Chunnel woes - but silver lining in sight

This from Judge Nutmeg...

The European Commission has today announced that it is taking proceedings against the UK and French Governments over their failure to comply with European railway law in the structure and regulation of the Channel Tunnel.  

In particular, the Commission is concerned that this non-compliance is causing prices for passengers and freight customers to be too high. 

No doubt this will be strongly opposed by the Governments, and long protracted court cases will follow.

Of course, if the European single market was working properly, one could rely on competitive powers to control prices; in this case competition from the alternative mode, cross channel ferries.

The same ferries in fact that the Competition Regulator has just banned Eurotunnel from buying, with multiple legal cases also heading to court.

The benefits of EU Membership for the Legal Profession can surely not be doubted even by Monsieur Farage and Co.

Warning - may cause retina bleed!

This from the Hammer Man...

This horror passed across the misus' desk this morning.

With the above in mind the answer to this particular question from M'learned Friends has to be no!

Will legal action delay Laidlaw report?

This from the Daily Telegraph...

Kate Mingay, one of the three civil servants suspended over the West Coast rail bid fiasco, has filed legal proceedings against the Department for Transport over the way she has been treated.

With the preliminary hearing due to take place in the High Court on Thursday Eye wonders if this will have an impact on the publication date of the Laidlaw Inquiry's findings, due out at the end of this month?
 
The involvement of m'learned friends may also mean that Sam Laidlaw's appearance at the Transport Select Committee next Tuesday will be rather less than illuminating.

ICWC fiasco - RMT consult M'learned friends

This from the RMT...

RAIL UNION RMT today notified the Government that it will be petitioning the European Commisson over breaches of the Consolidated Directive on Public Procurement (2004) over the planned award of an extension to the current West Coast Main Line contract to Virgin Rail Group.

Solicitors for the union will be tabling the petition this week as the talks over the new contract, due to start on the 9th December, remain log-jammed.

Good to see the brothers ensuring that the only real beneficiaries of rail privatisation can continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Virgin gets its day in court!

So purveyors of popcorn are in for a bumper month of sales!

Last Friday saw a pre-hearing for Virgin's application for a Judicial Review into the process behind the InterCity West Coast franchise award.

M'learned friends are expected to square up in court on the 17th or 18th of this month, with legal debates expected to last a number of days.

Hopefully all interested parties will remember that this Thursday is the cut off point for submitting evidence...

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

As no doubt the wheels of Justice will take many months to turn, DOR must now be a shoe-in for running InterCity West Coast from the 9th December.

Unless of course the newly emboldened ORR objects... 

First for consulting M'learned Friends

This from a Mr Pernickety-Nitpicker, senior partner with Messrs Sue, Grabbitt & Run...
 
There is a precedent for legal challenges to government decisions on franchising.
 
In June 2003, the then incumbent operator of the Great Eastern franchise failed to make the shortlist  for the replacement Greater Anglia franchise.
 
Lawyers were dispatched to the High Court which instructed the then Strategic Rail Authority to release the application form scores for the franchise.
 
With this information, the incumbent said that it now understood the pre-qualification 'more clearly' and could see 'in detail' the reasoning behind SRA’s decision to exclude it from the Greater Anglia bidding. 

The statement continued: ‘We are clearly still disappointed that, as the best performing operator in East Anglia delivering the best value for money for the taxpayer, we have not been given an opportunity to bid. However, we have decided that it is not in our interests to proceed any further with our legal challenge and, accordingly, we have withdrawn’.
 
So who was this litigious incumbent? 

Why our friends at First Group.
 
Clearly, and without prejudice, what goes around, comes around.

Police Five reduced to two fingered salute?

Further mutterings from the Boys in Blue over Eye favourite Tom Winsor.

Observers of the political scene will have noted that Tom, the last of the Ozymandean Rail Regulators, has been put forward by Theresa May as the new Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales.

As @captain_deltic dryly tweeted this morning:

I wonder whether the Home Office has asked DfT for a reference :))

Eye suggests Stephen 'Cab for Hire' Byers might be quicker off the rank...

RMT threatens BoJo with legal action

This from the RMT...

"RMT can confirm that we have today commenced a High Court action for defamation on Boris Johnson over his Not Ken Again poster campaign which falsely portrays our General Secretary Bob Crow as being part of a culture of political immorality and as having caused serious harm to the interests of people in London.

"RMT will be making no further comment and will be giving no interviews on this matter as it proceeds through the legal process." 

