Sir Nicholas Soames, the senior Conservative backbencher, has called for sackings at Network Rail, claiming there had been a fundamental breakdown in the management and leadership of Britain’s railway industry.
Soames, an MP for Mid Sussex, the heart of the commuter belt, said he was horrified by the travesty of the railway industry’s performance over Christmas, adding he was sure the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, felt a similar sense of outrage.
Referring to the passenger chaos over the weekend caused by planned engineering works north of King’s Cross station over-running, he said: “This is a problem for management and leadership – no other commercial organisation would set about this problem without a very clear idea of how they were going to do it, how long it would take, what it was they would use and what would be the finish time. Now they have failed on every single count and I understand that they even got the wrong piece of equipment to the line north of King’s Cross and then the replacement that was sent was wrong.
“Now whoever ordered that needs to be dismissed from service immediately – that is just a fundamental breakdown of management and leadership.”
Soames was speaking on London’s LBC Radio as commuters faced further disruption on Sunday, albeit less severe than the previous two days. Services out of Paddington were still disrupted, including Great Western, Heathrow Connect and Heathrow Express.
Services to King.s Cross were reopened on Sunday morning. Robin Gisby, Network Rail managing director, network operations, said on Sunday: “King’s Cross has reopened this morning following completion of yesterday’s late-running work.”
He added: “I would like to sincerely apologise for the upset and upheaval passengers suffered yesterday as our engineers struggled to complete an essential improvement project that had been months in planning.
“The advertised Sunday timetable for King’s Cross will run today as train operators work to get people home who we’re unable to travel yesterday.
“We now move our focus to completing the handful of other projects still under way without further impact on passengers. We will also begin our investigation into what went wrong with the work at Holloway [north of King’s Cross] and the planning that went into this project.”
Soames accepted railways were not in good shape and do need a lot of attention but he said the work needed to be done in an orderly way. He insisted the railway industry employs “brilliant engineers but the leadership and management failed to overcome the problems and that is completely and utterly unacceptable. The whole railway industry needs to look at itself.”
He pointed out there had been long-term staffing problems at London Bridge station with a lack of drivers. “Can you imagine British Airways saying, ‘we cannot fly these aeroplanes because we have got no pilot’, so why cannot the railways have enough drivers?”
