LETTER: Government needs to be more hands on with Southern

Following your leader today, I attach my e-mail to our MP earlier this week, which echoes all you said about terminating the franchise and doing an '˜East Coast'...

I hope her political instincts will not prevent her supporting what seems to be the only way forward – so, clearly, I fully support your campaign and await her and the Government’s response...

Hi Maria

I know that you and your colleagues have been attempting to address the disastrous state of affairs at Southern, but all that appears to have been achieved so far is a reduced timetable!

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When your colleague from Horsham asked a PMQ last week Mr Cameron said that the situation was ‘unacceptable’.

Dead right – we have all known that for months – but he then only mentioned increased compensation, when what is clearly needed is Government intervention...

Your colleague Henry Smith says that changing the operator would not change the staff... maybe, but it would change the management which has failed so disastrously in recent months.

In what is clearly an emergency situation, there must be some merit in pursuing Caroline Lucas’s proposal of public management at least for a while – as she rightly points out, it has worked elsewhere before...

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In any event, I hope that you and your local colleagues are doing all you can to involve the Government in becoming far more hands on... there seems to be no other way of resolving this woeful situation.

Richard Partridge

Clevedown, Lewes