Dear officials, Northern rail routes are not ‘valueless’ – your government is

For four weeks, as Northern rail passengers have struggled with delayed, cancelled and overcrowded trains, ministers have been at pains to tell us how much they care. The prime minister expressed “tremendous sympathy”. The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, declared from the despatch box that “commuters in the north are as important as commuters in the south”.

If he means it, it seems he hasn’t convinced his own department. Emails from within the Department for Transport, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI), were handed to me by a passenger group this week. They describe our key northern routes as lacking “value” and discuss how to fob off MPs and passenger groups who raise complaints, such as being forced to “drag heavy bags between stations”, because officials in London have cancelled and diverted vital rail services without bothering to consult those of us who use them.

The emails discuss how to hand a “sop” to passenger transport groups. They outline what is referred to as a “classic handling strategy … [which is to] propagate the myth that the service is closing entirely then people will rejoice at the news that it is merely being diverted”. They state clearly that key routes will be cancelled, while sending ministers and officials out to claim the opposite in public. One email is signed off “yours cynically, etc. etc”.

For three years, after the Tories awarded the Northern franchise to Arriva Rail North, MPs across five northern constituencies tried to get the Department for Transport and Northern to listen to our concerns about planned changes that came into effect on 20 May this year. We warned the new timetable would force people to change trains on dangerously overcrowded platforms or leave them stranded miles from their end destination. We said it would devastate local economies and cause serious hardship. Just weeks before the changes came in, with electrification already delayed indefinitely, I wrote to Grayling, asking him to think again and delay implementation because of the serious disruption these changes would cause. I also wrote to the northern powerhouse minister, Jake Berry. He didn’t even bother to reply.

The contempt towards Northern rail commuters and their representatives will come as no surprise to those who daily contend with our underfunded, outdated, unreliable public transport. Four years after we were promised station upgrades, improved capacity, new trains and electrification, promise after promise has been broken and the “northern powerhouse” lies in tatters. Our public transport system receives three times less funding than London and we are still not permitted to run our own services. Even before the current chaos, passengers were frequently left stranded because of cancellations. The trains that do turn up are older than I am. Frustrations have spilled on to social media, where passengers post pictures of trains that “rain inside”, or where corridors become sewers as toilets break down. In response, Northern’s regional director, Liam Sumpter, took to social media to abuse and patronise customers. When he was caught he apologised, but he is still inexplicably in his job.

The human cost has become apparent in recent weeks. Parents who cannot get home to pick children up from school; a disabled woman left alone without carers when her husband was stranded; families running up huge bills on taxis they can’t afford to keep desperately needed jobs; and a woman on her final warning at work.

Yet the culture revealed by these emails is one of officials sitting behind their desks hundreds of miles away, carving up services they have never used, with no regard for those affected and no understanding of the human cost of their failure.

The response from the transport secretary shows clearly that nobody in this system believes they are accountable. Grayling says this didn’t happen on his watch, but will not release the emails relating to his time in office that would show clearly what he knew and when. He says he didn’t know about these concerns, despite two years of correspondence with me and fellow MPs and a “working group” set up to resolve them attended by his own rail minister. He says he cannot comment on “leaked” emails, despite having been informed clearly that they were released by his own department under FoI.

In taking this approach, he is confirming what most Northern rail commuters already knew. Just as our rail routes “lack value” to those in power, so too do our public services, our views and our everyday lives. In such a rotten, broken system, these latest emails come as no surprise. Or, to quote government officials, “yours cynically. etc. etc”.

• Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan