Train Services: Extreme Weather
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) and thank him for securing this debate on extreme weather and rail services. He will have known that I would probably turn up to talk about it, because the issue is felt so acutely in my coastal and rural constituency of Truro and Falmouth. Coastal and rural areas such as mine need a railway that is reliable, resilient and speedy, so that our communities and economy can thrive. In fact, Cornwall has the fastest growing branch lines in the country; demand for rail has soared since covid. Yet in the duchy there is just one rail line going in and one going out. For the 1 million residents of Cornwall and Plymouth, that is all. Anyone living or working across Cornwall and Devon knows the fragility of that vital link. The line through Devon and into Cornwall sits right on the sea wall at Dawlish and Teignmouth; it is exposed and exceptionally vulnerable to heavy seas. When bad weather hits, this section frequently breaks down, leaving us 1 million people effectively cut off from the rest of the country. In February 2014, the railway line was basically swept away and cut off for eight weeks—the track was hanging into the waves. Great Western Railway shared with me in August that last winter’s cancellations exceeded 10% of services and punctuality dropped to 75%. As others have said, it is not just about storms and wintry weather. The heat we experienced this summer meant there were four separate lineside fires on the Falmouth branch in July resulting in full cancellations. Alternate branch line services were cancelled because the rails were too hot. On Saturday the lines in Cornwall were “too slippery”. This is not just a story of severe named storms. Our line is now so precarious that train services get knocked out by standard non-extreme weather. High tides, leaves on the track or routine heavy rain are sometimes enough to trigger speed restrictions, single-line working or total cancellations. When major storms do hit, the crisis deepens. Storm Goretti closed the route entirely. It was over a day in the end because we could not get home. And just a week later, during Storm Ingrid, I was on the 6 am train home from Westminster when we were halted at Dawlish as massive waves crashed over the track. With one line swallowed by the sea we joined a queue of trains crawling forward on the single operational track. Soon after that, Storm Chandra cut the line off yet again. The human cost of this persistent disruption is immediate. I have constituents contacting me regularly, sharing their frustrations and the impact of the disruption on their lives. One constituent contacted me about an overfilled train from Reading to Truro that was impacted by Storm Austen, leaving her husband, who was coming back from abroad, heavily delayed. It is unacceptable that passengers travelling thousands of miles across the globe face the greatest hardship on the final leg home through our region. Network Rail teams work heroically round the clock, clearing fallen trees, repairing track faults and executing a £2.6 billion national investment in climate resilience, but our local infrastructure is simply failing to cope. Long-range forecasts warn of increasingly challenging weather this coming winter. It has already started with Storm Austen. With climate change the disruptions will become more frequent and severe unless we take decisive action. In 2014, after the storms, the Department for Transport started the south west rail resilience programme. Phases 1 to 4 have been completed, but phase 5 at the Teignmouth cliffs has been delayed and is currently unfunded. Phase 5 involves de-watering and stabilising the cliff face. Testing is occurring, but funds are simply not there. There is a very real risk that a cliff could fall on a train. Much of the capital funding has gone to Northern Powerhouse Rail. We have one vulnerable line in and out for our 1 million people. There is no way of flying from Newquay to London most days because we have lost the public service obligation for our airport. It appears that Network Rail accepts that we will get cut off for a day or two when there is inclement weather, which I do not think would be accepted in many other parts of the country. There are options. Brunel obviously did not think ahead when he designed where the line was going to go. We cannot really blame him, I suppose, but now we look back, we can see that maybe this was not the best place to put it. The Okehampton line has been reopened and—we have always talked about this as a distant dream—a second line could go along by the A30. The Railways Bill will mean that regional transport plans can be considered by Great British Railways. We hope that will apply to our Cornish transport plan as well. GWR will be nationalised in December this year. Cornwall has extraordinary economic potential. We have immense value to offer the country, partly through the critical minerals that we have under our feet, but we need to remain connected. I am trying very hard to reopen the freight line that runs between Falmouth docks and the Falmouth branch line, which could bring some of those critical minerals in and out of Cornwall. But we need a more resilient line to connect to. The Royal Albert bridge is hard for freight to get across, and the cliffs are difficult to get past. Better rail links are not a luxury. They are a real necessity, particularly when we are out on a limb as we are. We will keep pushing until the far south-west gets the resilient rail network that our constituents need.