Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesman, Gavin Newlands.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

There are 14 trains scheduled this Saturday from Glasgow to Euston, but last Saturday only three actually ran, and yesterday saw more than 15% of Avanti’s Glasgow services cancelled. People in Scotland and the north of England are being treated as third-class citizens. I doubt that the laissez-faire attitude of the Department for Transport when it comes to industrial relations at Avanti would last five minutes if home counties commuter services were being slashed in the same way. When are Ministers going to roll up their sleeves and get involved? Was Mick Lynch not right when he said in evidence to the Transport Committee that Scottish Government politicians:

“have an attitude where they want to resolve the issue, whereas sometimes when we meet politicians down here they want to exacerbate the issue and make us their enemy.”

And that was before the Government tabled their utterly regressive Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill; Tory party ideology is impacting taxpayers and passengers yet again.

The six-month extension is seen by everyone as kicking the can down the road. What work is ongoing right now to ensure that the DFT and Directly Operated Railways Ltd are ready to “take back control” of a key piece of cross-border infrastructure, and we follow the lead of Scotland in ending the disastrous experiment of privatisation?

[Kevin Foster]

Work is ongoing to ensure that the operator of last resort would be ready in April to pick up the service. I will touch on some of the issues raised, but not all are within Avanti’s control; merely changing the franchise and who operates it would not resolve issues and problems that have been caused by infrastructure or engineering works, for obvious reasons—those sit in Network Rail’s purview. However, we are certainly not adopting a laissez-faire attitude. Every day, the DFT is engaging with Avanti and TPE about the services. Every week, there are senior-level contacts as well, and Ministers are actively involved with this process. I am a traveller on Avanti trains myself of a Sunday, and the idea that we are not interested in this or that we have some sort of laissez-faire attitude is completely for the birds. As for relationships with the trade unions, the Transport Secretary has met the general secretaries, but we make the point that we are not the employer in this circumstance, and it is for the unions and the operating companies to come to an agreement.