Dan Jarvis
Main Page: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)Department Debates - View all Dan Jarvis's debates with the Department for Transport
(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Huw Merriman
If I give my station as an example, we have one member of staff, who is in a ticket office. Most people already have their tickets, for the reasons I have given; only one in 10 buy them from the ticket office. They access the platform through a gate and do not see any members of staff. If there are delays and problems, it is better for passengers to be alongside the member of staff on the platform to get that information, rather than trying to find them behind glass.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
There is a problem with the Minister’s point about looking to the future. Back in 2021, Transport for the North, of which I was a board member at the time, was forced to abandon its integrated smart ticketing programme after the Government pulled the funding. I am sure the Minister will remember that from his time on the Select Committee. That work would have helped to digitise transport and create multi-modal, multi-operator pay-as-you-go travel on rail, light rail and bus. We thought it was a deeply flawed decision at the time, and recent events have shown that to be the case. Will he work with TfN and others to see whether any of that work can be reinstated?
Huw Merriman
I have the greatest respect for the hon. Member and I will certainly look at what more can be done. We are keen to roll out more pay-as-you-go. There will be 400 stations by the end of the year that will have pay-as-you-go in place, where people can tap in and out. That tends to be the future, as we see with London Underground. Those pilots are in place for the end of the year in the west midlands and Manchester. I recognise that does not cover the area he mentions, and I am happy to work with him to see what more can be done.
Coming back to London Underground, this system has been in place for some years. London Underground does not have staff behind ticket office counters, and I believe it works well. It has freed those staff to come out into the station area as a whole, where they can give much better advice and understanding to passengers. It works really well, and that is why, I believe, no Labour Mayor has asked for it to be reinstated.