Avanti West Coast

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State, Louise Haigh.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Thank you for granting this important urgent question, Mr Speaker.

Avanti West Coast’s decision to slash services on the UK’s busiest rail route has left passengers facing chaos; it has lost more than 220,000 seats per week between our major towns and cities. The damage that this shambles is doing to the regional economy and the public purse is enormous, yet, incredibly, it was signed off by the Government. Ministers have let this failing operator get away with appalling performance for far too long: the fewest trains on time; more complaints than any other operator; and a wholesale failure to train new drivers. A serving Transport Minister in the Lords has admitted that its performance is “terrible”.

Despite that, this Department has handed tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in performance and management fees, which have then been pocketed by shareholders, including—you could not make this up—a £4 million bonus for “customer performance”. What passengers need to hear today is a plan to get this vital line back on track, because those who rely on this service are tired of excuses. It is not sustainable or reasonable to continue to rely on the good will of drivers to work on their rest days, so will the Minister demand an urgent plan from the operator to restore the timetable, as she is perfectly entitled to do under the contract? Will she commit to claw back taxpayers’ money for services that have not run? Will she tell the House why, despite a contractual obligation to train new drivers, Avanti has comprehensively failed to do so? Above all, will she ask the new Secretary of State to guarantee that there will be no more reward for failure and to strip Avanti of its contract when it comes up for renewal next month? This ongoing fiasco is causing real damage to the economy, passengers and the public. The Ministers must stop washing their hands of responsibility and, finally, intervene.

[Trudy Harrison]

I completely agree with the shadow spokeslady on the need to modernise the workforce. People volunteering to work rest days is no longer a sustainable way to run the rail sector, and that is what we are tackling. On timetabling, however, it is surely better to provide certainty over uncertainty. The timetabling decision was made so that at least passengers could be provided with the confidence that the trains they see on the timetable will be running—they certainly were not previously. She will know that the rewards decision is an independent decision, and in some aspects Avanti performed well and in others it certainly did not. As I am sure she will know, the decision to be taken on 16 October is a commercially sensitive one, which I will not discuss, not least because I am not the rail Minister. I have every confidence, because the Secretary of State said so yesterday evening, that she will be meeting stakeholders, including those in the rail sector, and a new rail Minister will be appointed very shortly.