Cancellation Of The Intercity West Coast Franchise Competition

Download or read book Cancellation of the InterCity West Coast Franchise Competition written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Transport Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embarking on an ambitious, perhaps unachievable, reform of rail franchising, in haste, on the UK's most complex piece of railway was irresponsible. Many of the problems with the franchise competition, detailed in the Laidlaw report, reflect very badly on civil servants at the DfT. However, ministers approved a complex - perhaps unworkable - franchising policy at the same time as overseeing major cuts to the Department's resources. This was a recipe for failure which the DfT must learn from urgently. While the Department has already published a response to the Laidlaw report which Mr Laidlaw described as 'very encouraging', and has initiated a review of franchise MPs warn that a number of matters remain to be adequately resolved. The Committee calls on the Secretary of State and the Department for Transport to: explain why ministers and senior officials were misled about how subordinated loan facilities were calculated, if necessary after disciplinary proceedings against staff have concluded; complete a full email capture and get to the bottom of whether or not any officials manipulated the outcome of the competition to ensure First Group were awarded the contracts; provide a comprehensive breakdown of costs arising from the cancellation of the West Coast Mainline franchise competition. The Committee also wants to establish what lessons current and future ministers must learn from this episode