Ends

ORR gives regulatory thumbs up to Alliances

This from the Office of Rail Regulation...

We support the concept of alliances and welcome their potential to add value in the rail sector, delivering benefits not only for the parties involved but also for rail users and taxpayers. We will help prospective alliance partners develop their plans and we welcome discussions - the earlier we are involved in these the better we will be able to help.

That is all, although My Learned Friends will no doubt wish to pour expensively (shurely, 'exhaustively'? Ed) over the details here.

UPDATE: This from another satisfied reader...

Not for the first time do I have to correct the illiterate content of this so-called blog.

In a blatant and ill-informed attacked on the legal profession, a fine body of men and women who are all that stands between the privatised rail industry and anarchy, you refer to them pouring - presumably a snide reference to the consumption of alcohol.

In my experience they spend long hours into the night poring over legal documents to ensure that the railway runs smoothly.

I remain your etc...
R.Slicker

It's a fair cop!

DfT procurement priorities laid bare

This from Ithuriel...

This illuminating written answer given in the House yesterday...

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which external consultants were contracted to advise his Department on the (a) design, (b) tendering and (c) award of preferred bidder status for the Thameslink rolling stock contract; and what the cost to the public purse was of each such contract.

Theresa Villiers (Minister of State (Rail and Aviation), Transport; Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
The cost of each contract against the categories requested up to June 2011 is as follows:

£ million
Vendor	(a) Design	(b) Tendering (1)	(c) Award of preferred bidder status
Arup	2.53	2.86	0.14
Booz and Company	0.22	0.49	0.09
Freshfields	2.44	5.31	0.18
Interfleet	0.16	1.49	0.02
PWC	0.77	2.26	0.26
Total	6.12	12.4	0.69
Total	19.2
(1 )Tendering relates to evaluation. Note: These figures exclude VAT.

Eye Readers will doubtless note that even in the Design phase for a technical project, engineering consultants Interfleet were paid less than half the fees of lawyers Freshfields.

Is this because:

a) engineers are as cheap, as lawyers are expensive ?
b) making sure you can get your money back if the train doesn't work is more important than making sure it does work?
c) Interfleet missed a zero from their invoice?

Answers on a postcard please to Great Minster House.

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic...

Can I point out that this table corrects the inaccurate information in a previous written answer from Theresa Villiers in July this year.

Villiers said then that the cost of Thameslink consultancy was £13.1 million of which £5.3 million had been spent since May 2010.

Since Lord Adonis had put the figure at £13 million a year earlier it was obvious some civil servant was going for the Jammie Dodger Embarrassment Trophy.

Naturally, in publishing the correction the Minister apologised for misleading the House (actually, I made that last bit up)

Might I take this opportunity to point out that this blindingly obvious error was exposed in my Informed Sources column in Modern... (No. Ed)

Tom Winsor returns to Whitehall!

This from the Home Office...

The independent study, announced by Home Secretary Theresa May, will help bring modern management practices into policing and increase operational flexibility for the country’s 43 territorial forces.

Former Rail Regulator Tom Winsor will head the review, supported by professional advice from former West Midlands Chief Constable Sir Edward Crew and leading labour market economist Professor Richard Disney.

Eye hopes Tom has bought lots of batteries for that famous tape recorder...

Selling off NR - Cui bono?

Telegrammed by Bulldog Drummond
Interesting that two very similar stories (Alistair Osborne in Friday's Daily Telegraph and Tom Winsor in the Times today) suggest that the Government could trouser £12bn by selling off Network Rail.

This is based on the accounting wheeze that the Regulatory Asset Base is really 'worth' £36bn.

The figure is arrived at by deducting the debt of £23bn which supposedly leaves an equity of £12-13bn.

Complete fantasy of course as the RAB is not a realistic asset valuation in commercial terms and it conveniently overlooks the question as to who would want to invest in a business that has such huge debts, which can only be propped up by massive government subsidy and borrowing that, in part, goes to cover normal running costs and paying debt interest.

Network Rail is a complete dog's breakfast of a business and is only viable with huge levels of taxpayers' moolah.

The only people who can have any possible interest in selling off this business are the huge army of bankers, lawyers, consultants and general hangers on who are experiencing thin pickings at the moment.

It is certainly not in the interests of the taxpayer or those who want a properly run and cost-effective railway.

General Election 2010 - policy briefings

There is a useful Election briefing on the rail policies of the main political parties over at the Norton Rose website.

