Picture the scene: a cold winter’s night at Preston station waiting for the 20:58 back to Barrow. It’s late, it’s cold and you can’t wait to get back. The train is already late when the tannoy goes again to announce that they are very sorry but no train will be arriving, instead wait for the replacement bus.

Cue another wait and complete confusion before an old bus finally turns up around an hour later with little in the way of an apology from anyone. By this time everyone is thoroughly miserable and just wants to get home. The bus eventually rolls into Barrow well after midnight, everyone on board totally fed-up and furious with the people who are meant to run our railways.

This sounds like an extreme story, but the key ingredients will be familiar to anyone who frequently has to travel by rail in Cumbria. Over the Christmas period this problem has been particularly acute and lots of people have been in touch with me to make their views clear.

People are right to be furious. We are asked to pay through the nose for a rail service that is unreliable at best and non-existent at worst. The trains up the coast are a complete farce, hardly ever running and needing three locomotives on standby because the prehistoric engines break down so often.

When Northern took over the franchise from First Transpennine recently we were promised the service would improve, but nothing seems to have changed. I raised all of this with the new managing director for our region on Monday and while he was very apologetic, he couldn’t give me any assurances that improvement was on the horizon.

The situation is ridiculous and it is holding our area back. Our local workforce does vital work on behalf of the whole nation, building the submarines that patrol our waters and keep us all safe. The shipyard often needs to bring in contractors and people need to travel back and forth constantly. To put it bluntly, nobody can build a submarine when they are stuck on platform 2 at Preston station and the government needs to recognise this. This dreadful situation is the result of years of under-investment in our area, including disgracefully stealing our new trains and carriages and shipping them down to the south.

This isn’t the only public transport outrage foisted on our area over the festive period. I am aware of the strength of local feeling about the hikes in bus fares announced by Stagecoach for the new year. A 30 per cent rise in the Mega Rider monthly fare for children is totally unacceptable and puts hard-pressed parents in an awful situation. Children need to be able to get to school, and pricing their parents out of the bus service is an outrageous decision by Stagecoach. I am looking into this issue as a matter of urgency and will be arranging for a public meeting with parents to discuss what can be done.

Whether it is buses or trains (or even rail replacement buses) it is clear that the transport infrastructure in our county has been neglected for too long. A county like Cumbria, with many isolated rural communities, a high proportion of retired people, and long journeys to access vital services like schools and hospitals simply needs a much better service. I know people are at the end of their tether and so am I. For too long Cumbrians have been asked to pay top-rate prices for a second-class service, something has to change and I will be making clear to the government that local people will not stand for this neglect any longer.

All of this transport disruption has come on top of another winter of high pressure on health services in Cumbria, with hospitals asking patients to stay away if possible. Local NHS staff have been doing a fantastic job as always over the Christmas period, often sacrificing important time with loved ones in order to keep services running, but it is clear that A&E services in particular are coming under massive strain.

The government says it is putting more funding into the NHS, but locally we are seeing services becoming more crowded and difficult to access as well as staff shortages in some areas. We know that winter is a particularly busy time in hospitals and the government has to step up and provide the resources to allow local A&Es to operate effectively, and prevent local NHS staff being overworked.