Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the costs of administering each franchise of the Direct Awards programme are.

The costs of the 4 most recently-completed Direct Award projects have been as follows:

Northern £1.536million

Greater Anglia £1.088million

West Coast £ 0.842million

Southeastern £ 0.918million

In Total: £ 4.384million

These figures include staff costs, advisers, “non-pay” administrative costs (for example, IT facilities, training and travel expenses) and VAT.