Martin Wrigley

I agree entirely that the impact of Old Oak Common is immense, and will not be just during the construction phase. The six or seven years of delays and cancellations at weekends and Christmases have been covered in this Chamber before, so I will not repeat the list of weeks and weeks of diversions to Euston and significantly reduced services. I have already started to receive complaints from my constituents about the inability of Euston station to cope with the volume of passengers when the trains cannot complete their journeys to Paddington. But the piece of the plan that adds insult to injury for the millions of passengers from the south-west, is the idea that every Great Western Railway train will stop at Old Oak Common, even after construction is completed. It has been somewhat unclear—some misleading averages have been quoted—but having met with GWR and Network Rail, I understand that stopping at Old Oak Common will add some five to 15 minutes to every single journey. Adding 15 minutes on to the fast train—of around two hours—from Exeter to London is significant, and even more so on the quicker trains from Cheltenham or Bristol. Travel to Birmingham is already available via Bristol. Looking at journey times, it will usually be faster to go to Birmingham via Bristol, unless users are further east than Swindon or Westbury. Stopping at Old Oak Common will bring little or no benefit to the majority of the long-distance rail users of the west, south-west and Wales. Can the Minister confirm that fast trains from the south-west should be able to go through Old Oak Common without stopping?