will be resolved is by people sitting round the table to discuss concerns about safety, and there are concerns across the network, across the country, about safety issues on platforms and about the control of doors.

We did not get an answer to the question, and therein lies the problem: the current disruption that is causing massive inconvenience to our constituents is principally—not entirely—caused by the industrial action, which is official on strike days but unofficial when it clearly amounts to a work to rule. The problem is being caused by the unions, but hon. Members are not willing to criticise the unions for that. Undoubtedly, all sections of the rail industry have a case to answer for the poor performance in the franchise. Some 60% of the delays up until we had the strike were caused by the failures of infrastructure of Network Rail, not Southern, although that is partly being caused by the upgrade at London Bridge.

There is a real question about whether the franchise should have been awarded and about the scale of it. The franchise is too big. All parties have a case to answer; I am sure there is a case to answer on the part of GTR and Southern’s management, too. For a start, they kicked off with insufficient drivers and staff. That is poor planning, but I go back to the central point that I was seeking to make: I have found it surprising in this debate that so little attention has focused on what the unions are doing.

Before the hon. Lady intervened, I was making the point that the unions have been very clever, because all the blame has been attributed to Southern, and what happens? We now have a pantomime villain to whom it is very easy for us all to say, “Boo! Take the franchise away.” I joined in on this pantomime cry: “Take the franchise away and all the problems will be over.” That is the easy thing for us all to say, but the question will remain: is it safe to have these new trains with driver-only operation of doors? The new franchisee will have to answer that question, and hon. Members are doing themselves no service at all by failing to address the key reason why the dispute arose in the first place.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the very first time, Ms Ryan, and I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing this debate. He and I sometimes sit together on the train—we come from neighbouring constituencies—so we suffer alongside the people we serve and see the problems at first hand.

I want to do the unusual thing of thanking the Minister because in the short time that I have been an MP, she has never refused to meet me to discuss the issues. It has often turned into weekly discussions where the anger that has been expressed to me by the people I represent has been expressed in forceful terms to her, which she has always accepted at face value, and I am grateful for that.

In the year and a half that I have been a Member of Parliament, it has been made clear that representing a constituency served by Southern is like having toothache: you wake up in the morning and feel the pain of people who are trying, and failing, to get to work on time; you feel the pain of people who get home late in the evening. It is constant and absolutely unavoidable.

I never expected, when I became an MP, that I would become such an expert on the train system serving my constituency. I now know the timetable, even though it ​changes so readily. I know the rolling stock. I have spent time training and doing work shadowing on the line, including shadowing several drivers to enable me to understand the pressures they are under. I have visited London Bridge to see the construction site, and have made a visit to see the new rolling stock, to try to understand the pressures on the system. I understand the scale of the problem. There is historical underfunding; new rolling stock is coming on line; there is the London Bridge upgrade, as well as routine track maintenance; there is an industrial dispute; and very bad planning by the rail franchisee has led to the poor number of drivers and conductors that underpins all the problems.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the problem—apart from what was highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)—is that the franchisee never planned ahead sufficiently for the right number of drivers and continued to give us thoroughly wrong information about how quickly the increase in driver numbers would improve the service?

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because that is an incredibly important point. As I have said, bad management planning has underpinned all that is happening. It takes 18 months to train a new driver, and the driver shortages of the past six months to a year were absolutely predictable. GTR should have been on the case far earlier, and the fact that there is such a shortage of expertise on the line, including the shortage of drivers and conductors, has underpinned a shambles and turned it into a crisis. I have absolute sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

It is inexplicable to me that, even with all the challenges on the line, things have so quickly descended into crisis. At the moment, in the midst of an industrial dispute, there is what I can only describe as a dysfunctional relationship at the heart of the network—between Government and the franchise-holder, and the franchise-holder and the unions, with Railtrack involved as well underneath it all. It means that no one involved wakes up in the morning thinking, “How do I make passengers’ lives better today? How can I make passengers’ journey home better than the journey they took to work?” The impact is that there is damage to the economy. People arrive at work late and get written warnings. They get home late, which damages communities and family life, because they are not home to see their kids before they go to bed. It is quite heartbreaking.

Someone who got in touch with me said that she had aspired for most of her working life to live in Hove, by the seaside. That is a community that I chose to live in because I absolutely love it. She has been there for five or six years, but things have now got to the point where she must pack her bags and leave—go back to London—because she can no longer cope with the shambles that is the rail franchise. The service is letting down communities and people.

