I spoke in the Rail Service Reduction debate, challenging Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris to justify the planned cuts to SWR services across South West London. During the debate Munira said: “We can’t have a car led recovery, we need to be incentivising rail travel.”
The planned cuts will leave St Margarets poorly served during off-peak times. That is however already true for stations on the Shepperton line which has a notoriously bad service. I raised this with the minister in a meeting before and again during the debate.
The driver for the proposed service cuts is clearly financial, however, no clear data has been published on how much SWR and the treasury hope to save from cutting services. The minister committed to providing the figures in writing.
SWR needs to re-instate services as demand increases, but published passenger figures are too general and often out of date by the time they are available. The rail minister committed to publishing these figures “as quickly as possible to show the demand as it increases”.
Following the debate, Munira said, “I will continue to fight these planned cuts which are bad for our environment, bad for our economy and bad for the residents of my constituency”.