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From Public Accounts Committee Transcript of Evidence 12th October 2005

Sadiq Khan MP questioning Mr Mike Mitchell, Director General (Rail), Department for Transport, Mr George Muir, Director General, Association of Train Operating Companies and Mr John Armitt, Chief Executive, Network Rail

Q135 Mr Khan: Mr Mitchell, having read the report from the NAO and having heard the answers given by your colleagues and indeed your answers, would you say the quality of service received by passengers who use your stations, our constituents, is excellent, satisfactory or unsatisfactory?

Mr Mitchell: I think we would have to be guided by the responses from the public, both in the NAO Report, which we accept, and in the reports produced by the RPC. I think it is fairly clear that passenger satisfaction has been slowly improving, but I do not think any of us can be satisfied that is a position we want to remain in.

Q136 Mr Khan: How does your answer dictate the urgency or otherwise of your response to concerns raised by colleagues and by the NAO?

Mr Mitchell: I think Mr Newton has to some extent covered this. In the early years of the 21st century the priorities had to be addressing the state of the network in total, the safety of the network and the backlog of engineering work which had to be done and which Network Rail, I think, have addressed very effectively. Now we have dealt with that to an extent - and I am not being complacent, I do not feel that 85% is where we need to be, we need to move far and further than that - I think now we can start addressing some of these things.

Q137 Mr Khan: Talking about moving on. Can I ask Mr Muir, Southwest Trains are in charge of Earlsfield station which is in my constituency of Tooting. The sort of problems experienced by the 11,000-odd pensioners, the 11,000-odd residents with long-term illnesses and parents with pushchairs, difficulties with access to the station, there are no disability facilities, no lifts or escalators, other problems include no security, wooden staircases and very steep staircases and problems with ticketing facilities, so people are queuing outside on a Monday morning. Are you satisfied with the answer just given, "we have other priorities and now we will come on to these priorities"?

Mr Muir: I would certainly like to see better facilities at your stations. Indeed, I noticed the stations in your area, many of them are not accessible and do not have wheelchair access and indeed some of them do have problems with graffiti and vandalism. All I can do is assure you that train operators are putting resources into it. Whether there is money to make these wheelchair accessible? The ideal would be to make it wheelchair accessible, but this is enormously expensive and it is a priority for Government to decide as to whether they have the money to make them wheelchair accessible. In the meantime, what we are trying to do is do all the things we can do to make it easier for people with disabilities to travel on the railway, that is by improving information and improving the training of staff. Last week the ATOC approved an investment of £600,000 to improve the computer system which enables disabled passengers to book assistance in advance. We have such a system and it works very well now.

Q138 Mr Khan: In light of that, how do you explain when a disabled person without a computer goes to Earlsfield station in the evening, there is no staff there, nobody can direct them to where they can go, there is no sign up saying, "If you cannot get to the platform you can ring this number and a cab will come around", so the station is accessible. How are we helping them?

Mr Muir: The arrangement we have got to address this issue- it is the best that we can do and we will try and improve it- is that if people call train operators 24 hours before and make a booking, we will endeavour to make arrangements for them to complete their journey. I cannot promise that it happens in all cases because it is a complicated world but, for example, depending on where it is, we might send taxis or make other arrangements for people to use the railway.

Q139 Mr Khan: I could put out a press release to go in the Muslim Borough News, the local Guardian in Tooting, saying, "Any disabled person who wishes to travel and have the same rights that I have on public transport in British Rail, in the stations locally of Earlsfield and Wandsworth Common, can ring up this number and they will get the same level of service that the rest of us receive"?

Mr Muir: What I would rather do, if I may, is after this hearing write to you and confirm what we do in individual circumstances.

Q140 Mr Khan: You raise a good point in answering the previous question. Southwest Trains, in fact, want a holistic approach to Earlsfield station, which leads me on to Mr Armitt. There is a half a hectare site available for sale owned by Network Rail adjoining Earlsfield station. One would have thought - especially reading your "hot off the press" press release, talking about joined-up work in private finance partnership - that when you sell this piece of land, you would want to make sure that the planning gain is used to improve the quality of services at Earlsfield station, but also for a development which benefits local residents in the sort of way that the German stations usually benefit German residents. I have been told that the company selling the property on your behalf want the highest bid available and approaches made by local developers to try a holistic approach, in partnership with Southwest Train, has been pooped and they have been told that frankly we want the highest bid because we want to cut and run and use the money for proceeds elsewhere which could be stations in constituencies around this table, which is all wonderful for them, but I want an improved station in Earlsfield. What do you say to that?

