Railway Stations in Cumbria: Staffing Changes

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered staffing of railway stations in Cumbria.

It is an absolute privilege to serve under your guidance in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. The impact of the proposed staffing changes in Cumbria, including the loss of ticket offices, will be immense and entirely negative. With the conclusion of the consultation last month, those closures may be imminent, but the Government have the power to prevent them. That is why I am so pleased and grateful to have secured this debate at this crucial time.

I have a high regard for the Minister personally, and I am here to ask him to intervene directly to save our ticket offices in Cumbria and to prevent the removal of station staff. I draw his attention to the petition to stop the closures in Cumbria, which has been signed by more than 3,000 people. I am determined that our communities should be able to access our stations and be safe at them. Those stations should have knowledgeable professionals on hand to answer the questions we all have when we are rail users, and I want to ensure that the quality of rail travel is not further diminished because of these foolish and backward-looking proposals.

In South Lakeland and Eden alone, we face the closure of Avanti’s ticket offices at the mainline west coast stations at Penrith and Oxenholme. Penrith is set to have no ticket office and to have staff available for ticketing support from 9 am, rather than from 5.30 am. At Oxenholme station, it is a similar story: the ticket office is to close and staff are set to be on hand from 8 am rather than 5.45 am. We face the removal of ticket offices and massively reduced staffing at the Northern Rail-run stations at Appleby, Windermere, Grange-over-Sands and Ulverston.

Ulverston station, where mobility scooter users and people in wheelchairs are dependent on staff to assist them across the tracks to platform 3, will be staffed for just two hours a day, from 11 am to 1 pm, and not at all on Sundays. Grange-over-Sands station, situated in a town with a disproportionately older population, will also be staffed for just two hours a day, from 11.30 am to 1.30 pm, and not at all on Sundays. Appleby station, which has direct connections to Leeds, Carlisle and the Yorkshire Dales national park, will be staffed for just four hours a day, from 9 am to 1 pm, and not at all on Sundays. Windermere station, in the heart of the Lake district—Britain’s biggest visitor destination after London—will be staffed for just three and a half hours a day, from 10 am to 1.30 pm, and, again, not at all on Sundays.

The staff who will be present for those brief periods are to be called “journey makers”, but they will not be able to sell anyone a ticket directly. They are there only to give people guidance on how to use the ticket machines on the platform, many of which do not take cash, by the way—a feature that merely adds to the heap of barriers to access that the changes entail.

For the mainline stations at Oxenholme and Penrith, the proposals mean a huge reduction in the quality and availability of support, but for the branch line stations at Appleby, Windermere, Grange-over-Sands and Ulverston, the proposals are devastating. They effectively amount to the de-staffing of those stations, to the enormous detriment of rail users and the wider community. Unstaffed stations are unsafe stations, especially for solo travellers and even more so for women.

Unstaffed stations are inaccessible stations, too. I met William in Appleby a couple of weeks ago. He is visually impaired and cannot use the ticket machine at the station. To travel, he needs a staffed ticket office. If the changes go through, he will be able to use his local station only on the rare occasions that the “journey maker” happens to be present. Last month, I met volunteers at Sight Advice South Lakes in Kendal, most of whom have visual impairments. They told me the same story as William: de-staffed stations are, for them, unusable stations.

At Grange-over-Sands, a town with a larger, older population where the station really is a lifeline for hundreds of people, the de-staffing of the station will render it inaccessible to many. Lillian and Mohammed from Levens village, who use the station regularly, tell me that because of Mohammed’s disability—he is a wheelchair user—they need a staffed station to help with such things as the ramp to get him on and off the train.

At Ulverston, people with mobility issues need to use the crossing across the tracks to get to platform 3. They can do that only when a member of staff is present, yet the plan is for that station to be staffed for just two hours a day and not at all on Sundays. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell)—my constituency neighbour—and the disability access campaigner Tony Jennings have also rightly brought the matter to the Minister’s attention.

It is my privilege to chair the public transport group Cumbria Better Connected, and in that role I joined the hon. Member, Cumbria Tourism, Cumbria local enterprise partnership, Morecambe Bay Partnership, the RMT, Ulverston business improvement district, local rail users groups and local Westmorland and Furness councillors in sending a letter to the Secretary of State this summer outlining our objections to the plans that the rail companies have put on the table. The Minister replied:

“No currently staffed station should be unstaffed as a result of industry changes, and operators should ensure that staff are well located to meet passenger needs in future. This includes ensuring that staff are available to assist those who need additional support or do not wish to use digital tickets.”

The Minister knows that the proposals to de-staff our branch line stations for at least 80% of the time are not compliant with his pledge in that letter, so he surely cannot permit the proposals to happen.

Further to that, in a debate on ticket office closures in Westminster Hall on 13 September, the Minister stated:

“I do not expect a material reduction in the number of hours where ticketing expertise is available at stations…it is important to note that the volume of hours is similar to what we currently have.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 346WH.]

But that is not the case for the proposals at Oxenholme or Penrith, and it is especially not the case at Grange, Windermere, Appleby or Ulverston. Given that all the train companies are proposing job losses—2,300 job losses in all—as a result of their ticket office closure plans nationwide, it is surely not possible for the volume of staffing hours to be even remotely similar to what we have now, and certainly the consultation does not indicate that that is the intention. Did the Minister mean what he said in this place a month ago? If so, would I be right in assuming that he plans to block the proposals, and that in fact there will not be the job losses proposed by the rail operators?

