TRAIN journeys between Hampshire and London are too slow the rail minister has admitted – but without offering any solutions.

Claire Perry also told MPs that passengers should not have to stand for more than 20 minutes, while acknowledging that was “not always achieved”.

She faced accusations that South West Trains passengers are being used as “cash cows” – paying more than £1bn in four years to subsidise other lines elsewhere in the country.

During the debate Ms Perry rejected that claim arguing they were paying for “general investment in the railways as well as specific investments”.

But Caroline Dinenage, Conservative MP for Gosport, protested about London trains that suffered from “slow journey times, on a 1930s infrastructure, and eye-watering prices”.

In reply the minister said: “I have travelled that route, visiting one of her neighbouring constituencies and I was struck by the pace at which some of those trains travel.

“Passengers often do not feel that they are getting value for money. They travel on slow, crowded trains and cannot understand why timetables get messed up and why the network’s resilience can fail if there is a fatality or some operational problem.”

The minister said MPs would be “delighted to hear” that 150 new carriages would be introduced on South West Trains routes by 2018 – part of £38bn of invest-ment in rail.

But she did not offer any solution to the problem of slow trains – and admitted extra carriages might not ease the pain on the most congested routes.

The debate heard protests that the permitted space for rail passengers – 0.25 metres squared – was smaller than EU rules for “calves, adult goats and un-shorn sheep”.

Ms Perry said: “While we hope that additional capacity will immediately reduce overcrowding if more people choose to travel by train that capacity will continue to be filled.” It was “unacceptable” that people were unable to board trains on commuter routes because they were already full, she added.

Caroline Nokes, Conserva-tive MP for Romsey and Southampton North, said: “Commuters are paying more for what they see as a worse service. One of my constituents said to me they would accept consistently increasing prices if the quality of service improved and concluded by saying: ‘That is not the case currently’.”

And Ms Dinenage added: “The journey between Ports-mouth and London takes the same time as the journey from London to Doncaster, which is two and a half times as far. That is just not good enough for commuters on the south coast.”