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South Central Rail Franchise

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on securing this debate, and on providing the House with this opportunity to discuss these important issues based on the new South Central rail franchise. I am delighted that he has had the opportunity to speak for more than the traditional amount of time. I should also like to thank him for his kind words about my appointment. I assure him that I am not thinking about days, weeks or months; rather, I am focusing on the task in hand, for however long that might take. I now want to concentrate on trying to answer some, if not all, of his questions, within the limits that constrain me in regard to the current franchise process. Our railway service now has more people and more freight moving across the country than in the past 50 years. It is safer than before, and its reliability is much greater than before. In the command paper on a sustainable railway, which was launched in July, we committed further record levels of investment with the aim of doubling the numbers on the railways and the freight service and making them safer, as well as tackling the carbon footprint of the rail industry. That is the background to where we are, with record use of our railway system, which I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman recognises as very important. In dealing with his comments, it may be helpful if I explain where we are with the franchise process and pick up on some of the issues that he raised. The Department for Transport issued a general advertisement for the franchise in May this year and announced in August that four groups had pre-qualified to receive an invitation to tender later this year. Those groups were National Express, the operator of the East Coast, c2c and East Anglia franchises; Stagecoach, operator of South West Trains, East Midlands Trains and a significant shareholder in Virgin Trains; GoVia, the current operator, which is also the operator of Southeastern Trains and London Midland; and NedRailways, the Dutch railway operator, which also operates Northern and Merseyrail in the consortium with Serco. It is our intention that the formal invitation to tender will be issued in early November, with bids received in February next year. A final decision on who will be awarded the franchise will be announced in the summer of 2009. The new franchise will come into operation, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is aware, on 20 September 2009 and will run for five years and 10 months, with the final year dependent on the operator having achieved a number of performance targets. There will be an optional extension of an additional two years, which the Government will be able to introduce at their own discretion. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is equally aware that this franchise will probably be shorter than the average franchise of seven to 10 years, but he will recognise equally that that is because of the substantial investment going on, which will benefit his constituents as well as many others among the travelling public, with the implementation of the £5.5 billion Thameslink programme to which the Government gave the go-ahead in the summer last year. The completion of that Thameslink programme in 2015 may require significant changes to the franchise map in 2015; thus a period of five years and 10 months gives the Government maximum flexibility in that regard without the need to carry out costly and time-consuming franchise termination negotiations. That, in turn, will save the taxpayer money. I was interested to hear the right hon. Gentleman's comments about stakeholder engagement and, particularly, about Passenger Focus. He will know that extensive discussions have taken place in the build-up to the franchise consultation. The Department carried out briefing events with local authorities in January this year with the aim of gaining a broad understanding of key local issues in advance of the outline work of the franchise specification. In May, we launched the formal consultation document, setting out the objectives for the franchise and the key issues that we were seeking to address. Consultation events were also held with stakeholders in Croydon, Worthing and Eastbourne, and 60 organisations were represented at those events. Alongside that, we have received some 156 written consultation responses. We remain grateful, of course, for the time people have taken to address those issues. The right hon. Gentleman will be well aware that Passenger Focus has been strengthened to ensure that there is a good voice for the travelling public, whether it be for rail or bus passengers, who are dealt with in the Local Transport Bill. This is the first time that Passenger Focus has provided detailed advice to the Secretary of State about the issues that the new franchisee should be required to address. The right hon. Gentleman rightly asked for that document to be placed in the Library, and that will be done.