It seems obvious to me, and I assume it is obvious to the Minister, that the proposals for our stations in Cumbria completely go against his criteria. How on earth can passengers’ needs be met when Appleby station will be staffed for just four hours a day, Windermere for just three and a half hours, Ulverston and Grange stations for a mere two hours each, and none of them staffed at all on Sundays? The loss of ticket offices and our excellent ticket office staff would be a desperate step backwards, and an incredibly foolish and short-sighted one.

The train operators justify their proposals to close ticket offices and de-staff stations by saying that only 12% of passengers book their tickets directly at the ticket office. That is misleading, because it is not the case at our stations. At Appleby, for instance, 39% of all travellers book their tickets at the station office. At Grange and Ulverston stations, more tickets were bought at booking offices than through the electronic machines for every one of the last three years. Even for those who arrive at the station with a ticket, many still have questions that need answering. I am at Oxenholme nearly every week, and the excellent, cheerful ticket office staff are always being asked for advice by rail users. Most arrive with their tickets, but they perhaps lack answers to key questions about their journeys, especially when there are delays and cancellations, as is almost always the case these days.

The proposals are also stupid from a management point of view, because they are enormously demoralising to the entire rail workforce, whether staff work on platforms, in ticket offices or on trains. Have industry bosses and the Minister not noticed the ongoing industrial relations dispute? What possessed them to think that now is the right moment to cleverly pour petrol on that fire by seeking to force through unnecessary changes that damage the industry and morale?

The impact on our economy will be significant, too. In Cumbria, we have 20 million visitors a year. As I have been collecting signatures for our petition to save the ticket offices, I have been talking to passengers at Oxenholme, Appleby, Grange-over-Sands and Windermere. One thing that struck me is that many of those who were keen to sign were tourists. Indeed, at Windermere, the very first four signatories were from Israel, Abu Dhabi, Switzerland and Pakistan. By the way, they all already had their ticket. They were all uncertain about connections, timings and delays and would all be left high and dry if Ministers permit the closures.

Our tourism economy employs 60,000 people in Cumbria. It is our biggest employer by far, generating £3.5 billion a year for our economy. It is unacceptable that our visitors should have their experience so badly damaged by the proposed decisions. Westmorland and Furness Council and the Lake District national park authority are striving to get visitors to come to the lakes but leave their cars at home to protect our world-class landscapes from pollution and congestion. It is not right that that vital work should be undone by a proposal that would downgrade the main railway station in the English Lake district. By the way, many of those who arrive in the lakes as tourists are international visitors who come to the UK via Manchester airport, where TransPennine Express is planning to halve the opening hours of the railway station ticket office. That is a cut in Manchester that would do damage to the economy of the lakes.

The closure of ticket offices at the mainline stations is equally a backward step. At Oxenholme and Penrith stations, staff will not be available for ticket sales or advice until after the first several trains of the day have been and gone. How can that be an improvement in service? The loss of the physical ticket offices is also a foolish thing. Having staff at a designated ticket office means that passengers always know precisely where they can find help and advice, rather than having to scour the platform to see whether they can find a shivering employee randomly stood in an unspecified location. Furthermore, has it occurred to the Minister that the screens in the ticket offices can play an important role? Sadly, staff sometimes find themselves on their own, confronted by agitated and occasionally potentially violent people. It is not right to force them to lose that important shield.

The Beeching cuts of the 1960s were a tragic, myopic error on a huge scale, causing lasting and largely irreparable damage to our transport infrastructure, our environment and our communities. The minds behind that colossal own goal concluded that the arrival of the shiny new motorways and mass private car ownership rendered many of our railways redundant; they were yesterday’s news or old hat. Yet, looking back, few decisions can count as being as destructive or as stupid as the Beeching cuts.

What lesson do we learn from that devastating mistake? It is surely this: that we must not be hasty to throw away the old just because something new has come along. Then, the old was the railways, and the new was the motorways. Today, the old is human beings and human interactions, and the new is technology that allows us to book tickets and manage our journeys online. The new technology is good and most of us use it, but to arrogantly assume that we are on the right side of history if we blot out the human infrastructure of our railways is to invite the same ridicule and derision in future that most of us feel today towards Beeching and the politicians who foolishly followed his recommendations.

In the debate in this Chamber on 13 September, the Minister said:

“I have no role in the consultation at this stage”.—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 13 September 2023; Vol 737, c. 346WH.]

Throughout the process, the Government have tried to maintain that it is industry-led. But that is not really true, is it? Documents released via a freedom of information request confirm not only that the Government had to sign off each company’s proposal before it went for public consultation, but that they were advising the train companies what to do with their closed ticket offices afterwards and were encouraging them to consider renting them out for retail use—and all of that was before the public consultations were even launched.

The proposals to de-staff our stations and damage our railways are not some regrettable imposition by an alien force beyond the Minister’s control. They are proposals from rail operators who are answerable to him and the Secretary of State—proposals that he has the power to quash. If he thinks these damaging proposals are a good thing for Cumbria, the Conservatives must stand behind them and accept responsibility. If they think they are a bad thing, what is the point of them being in office if they will not do the right thing and stop them? If the Minister wanted to call a halt to this process, he could. If he wanted to and if the Prime Minister wanted to, he could save our ticket offices with the stroke of a pen. On behalf of the people of Cumbria, our excellent station staff and our millions of visitors, I call on him to do just that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us have a bit of balance, and try Tim Farron.