Mr Armitt: I am surprised. Anyway, whatever the local developer may wish to do, of course, he is going to have to get planning consent for it and it would be absolutely normal and to be expected in a situation like this, that he will not get permission to do things without taking account of some of the benefits which the station requires because the local authorities will use all the powers they have to make sure the development does take account of this issue.

Q141 Mr Khan: The site is owned by Network Rail. You are going to sell it to the highest bidder, who I am sure will put up luxury flats, that is what everyone does, to make huge profits, and that site is now lost. Southwest Train are desperate to get hold of that site and work in partnership with you, but you want the highest price.

Mr Armitt: I do not know the details of this particular bid, but normally we would be looking for a balanced bid which we will get. We want both. We will want the very best bid that we can get and we will want to make the best improvements we can to the station.

Q142 Mr Khan: In that case, will you agree to delay the closing date for bids, which is 21 October, for you to investigate whether or not Network Rail is acting in the best interest of local residents in Tooting and Earlsfield by going for the highest bid possible?

Mr Armitt: If the closing date is 21 October, we will have a very long way to run if the bids can come in on 21 October and then in appraising the bids we can see what opportunities can be delivered through those bids to benefit the station.

Q143 Mr Khan: Sorry to press you, but somebody who once had a holistic approach has been discouraged from putting that bid in but has been asked to put in a bid which could compete with those who are putting in bids for, for example, luxury flats.

Mr Armitt: I am quite happy to receive bids on both cases and then judge on the value for money at the end of the day which is the best. It could be that the very best bid will give me a lot more money than the balanced bid, in which case it might be better to take that extra money and then spend it as Network Rail on stations elsewhere.

Q144 Mr Khan: Excellent. You are going to reinvest the money for the better of Earlsfield and Tooting residents, is that what you are saying?

Mr Armitt: No, I am saying that we would take the money and spend it. As always, we have to prioritise our spending and there could be other stations, it might even be the next station down the line, where it would be more sensible to spend the money than at Earlsfield. I cannot make a judgment or a commitment on Earlsfield sitting here.

Q145 Mr Khan: You are willing to look into this and get back to me.

Mr Armitt: I will.

Q146 Mr Khan: I have got one other final question to ask and it is probably for Mr Mitchell, see that rail passengers have increased by 22% since 1997, obviously from the fantastic vibrant economy. Someone also mentioned the fact that each year, year-on-year the increase in passenger growth is about 5%-8%. In light of that, is it in your interest to have more for the benefit of stations? Why should you care and do you care about having better facilities for your passengers when you have full capacity and they will use your trains anyway because they have no alternative?

Mr Armitt: I believe the railways in the UK are becoming quite a success story. We are growing in passenger numbers every year. We are growing faster than any other European railway, but we have got a lot to do. We have got a lot to do with punctuality; 85% is not enough, we need to do better than that. We need to do more on stations - and this is part of the rationale of the Leipzig statement - we need to look hard at how we deal with capacity. That is the biggest problem we have and will have over the next few years that all of that has to be taken into account. I am certainly not in favour of a situation as you described.

Q147 Mr Khan: In the report it was reported most frequently about small low level problems, that great perception of users at stations which is low level stuff. What sort of approach are you taking to low level type things which really would improve the quality of life of users at the stations? You talked about graffiti, and there is violence at my station, lifts are another thing as well.

Mr Mitchell: I think there are some things which can be done following some of the successful things in the UK, but also continental factors, you can remove some of the hiding places for people: parks, bushes, small buildings on platforms and things like that. You can improve lighting, you can improve signage and you can install close-circuit television and that kind of thing. I totally agree that the perception of safety is extremely important to people, almost more important than the actual risks which exist. Some of these things do not cost a lot of money. There is a £50 million a year pot available for Network Rail to spend on minor enhancements which could include things like that.

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