Last year, the Government commissioned Chris Gibb, a rail expert with decades of experience, to produce a review of the performance of Southern Rail. The aim of the report was to identify causes of performance failure and make recommendations to urgently improve the service. Chris Gibb has not previously been involved in the Southern Rail franchise so came to this role in a non-partisan basis.

The Gibb report has today been published. I would urge all constituents impacted by the poor performance of Southern Rail to read the findings. Whilst the report concludes that the action by the rail unions was the primary cause for the system to fail, there are recommendations for every connected party to take onboard. The report calls for a new approach to investment, working patterns, engineering works, station ownership, timetabling, depot location, rolling stock and movement of some of the services from Southern to Southeastern. The report concludes that franchise removal would cause even more uncertainty and lessen the chances of an immediate improvement in the service.

Whilst the report recognises that some of these changes would cause disruption to specific individual journeys, the report concludes that these changes would benefit the reliability and performance of the network as a whole. Ordinarily, this report, and those involved in its production and implementing the recommendations, would appear before the Transport Select Committee, of which I was a member. Given that the committee has not been reformulated following the General Election, I today used the House of Commons Chamber to call for time to be made available in the Houses of Parliament for MPs and Peers to debate the report with the Secretary of State for Transport. This request has been taken up by the Leader of the House of Commons who will formally contact the Department of Transport.

It should be noted that, since the last round of industrial action came to an end, performance on Southern Rail is now up from 62% to 85% (near to the regional train operator average). This demonstrates that industrial action had a significant impact but is not the only cause of performance failure.

This excellent report is worthy of the widest possible comment and I would be interested to hear from constituents. Southern Rail have recently announced some changes to local timetables and services. I am hosting Southern's senior management in Parliament and will discuss if these changes are consistent, or driven by, the report. I also intend to discuss the report's finding directly with Chris Gibb.