The Minister will know that not only do I come to her to whinge, like everyone else, but I also try to present solutions. Many hon. Members here are like me, and want to help to turn things around and be supportive. I hosted a public meeting last week. The chief operating officer for Govia kindly came down and faced the full ​force of the anger in my constituency, so I am very grateful to Dyan Crowther. She left the meeting having learned in no uncertain terms how strong the sentiment is at this time. I have also co-founded and co-chair, with the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), an all-party group that will provide an opportunity for all MPs in the area to come together for scrutiny of the issue, and enable them to support the change that is needed. I hope my actions will prove constructive.

Campaigners handed me a petition on the way in, and there are some sensible questions that I want to put directly to the Minister on their behalf. They want a sustainable compensation scheme that will be much more aggressive, assertive and responsive than the present one. They want first class to be declassified permanently, while the temporary timetable is in operation. I have written to the Minister about that; it is eminently sensible. The campaigners want the Minister to announce the duration of the present temporary timetable. I hope she will take all those points into consideration and give direct answers to the campaigners who want action so much.

I was going to start my remarks with a comment about déjà vu until I remembered that I started my previous remarks in this Chamber, on the same subject, with a comment about déjà vu. We are getting continuous repetition.

I held a public meeting on this subject in Horsham on Saturday, and 300 of my constituents turned up—all very angry. At least one of them, I dare say, is still angry, having come up by train to sit in the Public Gallery today. I will not repeat the remarks that other Members have so eloquently made about all the problems the situation is causing—the way jobs, health and family life are being put at risk. That has been expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), among others. Every Member of Parliament attending the debate knows about that, the unions know about it, and the management knows about it.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who is also my constituency neighbour, I have been forthright in attacking GTR for poor performance, including in a debate that I obtained in this place three months ago. I am afraid that GTR entered the dispute when its reputation among its customers was at a low ebb. Notwithstanding that, however, I have no doubt that, as my right hon. Friend said, the immediate cause of the problems on the trains in recent months has been the dispute between the conductors and GTR.

I welcome the £2.5 billion investment in new trains. The independent Rail Safety and Standards Board has confirmed that the train doors can be operated safely by the driver. If that is so, it should be implemented. It does not mean that trains should be denuded of a second professional. I am totally in favour of having a second member of staff, trained in all safety precautions and techniques, on board the train in all but exceptional circumstances. I endorse the comment of the hon. Member ​for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who pointed out that management should have a sufficiency of trained personnel to ensure that trains can run appropriately. However, on those occasions, which should be rare, when a second staff member is not available, I want the train to be able to run, if it can do so safely, and get my constituents home in the evening from London Bridge or Victoria. I know that my constituents who are undergoing the current nightmare would appreciate knowing how many trains have been cancelled in the past because a conductor was not available.

Echoing what other hon. Members have said, I ask the Government to intervene directly to ensure that the dispute will be resolved. I have heard the Minister’s comments on guaranteeing jobs beyond the current franchise. My constituents are incredulous at the fact that no agreement has been possible to date, and I hope that the Minister’s proposal may result in a breakthrough in discussions. The dispute must not be allowed to continue. While the temporary timetable persists, may I ask the Minister four things? I make no apology for reiterating some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle).

First, why are trains not being declassified to ease the congestion on the reduced number of services? I appreciate that that may imply compensating first-class ticket holders; well, we should do so. Secondly, when will there be a complete overhaul of compensation? The Prime Minister—he remains that currently—promised a couple of weeks ago that we would hear news on that, but we still have not. It was in response to a question of mine in the main Chamber, at column 294 on 29 June. Let us be clear: delay repay does not do it. Many season ticket holders have given up on the trains because of their lack of reliability. They bought their season ticket for use with a timetable that has proved to be fictitious. I want a significant refund to be made to passengers.

Thirdly, GTR has shown a lack of foresight in the planning around the dispute. The dumping ground that is Three Bridges station is renowned. Why could alternative means to get passengers home from there reliably, without the colossal expense of taxis, not have been put in place by now? Lastly, in addition to explaining to customers the rationale for the dispute, I hope the management will give a granular explanation of the cause of the continuing disruption. Can we have, for example, regular publication of sickness statistics? GTR owes its customers, whose trust in the operator is low, proper explanations of why their lives are being made so miserable.

