Speeches by Haigh.

“Wi-fi is one of the examples of passenger experience that we are clear needs to be delivered through Great British Railways. I take East Midlands Railway, and the wi-fi is even worse on that line. I would be happy to raise that issue with Avanti. We are in the process of attempting to facilitate an agreement with North…”

“My views on Avanti’s performance are well known, I think. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that it has not been acceptable. Shockingly, the way that national rail contracts were written under the previous Government means that Avanti has not defaulted. It is on a remedial plan to drive improvements, and we have …”

“We can hear from the House how much of an impact the levels of service on Northern Rail are having. Andy Burnham texts me every Monday about the performance on Northern trains, so I can assure my hon. Friend that it is a priority.”

“The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Northern and TransPennine Express serve my constituency as well, and some of the most deprived parts of the north of England. Performance has not been good enough. TransPennine in particular has seen insignificant improvements since it was brought into public ownership, but neither op…”

“LNER’s reliability has improved in the past year, but I am not naive and do not think we are there yet; these are only the green shoots of recovery. The real improvements from these reforms will come when we can truly integrate track and train. LNER and the east coast are a perfect example of where the previous system …”

“One of the purposes of this reform was to save the taxpayer money, and bringing operators into public ownership as their contracts expire means there will be no compensation. We will also be saving the money currently leaking out of the system through dividends and management fees. It would not be fiscally prudent in t…”

“I am grateful for those comments. Govia Thameslink had an improvement of 3% in its cancellations on last year, but it is still falling behind on punctuality.[Official Report, 25 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 8WC.] (Correction) I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss what more we can do.”

“The Mayor of London is the owner of Transport for London, but we can absolutely work together to see whether anything of that nature can be achieved. I see no reason why we cannot make progress on that issue.”

“We will see 44 additional trains per day on the new timetable from Southeastern. CrossCountry restored its full timetable today, and we hope to see new timetables from TransPennine Express in the coming weeks. We have procurements out for TransPennine Express and Southeastern, I believe, so my hon. Friend will see new …”

“The problem across the entire railway is that we do not have sufficient drivers or staff, so too many parts of the railways are reliant on rest day working agreements. We should not have to rely on people volunteering to come on shift in order to run a Sunday service, but unfortunately that is the case at Great Western…”

“I was absolutely horrified, on entering the Department, to learn that there had been no routine ministerial oversight, in any sense of the word, of HS2 for some time. We immediately established a cross-ministerial taskforce, comprising me and the Treasury, to oversee HS2’s costs. I have written to the chair to make it …”

“I will look into the issue for the right hon. Gentleman. It may be that the Rail Minister has to make himself a hero; I will ask him to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss the matter.”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The strikes were costing us £20 million a day in lost revenue. That is aside from the economic impact of people coming off the railways and not making journeys to work, to see friends and family or to visit other towns and cities. Settling the pay disputes that were pervading our rai…”

“I have routine conversations with Northern Rail, as the hon. Gentleman would imagine. The most recent was on Thursday. We facilitated a new rest day working agreement with it, which has significantly reduced driver cancellations, but there is an outstanding issue with conductors; there is a very similar situation with …”

“It was extraordinarily frustrating to see the news of the obscene amounts of money spent on that structure to do with HS2. That happened under HS2’s previous leadership. We are resolving this by bringing in Mark Wild imminently to lead the organisation, and we are also resolving issues around cost control and governanc…”

“The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and unfortunately that is the picture across too much of our railways. The workforce terms and conditions are simply not fit for purpose. Part of our inheritance is that we do not have a workforce that can deliver a modern and efficient railway. We are working with Great Western Railw…”

“I was delighted to be in Derby recently to confirm that the headquarters of Great British Railways will be in that rail city. I am also delighted that, as I say, Alstom is manufacturing the new Elizabeth line trains, as a consequence of funding awarded in the Budget. Shadow GBR is really important for engaging with sta…”

“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Chiltern was the worst-performing operator last year, in terms of the reduction in punctuality, which further makes the case for public ownership. The previous Government made lots of commitments, few of which were funded, but I will take that question away and determine where th…”

“Shadow Great British Railways brings together the Department, Network Rail, and those operators that are already in public ownership to look at integration and ensure that our investment in the network delivers improvements for passengers as quickly and efficiently as possible. That work will absolutely cover maintaini…”

“Practical driving test waiting times remain far too high after the previous Administration failed to reduce them, limiting would-be drivers’ access to opportunities. I have met the chief executive of the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and driving test examiners, and I have instructed my officials to work at pace t…”