Severe Weather (North Lincolnshire Rail Network)

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 11:10 am on 21 December 2010.

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Photo of Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers The Minister of State, Department for Transport 11:10, 21 December 2010

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, even if this is a rather melancholy subject for debate this morning. I congratulate my hon. Friend Martin Vickers on securing the debate. He shows his dedication by ensuring that his constituents concerns are raised right up until the last moment that Parliament is sitting before the Christmas recess. No sloping off home early for my hon. Friend, who made a powerful speech on the severe problems on the railways in northern Lincolnshire, which occurred as a result of the extreme weather conditions at the end of November and during the first days of December, including a distressing incident reported in his local papers.

I will attempt to answer as many of my hon. Friend's questions as possible, but he will appreciate that these are primarily operational matters for Network Rail. I have been able to get some answers out of Network Rail in advance of the debate, but I will have to come back to him on some of the matters that he has raised, which are new and specific, having gone back to Network Rail.

I am concerned that my hon. Friend has not yet had a response from Network Rail to his own representations. I hope that it will remedy that in the near future.

Looking at the general picture, there can be no doubt that the severity of both the current weather episode and the one on which my hon. Friend primarily focused is highly unusual and outside the normal expected pattern for UK winters. The volume of snow and the extreme cold mean that these incidents are out of line with weather patterns that we have come to expect in UK winters over recent years. Much of northern Europe has been affected in a similar way to the UK. Even countries that are more used to dealing with extreme cold have experienced major disruption.

In Switzerland, for example, the same band of weather caused severe problems to the road and rail networks, and the international airport at Geneva was shut for 36 hours. Similar events occurred in parts of Germany and Scandinavia.

Although various parts of the UK experienced some significant disruption to transport networks, my hon. Friend is right to say that rail services in his constituency were particularly badly hit by the problems that occurred at the beginning of this month. I understand and share his concerns about the impact that this crisis had on his constituents, and on businesses and the economy in his constituency.

For the sake of passengers and our economic prosperity, we need to ensure that transport operators and the Government work as hard as they can to secure the best service that is practicable and deliverable in difficult circumstances caused by extreme weather.

In October, before the onslaught of the winter weather, an independent review was published, as my hon. Friend said, on resilience of transport services in winter conditions. The review, led by David Quarmby, set out a series of recommendations that the Government and transport operators agreed to act on. The review emphasised the importance of smoother introduction of emergency railway timetables. It also highlighted the fact that contacts between local authorities and the rail industry should be improved with regard to road access to stations.

As the bad weather set in, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State asked David Quarmby to conduct an urgent audit of transport operators' performance in England and their compliance with his earlier recommendations. The audit, which was published this morning, emphasises the importance of improving the information given to passengers in the event of disruption. For example, David Quarmby concluded that the rail industry is over-dependent on electronic provision of information. He feels that such systems do not, on their own, provide passengers with sufficient advice and help, nor can they properly demonstrate to passengers that those running transport systems really care about their plight when serious problems occur. We intend to work closely with train operators and Network Rail to respond to the recommendations made in the audit.

I would like to look in a little more detail at how events unrolled in north Lincolnshire at the beginning of the month. During the week of 28 November, cumulative snowfalls of up to 2 or 3 feet over several days were experienced across much of north Lincolnshire and north-eastern England. That initially resulted in delays and cancellation of train services in my hon. Friend's constituency, and then the closure of several rail routes, as we have heard.

Passenger and freight services were unable to operate for several days in the Grimsby and Cleethorpes area. North Lincolnshire is served by three passenger operators-East Midlands Trains, Northern Rail, and TransPennine Express-all of which were badly affected by the snow. Northern Rail services on the Barton-on-Humber branch were suspended from 1 to 11 December. East Midlands services between Lincoln, Cleethorpes and Grimsby were suspended between 1 and 8 December. The TransPennine Express route from Manchester to Cleethorpes was completely shut on 1 and 2 December, and from 3 to 7 December it operated only between Manchester and Sheffield. Three of TransPennine's diesel units were stranded in their maintenance depots at Cleethorpes, which meant that, until the route and depot tracks were cleared of snow, TPE had insufficient resources to serve the Cleethorpes to Manchester route, with negative consequences for passengers across the Pennines.

My hon. Friend specifically raised concerns about the resilience of Brocklesby junction. This has been identified as an issue to be addressed and was flagged up as a concern before the period of severe weather. I understand that this important junction will be renewed at the next practicable opportunity. However, that is expected to be Christmas 2011, because a period of closure is obviously necessary to enable those works to be carried out. The works will include replacing the junction with modern track and fitting point heaters to the remaining unheated points, increasing the resilience of the junction.

I am advised that, throughout the period of disruption, the affected train operators remained closely in touch with Network Rail, working to clear routes as quickly as possible. However, their efforts were hampered by further falls of snow, freezing temperatures and reduced staff levels as their staff struggled to get to work on the disrupted road network.

Network Rail has access to a fleet of purpose-built, heavy-duty snow ploughs, together with a fleet of railway engines fitted with smaller ploughs. To respond to my hon. Friend's questions, a number of locomotives fitted with snow ploughs were operating in the Lincolnshire area. However, in some places the snow was deeper than the snow ploughs were capable of clearing. Network Rail has a limited number of heavy-duty Beilhack snow ploughs, one of which was brought to the area on 3 December. It commenced snow clearance, but unfortunately became derailed that same evening because compacted ice had accumulated in the rail tracks at Garden Street level crossing due to council snow-clearing operations. The plough was put back on the rails, but from that point all level crossings unfortunately had to be cleared by hand.

I am afraid that I do not know the answer to my hon. Friend's question about the offers from freight companies, but I will seek to find out from Network Rail and will let him know.

The problems faced by those trying to get the railways operating again were compounded by the fact that many roads in the area were impassable during the period. That made it difficult to get teams of engineers and workers to the places they needed to be to clear snow and repair damaged infrastructure. I am told that, despite repeated requests, bus and coach operators were not willing to provide replacement bus services in such difficult conditions.