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, how kind. It would be terrible—wouldn’t it?—if the Government were claiming to be putting more money into potholes, when in reality in the past two years alone, there has been a £534 million reduction in real-terms funding for highways. I am convinced that local election voters in two weeks’ time will make their decisions based on realities, rather than on bluster.

Here is another reality: Cumbria gets 20 million visitors a year, and we are delighted to receive every single one of them. But our highways are in a state, because we do not get a penny from the Government to compensate for any one of the cars that those 20 million people visit us in. Is it time that the Government gave a funding formula to Westmorland and Furness Council, and Cumberland Council, that takes account of the fact that our roads, and indeed our hospitals, doctors services and police services, are used by others, and not just by ourselves?

[Mr Holden]

As I pointed out in a previous answer, when it comes to councils repairing roads, it is about getting on with the job on the ground. Conservative councils repair on average twice as many potholes per council area as Lib Dem councils do. The recent Government announcement about ensuring that utility companies are properly held to account is also in the right direction. If Lib Dem-controlled councils are interested in potholes, have they implemented a lane rental scheme that enables them to get cash, like Surrey, Kent and West Sussex County Councils have done, all of which are Conservative controlled? There is nothing from the Lib Dems on that.

Rail Services

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I know that my hon. Friend has had a particularly difficult time on the route that serves his constituents. I was clear at the Dispatch Box that TPE’s service is not acceptable, to put it mildly, and it needs to improve. The one thing I would say is that it is overly dependent on rest-day working. When I met northern Mayors, who made this point to me clearly, I ensured that a refreshed, more generous offer on rest-day working was made to ASLEF, but again, it did not even put it to its members. That offer would have made a significant difference in the performance delivered to his constituents. I ask ASLEF to look again at the offer that has been made on rest-day working and take it up, so that we can do the most important thing: deliver improved services to passengers, rather than continue an unnecessary dispute.

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

Avanti’s abysmal performance is not just demoralising its own hard-working staff on stations and on trains, but causing a huge blow to our economy. The Lakes is the second biggest visitor destination in the country, and it is connected with the biggest, here in London, and the impact on the economy is huge and massively damaging. During this six-month probation period we are talking about, Avanti has recorded almost one in five trains cancelled, with almost one in two delayed. What appalling additional reduction in the quality of service must Avanti do to lose the contract? People in Cumbria will be appalled at the apparent low standards.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me if I have this wrong, but I do not think he was here for the whole of my statement, so he may have missed the bit where I set out the improvement that Avanti had delivered. It weekday services have risen from 180 to 264 trains a day, and cancellations were down to 4.2%. I made it clear that Avanti had demonstrated enough improvement to justify the extension until October, but it absolutely has more work to do to deliver for his constituents and others who use the service. That is what the Rail Minister and I will be expecting Avanti to do in the months running up to October.

Decarbonising Rural Transport

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a really important debate. When it comes to decarbonising public transport, bus use is massively important in rural communities like hers and mine. I am sure she will agree with me that the Government’s £2 cap on bus fares is a positive thing and it is positive that it has been extended to June, but even more positive would be to extend it beyond that. But it is of no use whatever if someone lives in a community where there is no bus service. When I think about places in my own community such as the Cartmel peninsula and areas in Cumbria such as the Eden valley, there is a lack of options when it comes to bus services—far too few or none at all—so it would make sense to give local authorities like the new Westmorland and Furness Council the power to start and run their own bus services to fill in the gaps and people could spend their £2 on bus services that actually exist.

[Selaine Saxby]

I agree with the hon. Member. There is so much more that could be done. With so many of these rural transport issues, we need local solutions and for local communities to be able to share their best practice, because there are some great local bus solutions up and down the country. I have a remote district council that is detached from the county council, which is where highways sits. How do we join up those pieces? More could be done to come up with innovative solutions, which already exist in places, but are not universally available. Indeed, bus travel in my constituency is not universally available, let alone decarbonised, and that makes things as basic as getting to school both expensive and problematic.

Our bus company, which I recently met, notes that people are tending to make fewer trips than they did before the pandemic and also tending to make shorter and more local journeys as opposed to long-distance trips on a daily basis. Public transport providers have had to adapt to that, but our communities still rightfully expect the same connections to exist as they did before the pandemic, or even new connections to be developed as society has changed.

Broadly in my constituency the patronage has recovered to about 80% to 90% of pre-pandemic levels, but with concessionary journeys recovering only to around 70%. That recovery creates a challenge in rural settings where margins were stretched or non-existent before the pandemic. Funding needs to respect rurality and the higher costs of operating the routes. That could be done through paying bus service operator grants on a mile or kilometre basis as opposed to per litre of fuel to cover costs. I am assured that the industry wishes to engage with the Department on those points so that a longer-term settlement can be reached to support rural services on a longer-term basis as opposed to the current cycle of short-term funding that we are in, even though that funding is greatly appreciated.

The current Get Around for £2 is fabulous. In my constituency people can do a fantastic trip from Barnstaple to Lynton for just £2—a full 26 miles—or get to Exeter on the bus for £2. In normal times, to get from Ilfracombe, which has recently lost its last bank, to Barnstaple for the nearest branch, is two to three times more than the current £2 rate. We need to find a way to facilitate access to services for remote rural communities. In other communities, such as Woolacombe, employers provide buses for their teams to get to work, because there are no public transport options.

