Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Transport
Kate Hollern
Main Page: Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)Department Debates - View all Kate Hollern's debates with the Department for Transport
Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal
Kate Hollern Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Kevin Foster
The hon. Member is right to suggest that this idea of a publicly owned transport service being some sort of panacea of great customer service is rather false. It is interesting to hear the examples that he highlights of the service offered by the Welsh Government, which his own constituents get to experience. On the balance between reliability and the number of services being run, the reduced timetable was put in place partly to ensure that services would run. That said, the service is clearly not at the level that we would wish. That is why more than 100 drivers will have been trained between April and November, which is when we look to bring back the main timetable. Ultimately, it is for Avanti to deliver the services that it is contracted to provide.
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
The west coast Avanti line has been dysfunctional for many months. The Minister is saying that we need to give Avanti the opportunity. Let me give him some recent examples. Today, 44 services have been cancelled on the TransPennine route. On Thursday, if people tried to purchase a ticket online, they could not. No tickets were available until 9.10 in the evening. If someone is travelling back to Lancashire, that is a long time to hang about in London and it gets them home very late. The Minister says that we have seen improvements, but we have not. He says that he will give Avanti another six months. Are we really saying that people in Lancashire have to wait six months for an improvement that is unlikely to come, while the Minister decides to continue to reward bad service?
Kevin Foster
I make the point that the TransPennnine Express is a separate franchise from Avanti, although FirstGroup is the overall operator. We are starting to see the reinstatement of some services as new drivers are being trained, but we are clear that the overall service is unacceptable and needs to improve. The idea that just sticking it into the OLR tomorrow morning will suddenly resolve all the problems is not practical, but we are very clear that if we do not see the significant improvements that we need to see post the December improvement plan being implemented, we will need to take a careful view of the long-term future of the franchise.