ICWC bid spat exposes industry's immaturity

The InterCity West Coast franchise excitement continues...

Both First and Virgin have continued trading blows on-line and through the media over the last couple of days.

Sir Richard Branson took to his blog on Friday to say:

The Government may as well have auctioned the West Coast Main Line on eBay: “Roll up, roll up for the Great Train Sale! Highest bidder wins. Doesn’t matter when you pay, 10 years or 15 years time will do.

“We don’t mind how much debt your company has. Deliverability not an issue. Quality not a factor. Redundancies not a problem. Roll up, roll up.”

It would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort and the taxpayer lots of money...

A member of the public completely independent of Virgin has set up an e-petition calling for the government to reconsider the West Coast Main Line franchise decision

If you want to join them and let the Government know your thoughts, we urge you to sign the independent e-petition.

A call to action that @VirginTrain's own twitter account took to heart:

Amusing to think that in December this renamed account will be tweeting on behalf of First Group! 

Such are the paradoxes of the franchising system.

Meanwhile Tim O'Toole in Saturday's Daily Mail accused Beardie of being a bad loser:

‘Branson has lost and he is off the field now,’ he said. ‘What he is saying is simply not true. We are not going to be cutting staff – staff levels will be about the same.

‘But there are two things which are particularly outrageous. Had he won, he was planning to cut twice as much as he said we would have cut. And if he had won with his bid, he would have made a huge amount of money. Maybe that explains his hysteria.’

Whilst the main protagonists continued playing Punch and Judy across the broadsheets on Sunday, it now looks as if the National Audit Office and Transport Select Committee will be scrutinizing the bids.

According to Alistair Osborne in today's Telegraph:

Margaret Hodge, PAC chairman, said she was concerned that, following bid fiascos on the East Coast line, the Department for Transport (DfT) had been “over-optimistic about passenger numbers and economic growth”.

“There is no evidence to us that the DfT has changed its spots on any of this,” she said. “It would probably be legitimate for us to look at the process they have engaged in on this bid.”

Whilst this all adds greatly to the general gaiety of the nation, is it anyway to run a railway?

TSC finally confirms NR part of DfT

The Transport Select Committee is asking the public to suggest topics for future inquiries.

And, in the spirit of open government and democratic accountability, quite right too!

But what's this?

Has the NAO been told?

Chair of PAC on HS1

This from the Public Accounts Committee...

NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE: The completion and sale of High Speed 1

A statement from The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts:

I am yet to be convinced that HS1 will prove to be value for money. Yet again we hear that value for money will depend on uncertain benefits which have not been quantified. We will want the department to do all it can to realise the benefits and turn this sorry story round.

Compared to the staggering mismanagement of the West Coast Mainline upgrade, the department did relatively well with the construction of HS1. But that is damning with very faint praise indeed. It’s a sad state of affairs when it comes as no surprise that HS1 was based on dodgy assumptions and bad planning.

Don't be so coy Margaret, tell us what you really think!

How effing much?

More good news for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

The NAO report on the collapse of Metronet says it has cost the taxpayer £410m (this figure of course excludes the millions paid to consultants to set up the deeply flawed part privatisation of the Tube).

Caroline Pidgeon, quoted in the Grauniad, tells it like it is...

"This is simply a devastating report for the architect of the public private partnership contract – Gordon Brown. It is unforgivable that as much as £410m of taxpayers' money has been wasted. The PPP deal that was forced on Londoners by Gordon Brown has been totally exposed as a bad deal for taxpayers and for passengers."

Sadly it's not worth pointing out that had Brown and Vadera presided over such a monumental balls-up in the private sector they would have been out the door so fast their arses wouldn't have touched the ground.

UPDATE: This from Accountancy Magazine...

Ernst & Young was paid £33m in fees for handling the administration of Metronet, the firm set up to modernise the London Underground, a report by the National Audit Office reveals.

Why?

Ministry of Truth

Is the National Audit Office now colluding in DafT's dishonest declarations about the amount of new rolling stock it has ordered?

According to the BBC it is:

"The NAO said 1,300 new train carriages had been ordered, and ministers say they are tackling passenger growth."

Poppycock!

Captain Deltic calculates that, "because of a combination of double counting and someone in DafT keying in 42 (for 24) the real total is only 1,156 vehicles".

He is of course an optimist!

Meanwhile it is disingenuous for the BBC to claim "ministers say they are tackling passenger growth" because none of these vehicles have been built yet!

So BBC - bias or balls-up?

Prescient questioning

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee took evidence on the 4th June into the National Audit Office's report "Reducing passenger rail delays by better management of incidents."

Rail industry witnesses included Dr Mike Mitchell (Director General, Rail and National Networks Group, DfT), Iain Coucher (Chief Executive, NR) and David Franks (MD, National Express East Coast and an ATOC Board member).

Coucher-Tiger and Franksy made a good fist of the affair showing themselves to be on top of their brief.

One small gem crept through the rather dry proceedings.

With a delicious sense of irony Ian Davidson MP (Glasgow South) asked David Franks how delays influenced the number of assaults on rail staff.

How Franksy, who was sat next to Mike Mitchell at the time, managed to keep a straight face is unclear.

Younger readers may be unaware that in 2005 Dr Mike Mitchell was accused of of verbally abusive and threatening conduct towards a member of GNER staff.

He was found not guilty.