Mole shuts gate! Horse bolted.

Extra-ordinary.

The Department meddles in rolling stock specification and allocation (which it clearly isn't competent to do) whilst letting Worst get away with rewriting regulated ticket validity.

This from Politics.co.uk...

First Great Western used a loophole in the current legislation which allows them to change the time restrictions on certain regulated fares but not the prices to effectively increase the price of tickets. They re-named the ‘Off Peak Ticket’ as a ‘Super Off Peak’ ticket – meaning it was the same price but only available on a much more restricted timetable, whilst making some former ‘off peak’ prices 20% higher.

DafT - less meddling please and more focus on the day job.