David Drew Labour MP for Stroud

RETURNING to Westminster involves a great deal of planning - getting an office or in my case a couple of offices as I want a separate facility in Dursley; recruiting staff; travelling upwards and downwards from Westminster; and staying when necessary.

This can be stressful but is just part of the process of being an MP. Of these travelling has been the easiest, as next to cycling, I enjoy train travel - until last Wednesday. Then, like thousands of other travellers, we had two days of hell.

God’s wonderful railway turned into a woeful ride because with Paddington shut we were forced to journey via Waterloo to get to Reading, and then faced by total uncertainty on whether we could get any further.

Now I accept that technical problems happen - in this case it was signal breakdown in the Twyford area. But the lack of contingency planning let alone resilience left everything to be desired.

I’ve travelled on trains in developing countries but that was nothing compared to what we all had to experience midweek.

Quite how we are so badly prepared for such eventualities is difficult to know.

Privatisation doesn’t help this complete shutdown but even so whilst I felt sorry for individual members of staff who performed beyond the call of duty, what happened demonstrated the fragility of our rail system as current configured and why we need change.

I accept that the problem started with Network Rail but the checks and balances that should exist are simply not there - lack of information, no alternatives to get people onward, and no duty of care for the passenger. Rest assured I shall be taking this up via Questions and Interventions to get to the root of what went wrong – this shouldn’t happen in England in the 21st century.

Thankfully I was able to partly restore my equilibrium by travelling Saturday on the other GWR, the Gloucestershire – Warwickshire Railway which thankfully ran to time!