In the peak of the tourist season, overlaid with parking challenges and air pollution, huge queues of visitors and locals try to get to our beautiful beaches. Although the availability of public transport is my primary concern, decarbonisation of it is an entirely different matter, as rural bus journeys are significantly longer than urban ones. Capital investment in suitable vehicles is by definition going to be higher in rural Britain.

I recently spoke here about introducing a rail link from Barnstaple to Bideford. We also unsuccessfully submitted an inquiry into putting in a light rail link from Braunton to Barnstaple. Time and again, those projects do not progress; one cannot help but think that our rurality and population sparsity are factors. I hope that the Department for Transport will continue its positive work in active travel, with the latest round of funding of £200 million including rurality as a factor for the first time.

The previous cycling Minister visited north Devon’s iconic Tarka trail. Completing a stretch of that trail would see the north and south coasts of Devon fully connected. The project was ranked second out of six submitted by Devon County Council. The council team met the Minister to explain their frustration at having the five Exeter-based projects succeed, yet the second highest priority project rejected. I am delighted that rurality is now being considered following the Minister’s visit, and that the Tarka trail project is now being resubmitted. I hope that Active Travel England and the Department will look favourably upon it, and take further steps to enable more active travel solutions come to fruition in rural Britain.

Large counties such as Devon, with big urban centres and an enormous rural hinterland, need different approaches for those two elements. As a community, we would benefit hugely from electric bikes, which can undertake longer, hillier journeys and enable people who may not be able to cycle so far on a traditional bike to do so. Again, electric bike hire facilities are available at transport hubs in Exeter but not Barnstaple.

To begin to decarbonise our transport network, we need to look to transport hubs, where active travel can potentially be the first or last mile. To do that, our buses and trains should be better at taking bikes, hubs should have better bike storage and there should be electric vehicle chargers, if travellers are connecting to buses or trains, alongside public toilets.

[Tim Farron]

I am taking advantage of the hon. Lady’s generosity, for which I am grateful. I am in full agreement with what she says about transport hubs, where there can be electric bikes, non-electric bikes, and bus and rail interchanges. In our community, we have several railway lines: Settle to Carlisle, the Furness line, the Lakes line and the main line. My great concern is that we stand to lose railway station ticket offices at Grange, Appleby and Windermere. Would those not be great places to have hubs? Is that not a good argument to ensure we maintain fully-staffed railway stations in rural communities?

[Selaine Saxby]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is important to look at rurality in how we deal with all infrastructure developments. I know that my own ticket office in Barnstaple has concerns. I have only one trainline, so his constituency is particularly well connected. We need to recognise that, where there is a sparse population, ticket offices are working less than in a busy town centre. We need to be more innovative in our approach, to ensure that residents who do not use trains so often can comfortably use the train station and transport hubs.

I was coming on to say that facilities such as public toilets are a vital part of transport hubs. Barnstaple’s bus station toilets have not reopened since March 2020. If we are serious about encouraging public transport usage and decarbonising our transport, we need to recognise that longer journeys, with longer waits between buses and trains, require these additional facilities to be present, particularly for our older residents. The lack of hubs that are safe, warm and have the right facilities makes using public transport far harder in locations such as North Devon at this time.

Far too many routes in rural Britain are single-carriageway, 60-mile-an-hour roads. If we are to tackle that head-on, to facilitate safer cycling and walking on those roads, we need additional paths to be constructed to facilitate things such as safe school journeys on foot or bike. Although today’s debate focuses on decarbonisation, we could also consider the health benefits of an active travel mode to work or school, which often seem to be somewhat neglected.

I recognise that, as was mentioned earlier, there are examples across the UK of great rural transport schemes. However, as with so many matters around rurality, as discussed in the debate that I led on levelling up rural Britain, it is harder for these examples of best practice to be shared between councils and communities. I hope that as we move towards decarbonising our transportation, more support is given to overstretched councils to share best practice and roll out solutions to rural as well as urban Britain and find funding solutions that give councils the ability to deliver a decarbonisation plan that reflects rurality, alongside an acceptance that the costs per capita will differ. In areas reliant on their tourists, the population swells enormously in the summer, which, again, is rarely reflected in funding settlements or even the calculation of carbon pollution.

Rural Britain deserves to see its transport decarbonised. Our productivity is reduced because of the poor transport links. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister has plans in his Department to ensure that rurality is rapidly included in future funding announcements and that there are long-term settlements lying ahead—it was so warmly welcomed to have rurality mentioned in the current round of active travel funding—because we all want to level up and decarbonise transport in rural Britain.

Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

The assurances that Avanti is giving are that its plans for December will restore the majority of direct services into north Wales. DFT officials are engaging daily with Avanti, as I have touched on, because we do not just want to accept an assurance that the service will be better. Clearly, we want to have verified plans for it to be better. We are seeing additional train drivers coming in and we are reassuring ourselves that Avanti’s plans for December do not include the use of driver rest-day working, because the withdrawal of that prompted the major issues in its timetable. Clearly, we would not want Avanti’s improvement plan to be based on that factor. That is where we are at the moment. We are assured that it has the plan to restore the majority of services in December, but clearly we are engaging with Avanti daily and will see what happens in December, and that will then prompt what we do on the long-term franchise.

