The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House
of Commons on Tuesday 25 October.
“On 7 October, a short-term contract was entered into with the
incumbent operator for the West Coast Partnership. The contract
extends the delivery of the West Coast Partnership
and Avanti West Coast
business for six months until 1 April 2023. This
gives Avanti a clear
opportunity to improve its services to the standard we and the
public expect. The Government will then consider Avanti’s
performance while finalising a national rail contract for
consideration in relation to the route, alongside preparations by
the operator of last resort should it become necessary for it to
step in at the end of the extension period.
The primary cause of Avanti’s recent problems is a shortage of
fully trained drivers. Avanti was heavily
reliant on drivers volunteering to work additional days because
of delays in training during Covid. When volunteering suddenly
all but ceased, Avanti was no longer
able to operate its timetable. Nearly 100 additional drivers will
enter formal service between April and December this year,
and Avanti has begun to
restore services, initially focusing on the Manchester and
Birmingham routes.
From December, Avanti plans to operate
264 daily train services on weekdays, a significant step up from
the circa 180 daily services at present. We need train services
that are reliable and resilient to modern life. Although the
company has taken positive steps to get more trains moving, it
must do more to deliver certainty of service to its passengers.
We will hold Avanti fully to account
for things in its control, but this plan is not without risk and,
importantly, requires trade union co-operation. The priority
remains to support the restoration of services before making any
long-term decisions.
In assessing options for a longer-term contract, the Secretary of
State will consider factors including outcomes for passengers,
value for money and the delivery of major projects and
investment—in this case High Speed 2, given the links to its
future delivery model. To put it simply, things must improve
during this probation period for the contract to be further
extended.”
5.43pm
(Lab)
A cursory look at the coverage in local and regional newspapers
across the north-west and West Midlands will tell you that there
is seething frustration about Avanti’s ongoing failures and their
impact on the travelling public. It also impacts those living in
London and rest of the south-east looking to travel to some of
our other great cities for work and pleasure. This is therefore a
matter of national concern and I hope the Minister will ensure it
becomes a bigger priority for her new boss at the department.
Will she explain what level of failure the department is waiting
for before ending Avanti’s management of the service? It should
surely be expected to equal or exceed the performance of the
state-owned LNER.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Transport () (Con)
My Lords, the Government take the performance of Avanti very seriously.
We are looking at the performance metrics and working with it on
its recovery plan. As noble Lords will know, any award is
published in line with Section 26(1) of the Railways Act
franchising policy statement. There is also an independent
process to assess whether performance targets have been met. We
are very focused on working with Avanti to pull it
out of this period of poor performance and on to the sunlit
uplands of fulfilling the needs of its passengers. From the next
timetable change in December, Avanti will go
from 180 daily services to 264—a massive step change. Everybody
will notice the trains are back. We need to make sure that they
are reliable, but I absolutely appreciate that at this current
time the service is not good enough.
(LD)
My Lords, Avanti has run only 40%
of the services out of Euston that its predecessor ran. The
Government’s Answer to this Question refers to Covid as a cause
of the problem, but other operators do not seem to have had the
same problem with training—GWR, for example. The truth is that
bad management has undermined staff goodwill and the Government
have rewarded failure in this decision. Will the Minister explain
why Avanti has reduced its
service but has been rewarded with the same £6 million fee? If
the excuse is that it is in the contract, why are the contracts
so badly written that the Government could not reduce that
fee?
Secondly, it is almost impossible for the poor souls forced to
travel on these trains to buy advance tickets. They have to buy
on the day, and it costs more as a result. This is a con. Will
the Minister intervene on this issue and ensure that the prices
are adjusted appropriately if no advance tickets are
available?
(Con)
My Lords, there were several questions there, but I hope to get
through as many as possible. There is a well-worn path which
involves independent adjudication for contracting and that is
utterly necessary. We do not want contracts in the whim of
Ministers, because on either side of that debate, it could end up
with very poor outcomes. Contracts must be assessed properly and
there are legal and contractual processes to be gone through. It
is absolutely true that Avanti is on probation.
It has the six-month extension for a reason, and we will be
watching it like a hawk. Obviously, its performance will be
measured by the independent adjudicators.
What we tried to do over the summer period—as we tried in the
aviation sector—was to ensure that we had reliability. If you
have good communications and a robust timetable, at least people
who do have a train ticket can turn up and actually get their
train, which brings me to the advance ticketing issue.
