You’ve been contacting me in large numbers about the poor performance of West Midlands trains and I recently had the chance to question the Prime Minister in PMQs.

The reliability of services for my constituents who travel from Malvern to Worcester, Hereford, Droitwich, Bromsgrove and Birmingham seriously declined after last May’s timetable change and the management’s decision to remove two carriages from the commuter services led to horribly cramped trains through the summer and into the winter.

I’ve worked with my colleagues in Westminster and with the West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, to make the point that the rail operating company need to know we are serious – we will strip their franchise from them if they don’t take urgent steps to improve performance – and deliver on the promises that won them the franchise in the first place.

New management was brought in during January and there have been some indications of improvement in 2020.

The company wisely have offered season ticket holders discounted fares to compensate for historical poor performance.

I’ve also led a debate in Westminster for investment to develop a plan to dual two more sections of the Cotswold Line track – between Evesham and Pershore and also on towards Oxford. As part of this plan we’ll see a new fully dualled station at Pershore with a new platform and hopefully a new car park adding capacity for hundreds more passengers.

And all of this as we prepare to see trains finally stopping at the brand new Worcestershire Parkway station.

The Beeching Report cut back hundreds of lines and stations in the 1960s – this Government is investing £500 million on projects which will unlock some of the lines and stations that have been left to wither away.

More dual track along the Cotswold Line between Worcester and Oxford will be a huge boost to the local economy giving us faster, more frequent trains.

As we look more closely at how we can reduce car traffic and reach our net zero carbon emission targets, adding reliable, frequent train services to more cities and towns must be an important step forward.