Avanti West Coast

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I strongly sympathise with my noble friend on his experiences in his weekly travelling. My postbag, email and every other means of communication is full of criticism of Avanti West Coast. It was given a contract for three years in October 2023. I assure noble Lords that as hard as we look at the contract, the company has not yet failed to meet the performance target standards that the previous Government set it.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to Macclesfield station staff for their excellent work. I have an idea for how we can monitor the number of delays. There is something called Delay Repay. Does the Minister know much how is paid out by Avanti to passengers? If not, perhaps he could let us know. It may be a good thing for him to keep his eye on, for key performance indicators in terms of staffing and getting staff to work—particularly at weekends.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will have to write to the noble Lord about the amount of Delay Repay. I have statistics here about the number of trains on time and the number of trains cancelled. Although the number of trains being cancelled has been reducing, it is still far too high. Passengers dislike cancelled trains even more than they dislike them being later than in the timetable. I will write to him and put a copy of that letter in the Library. However, I think that the evidence of Delay Repay is the same as the evidence of the performance statistics—that the performance is just not good enough.