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

Avanti is currently able to run approximately 40% of the services out of Euston that its predecessor used to run, with a massive impact on my communities and all those people from London, the biggest destination in the country, who visit the lakes, the second biggest. Staff shortages are clearly the problem, along with a lack of good will in the staff body. There are wonderful people working for Avanti, but there are not enough of them and they are poorly managed. Will the Minister reflect on the fact that one reason why there is such low morale and low commitment to good will and working overtime is the Government-sanctioned programme of ticket office closures, not just on the mainline at Penrith and Oxenholme but in places such as Appleby, Windermere and Grange. Will he push Avanti to make sure that we keep those ticket offices open, and therefore perhaps do something about staff morale and train reliability?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I am always delighted to meet colleagues who share my passion for investing in our rail network and who recognise that our stations are not just a handy place to board a train, but are sometimes the heart of a local community. We are investing in our stations: for example, we recently delivered a new mobility hub at Norwich station in the east of England. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend.

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

Staveley station in my constituency, on the Lakes line from Oxenholme to Windermere, has 41 steps to get up to it. It is 100% inaccessible to anybody with a mobility problem. That is an outrage. We have bid into several pots over the years, but because it is not a main line station, it never qualifies for any funding. Will the Minister meet me and local rail campaigners to make sure that Staveley station is accessible for everyone?

[Kevin Foster]

As the hon. Member will know, we are making great progress on accessibility through our Access for All programme across our stations. We are also completing an accessibility audit of all the stations on our network. I am happy to meet him to talk about his station and I look forward to announcing, in the next year, the latest round of stations that will benefit from Access for All improvements.

Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for High Peak (Robert Largan), who made a thoughtful contribution concerning his constituency.

The integrated rail plan for the north is a real disappointment to many people, not least people from Cumbria, the furthest north-west county in England. When we leaf through the 162 pages of that document, we find not a single mention of the county of Cumbria. That is a reminder that when we talk about the north and levelling up the north, it feels to many of us that the rural north—rural communities generally, but specifically those in the far north-west of England—is not thought of and is very much overlooked.

The cancellation of part of HS2 is deeply troubling, but of course the more troubling cancellation is that of Northern Powerhouse Rail. If one understands the north of England, one understands that what we really need is not to get to London a bit quicker, but to have greater capacity and to get from east to west more quickly. That has been overlooked by the Government. It is a betrayal of the north, yes, but more than that it is a betrayal of their lack of understanding of the north, which is more telling.

I want to focus on a couple of things in my community. First, we appreciate that the HS2 line is not going to go further into Lancashire and into Cumbria, but nevertheless the trains will. I am deeply concerned that there are no plans for any of those HS2 trains to stop in the biggest visitor destination in the country apart from London, namely my constituency—the Lake district. That should be put right.

We have a railway line from the main line at Oxenholme that takes us to Windermere—the Lakes line. It is a very short line, and it would be one of the cheapest electrifications in the country if only it were done. Sadly, the Government have cancelled that. I am, however, encouraged by recent conversations with the Rail Minister about the possibility of a passing loop at Burneside, which would give us the opportunity to effectively dual the line again—that was our Beeching cut back in the ’60s and ’70s. Doing that would double the capacity on the Lakes line and massively increase the number of people who could come to the Lake district and not come by car. That would be a huge positive.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are many small things that are huge to us. At Staveley, the first station in the Lake district, there are 42 steps to get up to the station. Friends of mine who have disability issues, are elderly or need to use prams simply cannot use their local station, so I call on the Government to consider very carefully funding access to Staveley station.

We have a world-class visitor destination in the Lake district, with what feels at the moment like a third-class rail connection. That is why I ask, finally, that the Government reconsider the electrification of the line from Oxenholme to Windermere, and of the Furness line from Lancaster to Barrow through my constituency. That would be a positive, carbon-neutral thing to do, and it would be a massive boost to tourism and to local communities. It would be a good, effective use of public money after this disappointment.

Public Passenger Transport

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I support the spirit of these regulations. We must have equity of access to public transport across the country, and the collection of data to build an accurate picture of services is an essential part of that. However, I must warn the Minister that she will have a hard task collecting data on bus services in many towns and villages in Cumbria, because on most days there aren’t any, or at least it is so far that it will be a very short job and hardly worth the journey—which, in case I have not already made myself clear, she would not be able to make by bus.

I acknowledge that the Government have gone some way towards recognising the crisis in bus services, such as by laying these regulations, and indeed earlier this year there was an announcement of additional funding and the unveiling of a national bus strategy, of which I am sure this forms a key part. But the new funding turned out to be peanuts, and while having a strategy is definitely better than not having a strategy, it was still a far cry from the claims of the press release and light years off providing the solutions needed in communities like ours, where we would like these regulations to apply in practice.

So, to be clear, the whole of Cumbria received a total of £383,887, which, split roughly six ways between six constituencies, means about £65,000 for my constituency. My constituency could contain geographically every single one of the 73 constituencies in Greater London, and London—where these regulations will definitely apply —sees an annual subsidy to its public transport of around £700 million a year. And we must not forget that our £65,000—just less than a thousandth of 1% of the London subsidy—is just a one-off, and a one-off will not do.

Ministers surely know that research shows that in order for a community to trust a bus service enough to rely on it as part of their regular routines—enough to use it, basically—that service needs to be functioning reliably and affordably for two to three years. I am sure that the data collected as a consequence of this regulation will show that and prove it, but we know it already.

So this short-term puddle of cash does not even wet the feet of the problem. We will find a way of spending it wisely, and we are not ungrateful, but as we dare to hope for a time beyond the covid crisis, people in my communities want to believe that we have not sacrificed so much, endured such hardship and suffered such shattering loss just to go back to how things were beforehand.

