Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a joy to continue serving under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Stuart—I am thoroughly enjoying it, and I hope you are as well.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing a very important debate, which I think would have been even better attended if it had not clashed with the Railways Bill. This issue matters hugely to so many of us, but I am sure it also matters to many Members who are in the main Chamber. He made a really strong case for rural rail services in his beautiful constituency, as did the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), who made a really good speech that highlighted the issues affecting her lovely part of the world.

The major timetable update that we expect on 14 December is a source of significant worry for many of us in rural communities. Although there are some exciting developments that I am sure the Minister will list, we fear that the changes will be overwhelmingly urban and intercity focused, just like those introduced in May. They offer far too little to the rural communities that the Liberal Democrats now represent so comprehensively from Wick to Penzance, with Oxenholme pretty much halfway.

Rural rail routes suffer from limited frequency, infrastructure constraints and, ultimately, a lack of investment in tracks, stations and rolling stock. On the Lakes line, the Furness line and the Cumbrian coastal line, we see hourly services if we are lucky, whereas it is closer to every two hours on the Settle to Carlisle line. This has a negative impact on commuters, on school and college students, and on our vital visitor economy, which serves 20 million people, provides jobs for 60,000 and is worth £4.5 billion to the economy every year.

Connecting to local buses, which hon. Members have mentioned, becomes precarious when even small timetable changes can blow apart entire journey plans. In Grange-over-Sands, buses and trains coincide at exactly the same time on each hour, and predictable lateness on both roads and rail mean that there can be no certainty of interconnectivity. People seeking to get home to Cartmel, Flookburgh, Allithwaite and Lindale live with the daily anxiety of not knowing whether they will make their connection. On the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line, villages in Yorkshire and Cumbria miss out because passenger services to rural communities have been downgraded. The 13.37 service from Carlisle to Leeds, which passes through my constituency, has been converted into a semi-fast service, so it misses out most of the intermediate stations. By working with local campaigners, we have thankfully secured additional stops at Garsdale and Ribblehead, but Armathwaite, Lazonby, Langwathby, Dent and Haughton are still bypassed, leaving those communities with a four-hour gap in southbound services in the afternoon. The Government would never tolerate this sort of thing in an urban community.

An additional example of rural and northern communities being overlooked is the network closures in January during the Clifton bridge work—something that will impact pretty much everybody on the west side of the country. Passengers changing at Oxenholme between the Lakes line and TransPennine Express services to Manchester airport face waits of almost an hour in both directions, but that is not the half of it, because Avanti has chosen not to serve Oxenholme at all. This is hardly a surprise to many of us, because whenever there is a problem with the track in Scotland or Cumbria, Avanti almost always chooses to cancel all services north of Preston anyway. We are used to Avanti treating Cumbria, north Lancashire and Scotland as if we do not exist, but as predictable as this is, it is not acceptable.

If Avanti’s normal London timings had been maintained as far as Oxenholme, the connection with the Lakes line could have continued. Alternatively, TransPennine Express, which is still operating, could have taken over those timings, but it sadly declined. Even if its trains could not continue beyond Preston, a simple Preston to Oxenholme shuttle would have kept a reliable interchange in place and still provided four trains per hour to Manchester.

With years of west coast main line upgrade work still to come, the lack of planning for rural connectivity cannot be allowed to continue, and the upgrades do not promise enough for the main line in the rural far north-west of England. I think it would be fair to conclude that we saw that most acutely with the derailment on the southbound track at Shap on 3 November. It was not a laughing matter, and we were very grateful that no one was seriously injured, but that derailment has surely got to be a wake-up call for Network Rail.

[Rachel Gilmour]

I have three nuclear facilities in my constituency: Hinkley A, B and C. David Peattie, the chief executive officer of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has referred to the horrible incident at Shap, because the NDA runs nuclear waste on trains on that rail line. Does my hon. Friend agree that if there had been nuclear waste on that train, the situation would have been even worse?

[Tim Farron]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The horror was even closer to happening than that: nobody was hurt and the train remained upright between the tracks, but it was about eight minutes off being hit by the northbound train going in the opposite direction, which would undoubtedly have led to catastrophic loss of life. I do not want to pre-empt the ongoing investigation by the rail accident investigation branch, but we cannot help wondering whether the failure of this Government and the previous Government to fund the upgrades necessary to ensure the resilience both of the line and of the embankment between Warrington and Lockerbie could have played a part in that terrifying near miss.

There is much to welcome—the Liberal Democrats welcome the expansion of contactless fares into more rural and suburban areas of the London commuter belt, as well as the improvements on some rural midland lines—but we are urging the Government to establish a nationwide tap-in, tap-out ticketing system, which would be simple, modern and fair. It is time to end the regional lottery that passengers face across our network. We also continue to campaign to reverse the cuts to the restoring your railway scheme, which was scrapped by the Chancellor in last year’s Budget. That scheme would have delivered genuine social, economic and environmental benefits to rural areas that are too frequently cut off from public transport. We want to see smaller rural stations reopened and a UK-wide Network Rail railcard introduced, making rail travel more affordable, tackling regional inequalities and simplifying the system for passengers.

[David Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

Order. I think the hon. Gentleman is drawing to a close—and focusing on timetable changes, which are the subject of this debate.

[Tim Farron]

Well, even the best timetabling is meaningless, Mr Stuart, if you cannot make it to the platform to catch your train. The Government have effectively scrapped the mid-tier section of the Access for All scheme, which is meant to end the barriers to access for people with disabilities and mobility issues. If the mid-tier scheme is scrapped, only mainline train stations will ever be made access-friendly for disabled people, which is outrageous. I have an example in my constituency: the platform at Staveley station on the Lakes line, which passengers have to stagger up 41 steep steps to reach. I ask the Minister to reopen the mid-tier scheme, to support not just Staveley but all rural stations.

Rural communities deserve a railway system that recognises them as equal partners in our national network, not an afterthought. The solutions are not beyond us. With the right priorities, the Government could transform the experience of passengers right across the country. We call for a nationwide tap-in, tap-out system to extend the planned best price guarantee across all digital and physical sales channels, to ensure that passengers are offered the most cost-effective ticket available. We call for electrification as standard for new line. We call for ambitious targets to expand battery and hydrogen technology, where appropriate, including for freight. The Government should also grab the low-hanging fruit and invest in passing loops, such as the one proposed for the Lakes line. That would be a relatively inexpensive way to double capacity on so many of our rural lines—

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

And on timetable changes?

[Tim Farron]

And to ensure safe and reliable onward travel, Mr Stuart.

The reality is that when someone’s train comes in, if they cannot get to their next destination they are utterly snookered. That is particularly the case in rural areas where stations are unstaffed. At night, that often creates not only inconvenience, but a lack of safety, particularly at this time of year, particularly with late-night services curtailed and particularly for those who are travelling on their own. I will finish by simply saying that railways should work for all, urban and rural alike.