I am pleased to say that it is now possible to get advance
tickets on weekdays until 13 January and on weekends up to four
weeks from 7 November. It is shorter at weekends, because travel
is sometimes disrupted by engineering works.
I am aware that I have not covered the Covid issue, but I might
come back to that in subsequent questions.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of Transport for the
North. I think the Government fully accept that at the moment the
service that Avanti is offering is
basically not acceptable. I am very pleased that extra pressure
is being put on Avanti by the
Government, but there is no quick, easy solution to this, because
of the problems of driver training. I am pleased that another 100
drivers will be trained in the next few months. However, there is
growing concern, not only about Avanti but about
TransPennine services. Will my noble friend relay to the
Secretary of State the very deep concern across the whole House
and across the north about the poor service which they are
currently getting?
(Con)
I will certainly relay that concern to the new Secretary of
State. I am very grateful to my noble friend for raising
TransPennine Express, because that is a very similar situation.
It goes back to Covid, the point that the noble Baroness, Lady
Randerson, was trying to get me on to. TransPennine Express is
having the same issues as Avanti—actually, it is slightly earlier
in its journey, so at least the Government will have had
experience with Avanti when trying to
get TransPennine Express through. It has had higher than average
sickness among train crew, high levels of drivers leaving and
reduced training. It has also had the loss of driver rest-day
working because ASLEF decided not to extend or renew the rest-day
working agreement that has expired. There is a theme here. The
Government will work with Avanti and TransPennine
Express. I encourage all noble Lords on the other side of the
House to work with the unions to reach an agreement on getting
these services up and running.
(Lab)
Will the Minister accept that her responses stretch credulity, to
say the least? As recently as July this year, in response to a
Question from me, she acknowledged that Avanti’s performance was
“terrible”. Since then, it has had a contract extension and, for
no accountable reason, a £4 million bonus for customer service.
Is she aware of the misery that regular travellers on the west
coast main line have to put up with daily from this incompetent
outfit? What will it take for the Government to do their job and
relieve Avanti of any
responsibility for being involved in our railway system ever
again?
(Con)
I am pretty sure that Avanti has not received
a performance bonus of £4 million for providing services in the
current period—if I am wrong, I will of course correct the
record. I should like to be a bit pragmatic about all this,
because we have to look at the alternative. The alternative would
be to send in OLR—obviously there would be legal and contractual
processes to go through—but what would OLR do? It does not have
train drivers up its sleeve. The issues are the lack of train
drivers and the rest-day working agreement not being adhered to,
and those issues would remain. We understand what the problems
are. We are getting the drivers trained and into the trains, and
services are going from 180 to 164. I hope that the next time I
speak to the noble Lord, , he will be at least a little
more content than he is now, because I do want to make him happy.
We all want Avanti to succeed.
(LD)
I declare an interest as one of the seething passengers: my train
from Crewe this morning took one and a half hours longer than it
should have. Can the noble Baroness say whether the independent
adjudicator will take evidence from individual passengers,
because I would be very happy to send some to it? Your Lordships’
finance department knows very well the number of delay repays
that have gone back to my travelcard because of the delays
on Avanti trains over the
last six months. If Italian state railways can work on time, why
cannot ours?
(Con)
I suggest that we convene a meeting with the Rail Minister—I am
not the Rail Minister—which may be a better idea than shouting at
an adjudicator. Perhaps noble Lords could join me in that
meeting. We can discuss Avanti and TPE, and we
might be able to touch on reform and how we are going to take the
railways forward. I am very happy to sort that out; perhaps a bit
of face-to-face discussion with the Minister would be
appreciated.
(GP)
Can the Minister guarantee that this is the last rail franchise
extension for Avanti That would be
good to know. Also, will all the legislation for Great British
Railways come through before the end of this Parliament?
(Con)
I cannot give a guarantee on the first question,
because Avanti is on probation,
as I said. Let us be clear: there is a recovery plan, which has
been reviewed by the ORR and Network Rail’s programme management
office. It could be that that recovery plan comes into place and,
in a few months’ time, everybody is content with the performance,
so I shall say no more than that. On the legislation for Great
British Railways, we are working as hard as we can to find
parliamentary time for it, and in the meantime are doing
everything that does not need legislation—important elements that
will take us towards a modern, seven-day railway.