The mission must be to build back better, and that must include a refusal to leave communities behind. Rural, more isolated communities such as ours in Cumbria are at risk. Those communities are also often older, and while the majority of people, even in their 80s and beyond, will make some use of the technology we are talking about here, a higher proportion than in other age groups will not, and they are the people I am most concerned about in terms of the application of these regulations.

The average age of the population in South Lakeland is 10 years above the national average. It cannot be right that we forget the generation that has borne the brunt of this virus, yet we will do that if we acquiesce over the isolation that so many of them endure. Many I know have found themselves alone and disconnected in their later years, with the loss of bus services leaving them stranded in places that are utterly beautiful but utterly isolated. Many in these towns and villages rely on buses for the basic tasks of daily life—shopping, going to the doctors, making appointments, seeing friends or getting to work. Buses, when they exist, provide those people with the ability to look after themselves, be independent, protect their physical and mental health, and stave off the loneliness that isolation can bring. Technology can help to underpin that, but only if there is a service that it can be underpinned by.

There is no doubt that more of us have become acquainted with isolation over the last few months, but what is someone who lives in a small village and is unable to drive supposed to do if their one transport link is removed? At the same time, they witness the closure of accessible services as a consequence of the technology that is available in other parts of the economy. With few neighbours and fewer local services, the loss of buses constitutes the loss of connection, which risks leaving many more people even more isolated and vulnerable.

Building back better must mean that we learn from the improvement in air quality and the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions throughout this time, and public transport is key to preventing a return to pre-covid carbon emissions. Bus services will be central to that, as part of an integrated public transport system. That is why I continue to urge the Minister to double the capacity of the Lakes line by introducing a passing loop, as well as electrifying the line to significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

Many of us are excited for a time when lockdown has eased and we are able to see friends and family and visit the shops without unnecessary restrictions and caution. But the Government must recognise that the end of the lockdown will not bring that relief to everyone. In fact, for many isolated people in Cumbria, the official lockdown has not looked very different from the growing isolation that they have suffered due to a lack of services and transport links. In the 10 years between 2008 and 2018, the north-west lost 888 separate, distinct services, and that does not include the services we have lost in the last couple of years. We have not taken this lying down. We would love those services to be traced by an app and part of a technological solution, but as I say, there is no point having the technological solution if there is no bus service to underpin it.

It is not only the elderly in our communities who suffer from reduced bus services. Young people’s access to public transport is also under threat. Free school transport is provided for young people up to sixth-form age, but after that, the support is not available. It makes no sense for the Government to demand that young people carry on in education until 18 and then deny them the ability to afford to do so—a generation that clearly is technologically competent and able to make use of the apps we are talking about. In places like Sedbergh and Coniston, it is often impossible to gain access to sixth-form provision at schools or colleges by public transport. That is why, alongside these regulations, there needs to be a statutory responsibility for local authorities to guarantee home-to-school transport for 16 to 18-year-old students, in the same way there is for under-16s.

There must also be buses available to deliver that transport in the first place. In many of our towns and villages, if the Minister did agree to subsidise sixth-form bus travel alongside this technological innovation, there just are not any services to be subsidised. That has been emphasised during the covid crisis, as many families with free school meal vouchers have not been able to use them because the vouchers are not for the local supermarket in their town—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is going way off the scope of the regulations. If we are discussing regulations, that is what we are discussing. We cannot not have a general speech about everything that is happening in his constituency, as important as that is. This debate is about the regulations, and I urge him to return to them ASAP.

[Tim Farron]

I will do so instantly. I make the point, though, that the whole point of having the technology that is rightly rolled out through this statutory instrument is that it should apply to services that exist, not imaginary ones that we wish existed. My community is suffering under covid like anywhere else, but the hospitality and tourism industry is vital to us. We are the second biggest visitor destination after London, and yet our public transport infrastructure means that this instrument may as well not exist for many of the communities that I represent. While I support the regulations and will not oppose them, I want to send the Government the message that they should ensure that there are sufficient services in rural communities like mine, so that these applications actually have some application in a county like Cumbria.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Minister, and I ask her to address the points raised about the regulations.

Bus Services: Cumbria

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bus services in Cumbria.

It is a huge privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this massively important issue.

To represent a part of Britain as breathtakingly beautiful as ours in south Cumbria—to stand here and speak up for communities in the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District and the rest of the south Lakes—is the greatest privilege. It is an awesome place, and it is a huge place—the travel distances are immense. My constituency could contain every single one of the 73 constituencies that make up London, and we would be delighted to have the public transport options of just one of them. In such a vast and sparsely populated area as the south Lakes, public transport links are fundamental, yet so often they fall woefully short of meeting the needs of communities, and the provision that currently exists is coming under continuous and increasing threat.

Cumbria suffers from rural transport poverty. The picture for the whole north-west region is pretty bleak; in the 10 years from 2008 to 2018 the north-west lost 888 separate, distinct services. That figure does not include the services that we have lost in the past year. We in Cumbria have been particularly badly hit, although we had a little good news last week when we won a temporary reprieve for two bus services in the south Lakes. Stagecoach agreed to continue running the 552 between Arnside and Kendal and the 530 between Cartmel, Levens and Kendal, but only for a further three weeks, while we look to put a longer-term solution in place.

