Avanti West Coast

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Transport to make a statement on the future of Avanti West Coast railway services.

The current west coast franchise agreement is due to expire on 16 October. As with all contract awards, the Government will act in accordance with the Railways Act 1993 section 26(1) franchising policy statement, and a decision has yet to be taken by the Secretary of State. Given the market and the commercially sensitive nature of the outcome, further information cannot be provided at this time.

Like all operators, Avanti has used a degree of rest-day working to operate its timetable. In essence, this means that drivers have been volunteering to work the additional shifts over and above their contracted hours. The industry arrangement has been in place for many years, to the benefit of the drivers, the operators and indeed the passengers. Avanti has a rest-day working arrangement that remains in place with the ASLEF union, which represents about 95% of the drivers.

However, on 30 July this year Avanti experienced an unprecedented, immediate and near total cessation of drivers volunteering to work passenger trains on their rest days. This left Avanti unable to resource its timetable and, in the immediate term, resulted in significant short-notice cancellations. Avanti has reduced its timetable in response to the withdrawal of rest-day working. Reducing the timetable provided better certainty and reliability for passengers as it reduced the number of short-notice cancellations.

The Department continues to work closely with Avanti to monitor performance, while Avanti continues to review the demand data and the position regarding train crew availability to inform options to reliably increase services. An increase in services between Manchester and London remains an absolute priority and Avanti will continue to look for opportunities to support passengers and businesses along the route.

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. It is disappointing that the Secretary of State is not here, as this issue impacts millions of people in our constituencies.

Many of us saw the chaos at Manchester Piccadilly, London Euston and several other stations over the summer as Avanti West Coast slashed its timetables and suspended ticket sales at short notice, cutting key towns and cities off from each other. Now, in September, the problem has persisted and the chaos continues to blight the lives of thousands of people not only in my constituency but across the north-west of England and other parts of the UK. Avanti says that this has been caused by “unofficial strike action” and

“the current industrial relations climate”—

phrases that serve only to abdicate management responsibility for ensuring that the trains are properly staffed.

ASLEF and National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers members across the country have indeed recently been on strike in defence of their pay, terms and conditions—I pay tribute to those members for doing so—but their strike action has no bearing on the fact that Avanti has a business model that expects train drivers to work their rest days as a way of maintaining the service, rather than having sufficient staffing levels.

We know that there have been underlying problems at Avanti for a long time. Figures from the Office of Rail and Road for the first three months of the year show that Avanti’s performance was already behind that of other franchises, such as those on the great western and east coast main lines. The company was paid £17 million in performance and management fees from the public purse in just two years, including for “operational performance”, “customer experience” and

“acting as a good and efficient operator”.

And so you should be!

The hon. Gentleman raised a number of points. I completely understand the frustration and disappointment, but more than anything the need to give passengers the confidence in our rail sector to know that their train services will be safe, affordable and reliable.

This is a long-standing challenge. As I have already set out, the rest-day working agreement has been in place for many years, but it is a way of working that can no longer continue in a modern-day rail service. Part of the challenge is with recruitment and retention, which is why we are working to improve the gender balance among drivers, which is woefully low, and to improve the age diversity of drivers. When the average age is 51 years and the average age of retirement is 59, we clearly have a problem with retention. That is where we are focusing our efforts, in partnership with Avanti and all train operators.

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Huw Merriman.

I am grateful to you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. At the heart of this are the passengers who are losing out yet again, and I absolutely agree with the Minister that we cannot run the rail system in such an antiquated fashion, with train operators not able to fix in advance when their staff will be rostered. I hope there will be some changes on that. The transport Bill and the formation of Great British Railways will provide many of the solutions to transform the railways. Is the Bill’s Second Reading still on track to be delivered this autumn?

Great British Railways was a manifesto promise and that will continue. We are working with the House to secure the time and support required to continue with that legislation.

I call the shadow Secretary of State, Louise Haigh.

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.

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.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her response to this urgent question. The blame lies on both sides: the unofficial strikes are completely unwarranted and are causing immense trouble for my constituents, who are given the most appalling treatment as a result of those strikes. Furthermore, Avanti itself has got to get its act together, and get it together soon. I have been using this line on the west coast for 37 years, since I first came into Parliament, and I have never seen it in such a state as it is in at the moment. Finally, as HS2 is part of this argument, I just want to say that it is a white elephant, and I hope the Prime Minister will get rid of it as soon as possible, certainly from Birmingham northwards.

As ever, my hon. Friend makes excellent points. I wholeheartedly agree that the situation is untenable and needs to be improved. I also travel frequently—indeed, most weeks—on my journey down to London on Northern, TransPennine and Avanti services into London Euston, so I share the challenges and the pain that those undertaking journeys to Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow Central and Manchester are currently enduring. That is why we are working hard in the Department for Transport with our train operating companies, particularly on the matter of recruitment, diversity and retention, to ensure that we have train drivers who are trained so that we can operate a safe, affordable and reliable service in future.

The inflammatory tone and language the outgoing Secretary of State used regarding the ongoing industrial relations dispute has been echoed by many operators, including Avanti. That is very much to be regretted, and I hope that new leadership changes this.

Reports last week suggested that Avanti was being considered for a long-term contract award. Is there any truth to those reports, and what discussions are taking place about using the operator of last resort to take over services? Avanti paid out £11 million in dividends to shareholders last year, 30% of which went to the Italian state-owned operator Trenitalia. It is a clear sign of the failure of privatised rail operators when profits are being used to subsidise public transport in Italy, rather than the UK, so what discussions are being had with the Scottish Government about the situation at Avanti and, more broadly, how Scotland was able to nationalise our franchise and how DfT can learn from that process?

A quarter of TransPennine routes are also being suspended next week, in addition to the Avanti crisis. This is becoming a critical situation for Scotland and the north of England. Where does that leave the integrated rail plan? Lastly, what assessment have the Government made of the economic impact on the north of England and Scotland of Avanti and TransPennine scrapping their services?

I understand the challenges, particularly on that Glasgow Central train, which I travel on as well. All options are on the table for the discussions on 16 October as to how we will proceed, but information about those discussions is commercially sensitive at the moment.

I thank my hon. Friend for her statement to the House. Given that ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, has pumped in a quarter of a million pounds to the Labour party, does she also call on Opposition Members to condemn these strikes? Those who have a lot to say should make clear their other interests, which I am not sure they have done so far.

My hon. Friend speaks from experience and makes an excellent point. I think all of us across this House want the same thing: for passengers to be sure that they can enjoy a safe, affordable and reliable train service. As to how we are moving forward, when 95% of train drivers are represented by ASLEF and the remaining train drivers are predominantly represented by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, any of us in this House with communication channels open to those unions could make the point that the way we will have a sustainable rail sector in future, with more passengers travelling by train, is for those passengers to be confident that those trains will be driven, whether or not it is a rest day.