LAST week, I wrote to Louise Ellman, the Chair of the Transport Select Committee, requesting that an emergency session is held into the recent problems on the Great Eastern Main Line.

So many of my constituents have experienced delays every day for the past two weeks.

They have had congestion due to late-running freight trains, delays due to wet leaves on the track, short formations due to extra carriages having to go in for maintenance, and cancellations due to members of staff being missing.

Why is this? The Great Eastern Main Line is a profitable line, with the franchise holder of the line contributing around £1.4 billion to the Exchequer over the past ten years.

Yet the service received is amongst the worst in the country.

We have some of the oldest rolling stock in the UK, with some carriages dating to the 1970s.

Our inter-city trains are only being replaced with modern carriages due to the fact that they breach disability discrimination legislation.

The current Public Performance Measure (PPM) over the past twelve months for the eastern section of the Abellio service is 89.58%, the worst part of the franchise.

65-70% of delays are caused by ‘track’ problems, which fall under the remit of Network Rail.

We are all told that Network Rail are invested £170 million in our infrastructure this year alone.

The question is how has this improved the service? If you asked most commuters what they have seen in terms of the investment in the line, it would be the weeks of delays after Network Rail damaged a bridge just outside Witham whilst doing improvements to the track a couple of months ago.

Commuters have been told much of this will be solved in the new franchise, and that the Department has set out tough targets as part of the new deal.

But it is very difficult to say to the people of Colchester, who are paying at least £4,800 per annum to travel to London, that they just have to wait.

That things will get better from April next year. In the meantime, they continue to suffer delays, cancellations and disrupted lives.

The recent service provided has been shambolic, bordering on incompetent.

I believe there needs to be a full investigation of the service along the Great Eastern Main Line, in particular looking at steps being taken to tackle poor performance, the investment being made relative to our contribution to the Exchequer, and the working relationship between Abellio Greater Anglia and Network Rail.

I know that this is a key issue for MPs all along the line in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, and hope that they will support my call for this inquiry.

Sadly, we have reached to the point where doing nothing is not an option.