In a large rural area with a dispersed population, it is very hard for bus services to be run on a commercial basis. Unlike many urban areas, we cannot rely on the private sector to fill the gaps when funding disappears.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I represent a constituency with many similar challenges to those he is talking about in Cumbria; it is a collection of small towns and villages around a bigger town, near a city. Exactly that point applies—we cannot rely on a commercial service. If we compare the number of cuts, the funding and the services that we have in south Yorkshire and Cumbria with areas such as London, the same model simply does not work. Does he agree that we need more funding, but that local people also need to get the services they deserve?

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Lady’s intervention is very appropriate. I am certain that her communities will have had similar experiences to mine. In the end, investment in public transport is just that. People use the word subsidy, but we are talking about an investment, because the impact on local communities, their economy and the wellbeing of the people who live in them of having these services is worth the money we put into them. It makes more money in terms of the multiplier, so her point is well made and I am grateful to her for making it.

Over the next three weeks we will work together to try to provide a long-term solution to the proposed loss of the 552 and the 530 services. We are grateful to have managed to persuade Stagecoach to give us that stay of execution. As I said, in a large rural area with a dispersed population, it is hard for bus services to be run on a commercial basis and, unlike many urban areas, we cannot rely on the private sector to fill the gaps when funding disappears. In fact, none of the recent services that have been cut has since been taken up by a commercial provider. Once they are gone, they are usually gone for good.

That is why I am so determined that we should find solutions now to protect or to replace the 530 and the 552 before they disappear. With no alternative bus service, those communities can easily become cut off. The average age in my patch is 10 years above the national average, and with a significantly larger older population the need for reliable, regular bus services is all the greater. Many people I know have found themselves alone and disconnected in their later years, the loss of bus services leaving them stranded in places that are utterly beautiful but utterly isolated.

The steady erosion of our bus services comes at the worst time, when other key services are also being reduced. The closure of bank branches in places such as Milnthorpe, Grange, Sedbergh, Ambleside and Coniston in recent times, alongside the closure of shops and post offices, means that people rely even more on public transport to get to the bigger towns and villages, just as those public transport options are disappearing.

That is why we were right to fight to expose Barclays for its dreadful plan to withdraw from the scheme that underpins our post offices, and I am relieved that Barclays has done a U-turn under pressure from many of us. However, it is a reminder that we need to ensure that the banks pay a fair price to the post offices that now fill the spaces that they left behind when they closed their branches and abandoned our communities.

Many in our towns and villages rely on the buses for the basic tasks of daily life—shopping, doctor’s appointments, seeing friends and family or getting to work. The 530 is the only bus route that serves the village of Levens. It is well used by residents to travel into Kendal to shop and to access other vital services. The same applies to the 552; without that service, there is no regular bus connection linking Arnside with the other major communities.

We must also consider the impact of loneliness on physical and mental health. Let us imagine someone who lives in a small village and is unable to drive. If their one transport link is removed, they will find themselves increasingly cut off, unable to travel at the same time as they witness the closure of accessible services in the place they live, with more and more of the homes in their community becoming second homes that are empty for 90% of the year. With few neighbours and fewer local services, the loss of buses constitutes the loss of a vital lifeline and risks leaving many even more isolated and vulnerable.

It is not only the elderly in our communities who are suffering from the reduced bus services. Young people’s access to public transport is also under threat. Free school transport is provided for children up to sixth-form age, but after that the support is not available. It simply makes no sense for the Government to demand that young people carry on in education until they are 18 and then deny them the ability to afford to do so. In places such as Sedbergh and Coniston, it is often impossible to gain access to sixth-form provision at schools or colleges by public transport. There needs to be a statutory responsibility for local education authorities to guarantee home-to-school transport for 16 to 18-year-old students, in the same way that there is for the under-16s. However, there must also be the buses available to deliver that transport in the first place.

Community bus services have filled the gap in some cases, as over the past 30 years Governments of all colours have allowed funding for bus provision to evaporate. To their absolute credit, communities have not just stood by. When the X12 from Coniston to Ulverston was cut, the community stepped up to run the service through fundraising and sheer determination, but it has not been easy. It is a service run in the face of obstacles thrown up by the Department for Transport’s own rules.

Similar stories could be told of the 106 between Kendal and Penrith, and of the 597 Windermere town bus. In Sedbergh the buses are now run by the community-run Western Dales Bus, set up after the cancellation of the 564 left Sedbergh entirely without a connection to the main town of Kendal. I am massively grateful to the volunteers who make those services possible. Indeed, it was a pleasure to be a volunteer driver myself on the Sedbergh bus just a few months ago. It was a great pleasure for the passengers too—at least, they were pleased when the experience was over.

I am proud of our communities and proud of the bus services that so many groups run locally, working tirelessly to provide the best services they can, but it is a battle that comes at a personal cost. Our communities do a phenomenal job, but they should not have to. Urban areas would never settle for that absence of provision, so why should we?

The Cumbria chamber of commerce last year consulted businesses throughout our county for their response to Transport for the North’s strategic review. Inadequate bus services were cited repeatedly for the toll that they were taking on the ability of businesses to recruit staff. Put simply, staff have no means of getting to work. That is a particular issue for the tourism and hospitality industry, in which staff often have to start shifts early or finish late. Lack of buses also prevents businesses in the Lake district from recruiting staff from Barrow, where the employment pool is bigger and unemployment is higher.

Bus services are essential to life for locals. They are also key to Cumbria’s vibrant tourism industry. Cumbria’s Lake district is Britain’s second biggest visitor destination after London—16 million people visited us last year. A high proportion of visitors use their free bus passes while on holiday. That is subsidised by Cumbria County Council through funds provided by the Government, but calculated according to the number of people permanently living in our community. That calculation does not count the reality of the colossal number of tourists using the service. The funding does not even begin to reflect the number of passes used in our area, and local taxpayers end up picking up the shortfall. That is one reason why there is no money to subsidise public bus services in Cumbria; we are basically subsidising public transport for people from richer authorities who do not return the favour.

