Avanti Trains

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Snape]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they next expect to meet Avanti Trains to discuss payments made to the company under the service quality regime.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, officials regularly meet Avanti to discuss its performance against service quality regime targets and how it will make improvements for passengers and to the customer experience. To date, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime. The evaluation to determine the first service quality regime performance fee for April to October 2023 is currently under way.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, at a recent internal meeting at Avanti trains, various slides were produced for its management? I have some of them with me at the moment and I shall quote from them. Managers joked about receiving “free money” from the Government and performance-related payments being

“too good to be true”.

The presentation went on to say that the Department for Transport supports the firm and added:

“And here’s the fantastic thing!—if we achieve those figures”—


that is, the Government’s punctuality figures—

“they pay us some more money—which is ours to keep—in the form of a performance-based fee!!”

Does the Minister accept that this is a situation where the Treasury takes the revenue, the passengers take the strain and the directors take a bonus for providing the worst train service in the UK? This is not a policy; it is lunacy.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I referred to in my opening response, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime thus far. The department considers the comments from the leak to be a very serious issue, and expects the highest standards of culture and leadership from Avanti’s operators and senior management. We are extremely disappointed by the tone expressed in the leaked presentation. Officials have met their counterparts at First Rail Holdings, Avanti’s parent company, and spoken to the managing director to convey the seriousness of this issue. The Rail Minister has also met the chief executive of FirstGroup.