Olly Glover

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and thank both him and the Minister for the opportunity to speak. My hon. Friend eloquently articulated the cost and train service challenges facing his constituents on the south-west main line. Many of them are shared by my constituents in Didcot and Wantage in their commuting experience on the great western main line between Didcot and London Paddington. An annual season ticket on this route, without any London travelcard addition, for the 53 miles in each direction costs £6,300. A peak-hour day return is £81. Sadly, few commuters can benefit from travelling off peak. In part that is because the evening peak period for fast trains lasts from 15.33 until 19.21—nearly four hours. Such a long peak period can create significant overcrowding on the first and last off-peak trains, which is not an effective use of the capacity available. Given that we are frequently told that travelling volumes are lower than before the pandemic, it feels like a missed opportunity that such harsh rush-hour restrictions have not been reformed. To save money, some of my constituents choose to double their journey time by using slower, local trains instead of intercity ones, which is less than convenient. As well as supporting my hon. Friend’s calls for fare freezes and wider service improvements, I make two broader observations. First, as so often with rail policy, the key questions for the Government are: how much do they wish our railways to be used, and how much do they wish the railways to deliver their potential for wider economic value? To make the most of the high and generally fixed costs associated with infrastructure and operations, making the ticketing system comprehensible and affordable will help to increase the volume of fare revenue, as well as the yield from each fare. Secondly, the fact that so many people in the south- east of England have long and expensive commutes by train is surely partly a product of London’s profoundly unaffordable housing market. As so often, transport policy does not, or should not, exist in a vacuum.