West Coast Main Line

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not entirely sure where the noble Lord gets those figures from, because my understanding is that on weekdays between 7 am and 9 am—for example, between Birmingham and London—the services are actually at pre-pandemic levels. Of course, there have been changes to the timetable at some other points, but that is very much down to changes in travel habits, such that the system needs to have a demand-led timetable so that we can ensure that people can travel when they need to.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

If I were a nurse and decided to work only half my contracted hours and demanded to be paid my full salary, I would be rejected out of hand. Yet Avanti has essentially done this: it has provided less than half its service to some major cities, but it is still paid the standard contract fee. I ask the Minister: why are DfT contracts written so loosely that it is still entitled to that?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I think it is absolutely right, as I said earlier, that the performance is subject to independent  adjudication. If there is any action to be taken by the DfT, we would follow the legal and contractual processes. We are aware that there is an opportunity to improve our contracting as we move forward and that is why we hope to move to passenger service contracts in due course to encourage competition and enable services to run as they should.