I appreciate that the franchise is huge and there were good reasons, connected with going through London, why it was put together in its present form. In our previous debate I asked the Minister to be brave, if she felt that she needed to and if the franchise had become too large and out of control. I should love to hear her comments on how she feels the debate has gone, and whether the franchise is still operable on its current basis.

Order. In an effort to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to speak, I am reducing the time limit to three minutes.

It is not just the new timetable that is the issue. My constituents have faced delays for many weeks and months. Last month, more than 1,350 trains were delayed each and every week. My ​constituents are fed up. I will not go over the impact it is having on many of them, but their experiences reflect much of what has been said.

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing the debate and on his excellent contribution. I echo and agree with ​much of what has been said. My constituents use Southern services into London Bridge and Victoria from stations such as East Dulwich, Peckham Rye and North Dulwich, and they use Thameslink services from Sydenham Hill, Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction. It is fair to say that, before the current crisis, services were already unacceptably poor. The works at London Bridge were entirely mismanaged. Southern produced a timetable that was entirely unsustainable, had no resilience and was understaffed. Satisfaction with GTR services is among the lowest in the country and, within that, the lowest level of satisfaction are within the metro part of the service and among commuters.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing this debate. I speak on behalf of both myself and my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd). We share the two worst-performing rail operators—Southern and Southeastern—and we bear our crosses as best we can.

I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this debate. It is no exaggeration to describe the situation on Southern railway as of crisis proportions. The impact on residents’ day-to-day lives is deep and profound. Lee Fenton, one of my neighbours in Coulsdon, lost his job because he was so persistently late for work. I have talked to people who have had to quit their jobs, to self-employed people who are losing earnings and whose businesses are no longer viable, and to parents who are not getting home in time to put their children to bed. These problems are profoundly affecting the day-to-day lives of tens of thousands of people.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this important debate on the performance, and frankly the failure, of Govia Thameslink. I am sitting next to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), and I must point out that this sickness has spread to Hampshire. Indeed, Southern has a toe in my constituency, and it must not be forgotten that services up from Swanwick in her patch—there is a bridge between our constituencies —to Gatwick airport have left travellers stranded and abandoned, with embarrassing and derisory compensation offered.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem extends across the whole network? Many people using our stations in southern Hampshire on the mainline west coastway route—Swanwick, Portchester and Fareham—are travelling to Crawley or Gatwick for work, and they are putting their jobs at risk.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I have travellers from Netley and Hamble going to Bursledon and onward to Southampton Central. Those people avoid the A27 and the grind through Chichester, ​or the M27 heading to Littlehampton, Worthing, Hove or Brighton and the perils of the Chichester roundabout, in the hope of getting to work safe and sound. The safety considerations are, of course, off the trains. Yes, the unions might have a point, and perhaps we have not quite gotten to the bottom of that, but for me the safety considerations are about vulnerable people being left on the side of the railway.

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this crucial debate and on his tour de force. We were all impressed by what he had to say.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Will the hon. Gentleman forgive me if I do not? I want to give the Minister time to respond, and she has little enough.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I thank right hon. and ​hon. Members on both sides for their contributions to this important debate. Before I look forwards, I want to take a couple of minutes to look back.

That is rubbish.

It is still terrible.

It was not nearly good enough, but that was 10 percentage points up over the last six months. There was every view that performance was returning to the place where we needed it to be.

They do care.

They do care, but why would they feel an allegiance to a company the name of which changes every few years? The staff on the frontline care in extreme amounts, and we are all very grateful for that.

Will the Minister give way?

No, I am going to continue.

indicated dissent.

The hon. Gentleman knows—he has been involved in contracting—that we have a contractual structure and there are a series of inputs and outputs. The company is not in breach of them. People ask what happened with Directly Operated Railways. The franchise was handed back to the Government by East Coast. In such circumstances we can take it back in-house and do something with it, but at the moment I do not have the levers to pull to take the franchise back.

Will the Minister give way?

No. If I may, I will continue, because I want to try to address some action points. I will try to finish quickly.

From Streatham to Horsham, from Fareham to Bexhill, from Dulwich to Lewes, our constituents are angry, for all the reasons that have been laid out very passionately by the more than 20 Members present for the debate. With respect to the Minister, I did not want a history of the railways. I did not mention leaves on the line. I certainly would not hold up an 83% PPM as a badge of honour, because that means that almost one in five trains are still running very, very late. She said that the company was not in breach. When on earth will it technically be in breach? We need to know that.