Transport in the North 'shockingly letting down the public', Sir Keir Starmer says

Sir Keir Starmer says transport in the North is "shockingly letting down the public".

It follows months of disruption to rail services, with operators cancelling trains across in the North West.

The Labour leader said under his party the region would have a rail service that is fit for service "as soon as possible".

Sir Keir said: "We would work with Andy Burnham on this because in the North West it has been a shocking service with operators. Whether it's Avanti or TransPennine.

"They are shockingly letting down the public and what you have seen is a government that is not holding these operators to account."

The leader of the opposition continued to say that Labour would "hold these train operators to account".

"They've got very good contracts that they're not delivering on and the Government needs to come down hard on them."

The Government recently decided to grant a short-term contract renewal to Avanti, despite the train operator struggling with reliability and punctuality during parts of the past year.

Its contract was due to expire at the end of March, but has been extended until 15 October.

The Department for Transport said since a 'recovery timetable' was introduced on 11 December, there have been improvements across services, including 90% of trains arriving within 15 minutes of the booked time and a reduction in cancellations.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said the improvement plan produced by Avanti West Coast "is working", but there is more work to be done.

He said: "The routes Avanti West Coast run are absolutely vital, and I fully understand the frustrations passengers felt at the completely unacceptable services seen last autumn.

"Following our intervention, rail minister Huw Merriman and I have worked closely with local leaders to put a robust plan in place, which I'm glad to see is working.

"However, there is still more work to be done to bring services up to the standards we expect, which is why over this next six months further improvements will need to be made by Avanti West Coast."

FirstGroup Chief Executive Graham Sutherland said: "We are working closely with Government and our partners across the industry to deliver a successful railway for our customers and communities.

"Performance at Avanti is steadily improving and since the introduction of the new timetable in mid-December, the number of services has increased by more than 40% compared to last summer, with more seats and better frequencies.

"The agreement allows our team to continue their focus on delivering their robust plans to continue enhancing services for our customers, including further progress on our train upgrade and refurbishment programme."

The Department for Transport is also examining the details of a recovery plan produced by TransPennine Express after ministers deemed its performance was unacceptable.

The operator’s current contract expires in May.

Previously a spokesperson for TransPennine Express said the company was “committed to the communities we serve" and that it was doing all it can "to deliver a train service they can rely on".

In a statement it said: “Prolonged disruption to our services has been caused by a combination of very high levels of sickness and a training backlog following the pandemic, which have led to us needing to remove services from our timetable on a day-to-day basis through pre-planned cancellations.

“Our customers want, and deserve, reliable and punctual train services, and we are sorry we have not been able to consistently provide that due to the ongoing issues. TPE’s team continues to work flat-out to deliver higher levels of service delivery and to tackle the issues that are being experienced by customers.”

When asked whether he supported nurses, paramedics, teachers and junior doctors going on strike Sir Keir said: "I completely understand why people are going on strike and what sits behind that industrial action.

"We've got the worst cost of living crisis that we've seen for many years.

"Mortgages are through the roof, energy bills are through the roof, prices are going up everywhere and we've had a Government that's been stagnant on living standards for over a decade, so I completely understand why people feel that they've got to take industrial action."

Sir Keir continued: "The single thing that I can do for them is to ensure that they have a change of Government, a Labour Government so that we can concentrate on growing the economy, drawing those living standards up, giving them better wages, better terms and conditions and ensuring that we don't have the industrial action."

Sir Keir Starmer's full chat with Granada Reports presenters Lucy Meacock and Gamal Fahnbulleh: