Railways: CrossCountry

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Baroness on that. Part of the problem is the increasing demand from passengers travelling into London on our railways. We want to ensure that the CrossCountry service continues to provide other options for passengers so that they do not have to travel into central London.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

When the CrossCountry franchise is considered, will the Government ensure that the company winning the bid has sufficient trains and, more importantly, sufficient drivers and guards to run those trains, unlike Northern in Cumbria?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said before, one of the things we will be expecting the new franchise operator to deliver is more rolling stock, to deal with overcrowding. I say from recent experience that we will be looking closely at the train drivers that it has available.