Alison Griffiths
Main Page: Alison Griffiths (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)Department Debates - View all Alison Griffiths's debates with the Department for Transport
(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
Labour promised that nationalisation would deliver a more reliable railway. Two years on, it is getting worse. Between April and June, all Government-run operators saw cancellations rise or punctuality fall. Ministers say that Great British Railways will turn that around when it launches next year. They promised its implementation timetable and draft licence consultation this autumn. On this last sitting day of October, neither has yet appeared. When will they, and when will passengers see the improvements they were promised?
Heidi Alexander
May I start by congratulating the hon. Lady on her appointment to the Opposition Front Bench? I think this is the first opportunity that I have had a chance to do so from the Dispatch Box. She is right in some respects. We do need to make more progress on improving punctuality and reliability, and I cannot pretend that I am happy with performance across the entirety of the rail network at the moment. However, I would gently point out to her that at the last reporting period, cancellations across publicly-owned operators were 3.9% compared to 4.9% for operators yet to transfer and still in private ownership. On punctuality, 82.6% of stops by publicly-owned operators were within three minutes of their scheduled arrival time, compared with just 73.8% for operators yet to transfer.