Rail Franchises: Govia Thameslink Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Tunnicliffe
Main Page: Lord Tunnicliffe (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Tunnicliffe's debates with the Department for Transport
(6 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberI reassure the noble Lord that we will be considering this very carefully. I will certainly feed his comments back to our new Rail Minister.
Does the Minister accept that it is the duty of the Department for Transport to assure itself that bidders are capable of delivering? If the answer is yes, why has it failed on so many occasions?
I agree with the noble Lord that it is indeed the DfT’s responsibility to ensure that bidders can deliver. As I say, we have looked carefully at the NAO report and will be learning lessons from it. There are a number of reasons why passengers have suffered disruption on Southern, such as infrastructure works and the process of introducing new trains. However, I want to be clear that the main cause of the widespread disruption in this case was union action. We have seen an unprecedented 39 days of strikes by the RMT, which have directly led to the terrible time that passengers have experienced. Until the RMT calls off its strikes, passengers will continue to suffer.