Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Transport
James Davies
Main Page: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)Department Debates - View all James Davies's debates with the Department for Transport
Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal
James Davies Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
The hon. Gentleman would be aware, had he heard some of what I said earlier, that the performance payments in relation to the period since the timetable reduction have yet to be evaluated independently. Clearly, the evaluation will take into account the actual situation of the delivery of the contract. As this is an independent evaluation, he will appreciate why it is not one I will personally do as a Minister and it is right that it is under that process. As we have touched on, the Government have made it clear to Avanti that significant improvements need to be made in its service. It has a plan to implement for December, which it is confident will deliver a major improvement in the service it is operating. We look forward to seeing it implement that.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me a week ago today to discuss Avanti West Coast services to north Wales. He knows that those remain abysmal. Whereas there are normally six direct services a day, there is now just one, if it is not cancelled. What assurances has he received from the company that it will able to return to near normality by December, as promised?
Kevin Foster
The assurances that Avanti is giving are that its plans for December will restore the majority of direct services into north Wales. DFT officials are engaging daily with Avanti, as I have touched on, because we do not just want to accept an assurance that the service will be better. Clearly, we want to have verified plans for it to be better. We are seeing additional train drivers coming in and we are reassuring ourselves that Avanti’s plans for December do not include the use of driver rest-day working, because the withdrawal of that prompted the major issues in its timetable. Clearly, we would not want Avanti’s improvement plan to be based on that factor. That is where we are at the moment. We are assured that it has the plan to restore the majority of services in December, but clearly we are engaging with Avanti daily and will see what happens in December, and that will then prompt what we do on the long-term franchise.