NEWS
Virgin to extend West Coast contract – McLoughlin
Claims of anti-Virgin bias denied
The DfT has strongly rejected newspaper allegations that there is
anti-Virgin bias among its
officials in the wake of the West Coast franchising fiasco.
Responding to accusations that there was an ‘anyone but Branson’ bias in the department made in the Daily Mail, including claims about derogatory emails, a DfT spokesman said: “There is no culture of bias against V
Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin has confirmed that Virgin has been asked to extend its West Coast contract for 9-13 months whilst a new franchise competition is run following the debacle over the original bid decision.
This initial franchise will be just two years long, before a full- length contract is let around the time of the general election.
McLoughlin (pictured right) said: “This is a regrettable outcome caused by unacceptable mistakes made by officials in my department during a complex procurement process.”
irgin
at the Department for Transport and we have seen no evidence to suggest that there is.
“We are also not aware of any
email exchanges that are
derogatory towards Virgin or suggest that officials have acted in any way other than impartially and in good faith.”
Three officials were suspended over the errors that led to every re-franchising process being halted, and there may yet be more following the reviews into what happened.
Civil service union PCS attacked the Government for blaming civil servants “before any of the facts have been established” and said ministers were trying to dodge the blame.
The former head of the civil service, Lord O’Donnell, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that many departments were suffering from skills shortages and a lack of top-flight talent.
In late August, before she was reshuffled to the Department for International Development, Justine Greening
ordered an
investigation when she was informed about an error in the calculations.
4 | rail technology magazine Oct/Nov 12 He added: “I would like to
reiterate that there is no suggestion that FirstGroup or any of the other bidders including Virgin Trains acted in anything other than good faith during the bidding process.”
McLoughlin has also announced the remit for both reviews: Sam Laidlaw’s investigating the specific West Coast errors, and Richard Brown’s into their impact on the wider franchising model. After Virgin applied for a judicial review of the process, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC)
was appointed by the DfT in late September to go over the figures. The study showed the absence or loss of calculations showing how civil servants arrived at their decision, the Telegraph reported. It states it is unclear whether officials failed to save the results, lost or deleted calculations.
will take time.”
The report also show the GDP resilience model was not properly applied for the last three years of the contract, and the DfT made errors confusing real and nominal inflation. The revenue forecasts were not correlated with how many passengers could actually fit on the trains.
But McLoughlin said: “Before these reviews have been completed,
and particularly
before the findings of the Laidlaw review have been published, any speculation as to the nature of the flaws is just that – speculation.”
He said: “I am committed to
ensuring that passengers will see no impact as a result of these mistakes. Clearly we will need to learn lessons from the two reviews. And we will need to run a new competition for the West Coast franchise. I want this to happen as quickly as possible, but we want to get it right, which
State-owned Directly Operated Railways (DOR), which runs East Coast services, will continue to “stand ready should they be required”, he added.
A spokesperson for ATOC said: “There is an opportunity
here for the DfT
to look again at its approach, particularly on risk and evaluation, and simplify the process while delivering better value for money and improved services.”
A Virgin Trains spokesman said: “Our customers have made clear they want us to continue our excellent service and we now have the chance to deliver that and offer customers some short- term continuity.”
For the full terms of the Laidlaw West Coast review and the Brown review into franchising, see www.
railtechnologymagazine.com
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