Rail Disruption: Social and Economic Impacts

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for asking this Question. I understand from the technical press that 86 out of 93 of these affected trains have either a failure of the yaw dampers, which connect the bogie to the body shell—they are quite important parts—or the lifting points, with cracks of up to one foot long. On the routes affected this clearly means that there are very few, if any, trains. These are trains designed and procured by the Government—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but could he keep his question succinct?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Unfortunately I missed the question, but I hope to provide some colour to what the noble Lord was saying. Indeed, there are two different types of crack. One is found on the yaw damper; those cracks were found three weeks ago and are not the reason for the withdrawal of the trains from service. The second cracks are on the lifting lugs and have led to the withdrawal of trains from service. I would like to reassure the noble Lord that there is a very stringent engineering risk assessment in place. These trains are checked every 24 hours and are being returned to service from today; we expect to have up to 25 coming back today. We hope that 60 GWR trains will be back by Monday and we believe that services will significantly improve.