Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (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.

[Baroness Randerson (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?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (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.