The rail minister Claire Perry, who has been the public face of the government during the outcry over Southern railway’s failures, has resigned.

No reason was given by the Department for Transport for her resignation, which happened on Thursday evening after a fractious week in which she admitted she was “often ashamed to be the rail minister”.

In a Commons debate on Tuesday about Govia Thameslink Railway, which owns the Southern franchise, Perry said: “If I thought it would help by falling on my sword, I would. This feels like a failure.”

While problems at Southern predate an industrial dispute that started last year over the role of guards or conductors on trains, the cancellations have worsened since strike action was called by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) and staff sickness rates rose earlier this year.

Southern said it would press ahead with changes to conductors’ jobs, which have been resisted by the RMT on grounds of safety and fears of job losses.

Perry made an offer on Sunday to unions to guarantee the presence of a second staff member on trains into the next franchise term. But the RMT said the announcement raised more questions than answers.

Perry, the Conservative MP for Devizes, had been rail minister since July 2014.

Southern introduced an emergency timetable on Monday, cutting 341 trains a day to try to create a more predictable and resilient service, after a wave of cancellations and delays had caused fury among commuters.

On Friday, Southern announced it would be restoring 16 of those services after a relatively reliable week, with 80% of scheduled trains arriving on time, compared with about 60% when the normal timetable was running.

Restored services include some of the trains serving south-east London to Tulse Hill and along the south coast from Seaford and Lewes.

Southern’s passenger service director, Alex Foulds, said it had “fine tuned” the deployment of available train crews. “The journey to restoring the railway to a better level of performance still has some way to go but we are encouraged that the new timetable is a first step in that direction,” he added.

The disruption caused to commuters’ journeys prompted a demonstration at Victoria station, London, on Monday, while MPs of all parties and the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, have called for Govia to be stripped of the Southern franchise.

Despite Southern missing targets and being fined for its performance, the government had resisted calls to take over the franchise. Perry repeatedly said she she would not countenance such a move. In transport questions in the Commons on 30 June, she said: “In my view, changing the franchise would do nothing. Everybody has to work together. There is a highly experienced management team already in place.”



While ministers blamed unions for disruption, commuters have often appeared most critical of Southern management. Monday’s protesters also demanded the government faced up to “its responsibility to hold Southern and GTR to account”.

View along the line

According to commuters at Redhill station, in a part of Surrey whose residents rely heavily on Southern, the emergency timetable has proved more predictable but at a cost. Kate Hayes, 55, from Nutfield, connects daily to London on the 6.46am at Redhill when her Tonbridge branch line train makes it in time. On Thursday morning, trains were running smoothly through Redhill with only slight delays: “This is a good day but often it’s a disaster.”

Since Monday, “it’s been more reliable, yes – but not convenient”, she added.

Fellow commuter Fran Dobson, said: “Our worry is that they say it’s temporary but could soon be permanent.” Already, timetable alterations have forced Dobson to change trains twice to return home to pick up her child and she factors in an extra hour after being constantly delayed.

Both seem more resigned now than furious. Dobson said: “There’s not much anger but it’s past that stage.”

But neither blames the staff or the strike. “It was a bad service before all this,” said Dobson.

Jonathan Ricketts, 34, cycles to Redhill although he lives in Reigate. He said: “I don’t risking getting the train from there. At night it’s absolute chaos.”

Nuala Read, 45, commutes to London Bridge from Reigate. “Since the new timetable it’s been a bit better. But often it’s hours: not just two hours on the train, it’s being told it’s cancelled, being kicked off it, and not being able to get on the next one, after a 10-hour day. I was walking up the stairs at East Croydon, thinking, I feel like cattle, a piece of meat. You shouldn’t have to think about trains, they should be in the background. I’d move, but who wants to buy a house in Reigate now?”

Season tickets cost £2,696 a year for the 21-mile journey to London. Jonathan Hanley, 34, has returned to commuting with a £258 monthly ticket for a short-term contracting job, and seemed calm waiting for his train. He says he habitually arrives for an early service in case it is cancelled.

“The thing is, I’m used to it, mate,” he said. “It’s gone downhill, but it’s so atrocious, you get to a point where there’s nothing you can do. You’re held to ransom. But you get told off if you shout at people, so I have a little internal rant or something.”

Up and down the line from London to the south coast, the frustration among commuters using Southern is equally palpable.

“It’s a lot of stress,” said Jonny Glynn, standing on the platform of Haywards Heath on Tuesday evening, waiting for a delayed Southern rail train home to Lewes. “It sounds like a little thing but until you’re experiencing it, you have no idea what it’s actually like: to wake up and have no idea if your train is actually going to be there, whether you’re going to get back.”



Andrew Millard, an IT engineer who commutes from Littlehaven to London, said at least once a week a journey that should take 50 minutes takes two hours. He too has taken to building in contingency time for services inevitably going wrong. “You can never be certain because there’s always last minute cancellations, so for last hour of work I’m constantly checking the app.”

Martin Swain is a broadcast engineer who travels from Horley to London Bridge. “It’s been pretty traumatic to be honest, the service has been appalling since Christmas,” he said Martin Swain. A journey that should take 40 minutes to an hour has stretched to 90 minutes, or sometimes as much as three hours during recent delays and cancellations.



“At first I was blaming the guards for work to rule, then I was blaming Southern and then ultimately I start to blame the government because I hear they’re using this as a test case to push through policy that will affect other railway users elsewhere,” Swain said.



Many have had to reschedule lives, pay out of their own pocket for taxis because of services running late or ending prematurely. While some did claim from Southern delay repay – for trains more than 30 minutes late – they said the compensation was meagre.

Katie Bullard, a secondary school teacher in London who travels between Tulse Hill and London Bridge, said: “As a teacher, it’s not like I can phone in if I’m late. Kids need to be taught, so it’s a significant impact, and expensive, because cover teachers cost a lot of money. It’s very frustrating … Frankly I think the government isn’t stepping in where it should be.”

