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Rail Fares and Franchises

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his additional comments. The Committee has always been concerned that if the premiums demanded were too high and risked reducing services or jeopardising the TOCs, that, too, would be an error in the franchising process, and we have drawn attention to that in previous reports. Our report also deals with passenger services and the threats to them. The range of services includes refreshment facilities, station security and booking offices, the provision of which impacts on passenger safety. There have been many complaints about TOCs trying to reduce passenger services in an attempt to reduce their costs and, in some cases, the Secretary of State has stepped in and not allowed that to happen. Passenger Focus, which does excellent work in the interests of the travelling public, has highlighted these issues, and it is encouraging that the new chairman of the Office of Rail Regulation, Anna Walker, has made public statements expressing her concern about the reduction of passenger services. We welcome the inclusion of important passenger services such as improved stations, added CCTV, and cycle and car parking in the new South Central franchise for Southern Railways. We hope that it will be a model for future franchises. Recent statements by the Secretary of State encourage us to think that that might be the case. I shall make particular reference to the recently published Department for Transport document, "The Future of Rail Franchising", which discusses passenger services, the length of franchises, risk—many of the matters referred to in our report—and three new franchises that are under consideration. We would like the proposals in the document to relate to franchises as a whole, and I shall refer to that later in my contribution. The third area that we looked at was fares. We repeated our long-standing, strong concern about the complexity and cost of fares and about the difficulty many people experience accessing cheaper tickets. We recognised that there are many good deals to be had, but for the passenger who perhaps does not have access to the internet and cannot arrange their journeys in advance or at specific times and days, the increase in fares is horrendous. We repeatedly expressed concern about this. We are pleased that the Secretary of State accepted our recommendation to continue the retail prices index plus 1 per cent. formula for increases on most regulated fares. That was particularly important because, at a time when inflation was set to fall, there were reports that the train operating companies were attempting to have that formula removed so that they could increase fares, when they ought to have been reducing them. We were also pleased that the Secretary of State promised to remove the basket of fares which allowed individual fares to rise by up to five times as much as the national increase. That promise was carried out and the basket for regulated fares has gone, but it is not at all clear whether its removal is for one year only—this year—or for the foreseeable future, so I seek clarification on that. In July 2009, the RPI stood at 1.4 per cent., and most regulated fares fell in 2010—the first fall since privatisation—but there were concerns that the train operating companies would seek to recoup this through cuts in services or increases in unregulated fares. Last November, the Association of Train Operating Companies announced that overall fares would rise by an average of 1.1 per cent. for 2010, but this has masked major increases in some areas, particularly in unregulated fares. For example, the increase in the price of a First Great Western London to Swindon supersaver ticket by a massive 15 per cent. at a time of falling inflation is unacceptable.