Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (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.

[Lord Snape (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?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (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, Lord Snape, 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.