It strikes me as bizarre, standing in London as I am, that bus services here receive a £722 million annual subsidy, while in Cumbria we receive absolutely nothing. The lack of subsidy has a catastrophic impact on fares, and the extortionate prices make commuting by bus a real challenge, especially for lower-paid workers. How is it right that the 5-mile bus journey from Ambleside to Grasmere—neighbouring communities—costs £4.90, while a journey of equivalent length in London costs £1.50? The Government subsidise buses in a big city where the market is not broken, but they refuse to help in rural areas where the market absolutely is broken.

We are proud that so many people want to visit our area—we love to welcome you to Cumbria. Our tourism industry is invaluable to the economy, but investment in public services is essential to ensuring that tourism does not damage our local communities but helps them to thrive. We want to encourage our visitors to travel sustainably, but 85% of them use the motor car to get to our community and to travel around once they are there. However, we know that with the right interventions and conditions, our visitors will travel sustainably.

Tourism sector deal zone proposals include a focus on sustainability, and public bus transport is a key component of that—so we welcome it—alongside rail, boats, bikes and, of course, walking. Improved bus services could alleviate pressure on the roads that become clogged with the cars of those visiting.

The reality is that we are too late to prevent climate change, but we have perhaps a dozen years left to avoid a major climate catastrophe, with real and appalling human consequences. [Interruption.]

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. [Interruption.] Order. Could you sit down in the Public Gallery and be quiet, please. Thank you. Mr Farron—[Interruption.] Please, this is a debating chamber; it is not for members of the public to take part in the debate. I am awfully sorry, but thank you for leaving. I am sorry, Mr Farron. Would you like to continue?

[Tim Farron]

Thank you, Dame Cheryl.

The reality, whether we like it or not, is that climate change is happening. The question is whether we can prevent a climate catastrophe that will have huge impacts on human beings in this country and across the globe. Tackling this global disaster will take change in every community and lots of steps that add up to a bigger picture. Public transport is an element of that. In order for there to be success globally, we in the Lakes are determined to act locally. Our community bus services prove that determination.

Two new platforms are being funded and opened at Manchester Piccadilly railway station. That important public investment in infrastructure and the economy through the northern powerhouse is good news, but where is the equivalent for the rural north? The transport spend in the north-west per head of population is still barely half that in London, despite promises made when the northern powerhouse was formed. I will continue to fight the cuts to individual bus services. I will continue to stand with and work with the community to find alternative solutions, just as we are currently doing for Arnside, Levens, Cartmel, Hincaster and Kendal. But let us be honest: that is not good enough. The concept of the northern powerhouse is great, but from Cumbria’s perspective it is not much of a powerhouse and it is not very northern.

If new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly are an investment that will boost the Manchester city region’s economy, a comprehensive bus service in rural Cumbria is the investment to boost the Cumbrian economy, so that is my proposal today: that the Minister should ensure the direct commissioning of a comprehensive, affordable and reliable rural bus network in Cumbria. Will the Minister do that as a key plank of the northern powerhouse?

The bus service running through the south Lakes along the A6 and the A591 is the 555. Running from Lancaster to Keswick, it serves Milnthorpe, Kendal, Staveley, Windermere, Ambleside and Grasmere. It is a reliable service, but extremely expensive. The Kendal to Ambleside journey was recently revealed as the second most expensive route in the country. But if we look at the 555 as the trunk service, what we have seen over the last 30 years has been the slow but steady hacking off of the twigs and the branches. If people do not live in one of the communities along the main south Lakes route, they are more than likely without a bus service. Therefore, what I am asking for is a new commissioned service that will bring back buses to every community and breathe new life into the public transport of the Lakes.

If the Government keep ignoring the plight of rural communities, we will keep fighting for ourselves, rolling up our sleeves, making our own luck and finding solutions against the odds, but we would love it if they would stop ignoring us and instead commission a comprehensive rural bus service to exceed anything that we have seen before, even 35 years ago before deregulation. It will be an investment that revives rural communities, boosts our economy, tackles isolation and connects our towns and villages. I plead with the Minster to be ambitious and to back that proposal.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Before I ask the Minister to respond to the debate, may I thank you, Mr Farron, for bearing with the interruption, and may I place on the record our thanks to the Doorkeeper for dealing on our behalf with that interruption?

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

Mr Oakervee is trying to ensure that he works consensually with the panel to ensure that they reach a single report. The management of the panel and the individuals on it, who cover a wide range of views, is a matter for Mr Oakervee.

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

HS2 is an investment for the north of England, but it would be a lot more popular in the north of England if the trains actually stopped somewhere in the far north of England. At present, there are no plans whatsoever for HS2 trains to stop in Cumbria, even though the Lake District is the biggest visitor destination in the country after London. Will the Minister fix this immediately?

[Paul Maynard]

The hon. Gentleman is perhaps tempting me to go a little too far in presuming that everything is going ahead. I do not want to pre-empt Mr Oakervee’s report, but he will be aware that under the previous plans, classic-compatible trains will run north of Wigan and will therefore be able to stop at a range of stations, including Kendal, Oxenholme in the Lake District and Carlisle. That is part of what the West Coast Partnership will be able to consider.