Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the Department for Transport
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Joseph Johnson
We are working closely with Network Rail to ensure punctual and reliable services on the network. We are ensuring it is doing everything it possibly can to maintain and build upon the current improving levels of performance. My hon. Friend mentioned the performance targets: the operator will be required as part of the next franchise arrangements to publish on its website in relation to each reporting period its performance against the following metrics: cancellation figures, short formation figures, and now, critically, timing to three minutes, rather than the previous performance targets.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, may I associate myself and my hon. Friends with your kind words to my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and wish him all the best?
When I arrived at my station this morning, they were handing out free copies of fiction: the Southeastern rail timetable. It is fiction because of not just the performance of Southeastern, but the poor infrastructure that we have to endure. We have spent £1 billion upgrading London Bridge, and it is a magnificent project, but unfortunately we have seen broken rails and the breakdown of signals last week and the week before, and there was another stranded train outside St Johns station on 5 April. This is not good enough: we need to upgrade the infrastructure around London Bridge, otherwise all the money will have been wasted.
Joseph Johnson
In the next franchise period we will ensure that performance in quality is an absolute focus for the new operator. When that is in place moving towards next year, the new franchisee will adopt the new measures we have proposed as part of the move towards control period 6. The use of a public performance measure that allows services to arrive up to five minutes late at end destination will be replaced by timed to three, or T3, and that measure will be used for the services along this route.