McNulty Report and West Coast Rail

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I can say that they are unfounded. By the way, the right hon. Gentleman made the case for High Speed 2 more eloquently than I could. It will deliver a massive increase in capacity on the west coast corridor and allow much more innovative and flexible services on the west coast main line, which is now operating at—or very close to—capacity. However, there is a serious point about pricing and cliff edges in the pricing system. Anyone who stands at Euston station on a Friday evening will see that nobody wants to board a train at 6.50 pm or 6.55 pm, because that means paying the peak fare. They are all trying to get on the train at 7.2 pm, to the extent that the British Transport police regularly have to deploy to physically keep people off the trains for safety’s sake. That is a barmy pricing system. We have to consider the anomalies of massive cliff edges and try to smooth them out, so that there is less of an incentive not to travel on a particular train. However, overall I would expect such a move to be revenue-neutral across regulated fares; this is about managing the system better, not raising more money.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

One of the understandable grumbles of the Kettering rail users group is that for historical reasons the fare for a journey from Kettering to London is disproportionately higher than that for a journey to London of a similar length from other places. Will the fares policy review seek to iron out such anomalies?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not want to pre-empt the rail fares policy review, to which I am sure that my hon. Friend will make a submission, but I have recently enjoyed meeting the Northampton rail users group, and the Minister of State has just said that she would be happy to meet the Kettering rail users groups, so perhaps we can carry a dialogue forward.