Lawyers giving something for nothing - shurely shome mishtake - allegedly.

Adonis to strip FuCC of franchise in April?

Poor old FuCC.

Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph has now joined the legion calling for First to be stripped of the franchise:

The Government could do this as early as April because of a "break clause" allowing the Department for Transport to remove the company for poor performance after four years.

Eye thinks not.

Our resident legal expert, Hugh Fee, points out that the 10th April termination date referred to in the contract was dependent on performance between April 07 - April 08.

So whilst the Noble Lord might huff and puff he still can't bring FuCC's house down.

UPDATE: This from Thameslink Tommy...

Poor Neal Lawson don't you mean.

The guys only been in the job two weeks and he's already been roasted by the High Speed Evangelist.

Your readers might be interested to know that the shortfall in FuCC's driver establishment had its origins in the obsession with driving out costs championed by a previous MD.

Obviously the elimination of "spare drivers" was seen as an easy target.

Older hands knew that this wasn't wise but in the aggressive management climate that existed at the time no one felt brave enough to say so.

So as drivers left, no replacements were recruited and over time cancellations due to "driver shortages" became more and more frequent.

Hopefully driver spare ratios are being maintained over at East Coast?

RT: BBC Caves in to Carter Ruck Threats Over Trafigura Film

Reposted from Ian Dale's blog...



Carter-Ruck have succeeded in persuading the BBC to remove all reference to the Trafigura story from its website, according to the New Statesman. They really don't learn do they - Carter Ruck or the BBC. You cannot suppress things like this in the modern media age. If one organisation caves in, there will the dozens more only to willing to step up to the plate.

So do enjoy this Newsnight film, which I really wouldn't bother to have posted had the BBC caved in.

Could I encourage every single UK blogger to embed this video in their blogs too?

Footnote: For the history of this sage click HERE.

Done - ta.

EU rail liberalisation

***Norton Rose provides a useful primer here.***

National Express update

Looks like the wheels have come off the Cosmen CVC deal and with it Stagecoach's rescue of the C2C and NXEA franchises.

Whilst this leaves National Express in the brown stuff it may prove even more embarrassing for the Noble Lord.

City lawyers are rumoured to be dusting off wheelbarrows in the expectation of huge fees for sorting out Cross Default.

UPDATE: This from Leo Pink...

So that's 'rescued' as in 'Blackbeard the Pirate' rescued' the passengers on passing merchant ships?

See also 'liberated' as in my dad 'liberated' the Iron Cross in my medal collection.

UPDATE: This from Ithuriel...

So does this mean that wee Brian's court battle against the Department of Dogs' Breakfasts over the timing of cap and collar, the delays to ITSO smartcards and compensation for the missing £200 million is on again?

Will the lawyers have enough wheelbarrows to go round?

Grauniad gagged - threat to Bill of Rights

This is an absolute disgrace.

Ian Dale has the story here.

Whilst Guido, who is offshore, furnishes further details.

Log on, get outraged and reclaim our ancient rights!

UPDATE: It was the web what won it!

Via Twitter...

@arusbridger: Victory! #CarterRuck caves-in. No #Guardian court hearing. Media can now report Paul Farrelly's PQ about #Trafigura. More soon on Guardian..

@arusbridger: Thanks to Twitter/all tweeters for fantastic support over past 16 hours! Great victory for free speech. #guardian #trafigura #carterRuck

UPDATE: Grauniad story here:

Gag on Guardian reporting MP's Trafigura question lifted

UPDATE: And here is the BBC Newsnight story on Trafigura.

Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast

With a bowler tip to Carter-Ruck for bringing this to everyone's attention.

Khan's conflict of interests?

Campaigning lawyer Louise Christian, of Christian Khan solicitors, is demanding a public enquiry into the Grayrigg accident.

Hopefully this will be dealt with in person by Secretary of State, Lord Andrew Adonis, and not left to the junior Transport Minister responsible for railways, Sadiq Khan.

That would be the same Sadiq Khan as in 'Christian Khan' - Louise's former business partner.

How ironic that the new transport minister built his previous business from suing the railways.

Sunday Working

The question of whether Sundays are a rostered turn for drivers has exercised many minds since privatisation.

Most recently those at East Midlands Trains, which, over the last two weekends, has found it almost impossible to provide a Sunday service "due to virtually no drivers being available for work".

Following discussions at the High Court on Friday the following letter has been jointly issued by Alsef and EMT.


This one looks set to run and run, unless of course it's on a Sunday.