UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 655-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

THE committee OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Wednesday 4 June 2008

 

 

REDUCING PASSENGER RAIL DELAYS

BY BETTER MANAGEMENT OF INCIDENTS

 

DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT

DR MIKE MITCHELL and DR GARY BACKLER

 

NETWORK RAIL

MR IAIN COUCHER

 

OFFICE OF RAIL REGULATION

DR BILL EMERY

 

ASSOCIATION OF TRAIN OPERATING COMPANIES

MR DAVID FRANKS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 126

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral evidence

Taken before the Committee of Public Accounts

on Wednesday 4 June 2008

Members present:

Mr Edward Leigh, in the Chair

Mr Ian Davidson

Nigel Griffiths

Mr Austin Mitchell

Dr John Pugh

________________

Mr Tim Burr, Comptroller and Auditor General and Ms Geraldine Barker, Director, National Audit Office, gave evidence.

Mr Marius Gallaher, Alternate Treasury Officer of Accounts, HM Treasury, gave evidence.

REPORT BY THE COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL

REDUCING PASSENGER RAIL DELAYS

BY BETTER MANAGEMENT OF INCIDENTS

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Mike Mitchell, Director General, Rail and National Networks Group and Dr Gary Backler, Director, Rail Service Delivery, National Networks, Department for Transport; Mr Iain Coucher, Chief Executive, Network Rail; Dr Bill Emery, Chief Executive, Office of Rail Regulation and Mr David Franks, Chief Executive, Trains Division, National Express Group and Managing Director, National Express East Coast and an ATOC Board Member, Association of Train Operating Companies, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we are considering the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report into Reducing Passenger Rail Delays by Better Management of Incidents. We welcome Dr Mike Mitchell who is the Director General of Rail and National Networks in the Department for Transport; Iain Coucher who is the Chief Executive of Network Rail; Bill Emery who is Chief Executive of the Office of Rail Regulation and David Franks who is the Managing Director for National Express Rail and a Board Member of the Association of Train Operating Companies. Mr Mitchell, before I ask any questions of Mr Coucher, it strikes me that Network Rail is a bit of an enigma; there is a bit of a fiction that it is a private company but in fact 50% of its funding comes from the public sector, from us the tax payer. That is £3.4 billion a year. Mr Coucher is not an accounting officer so how do we actually exercise control over him as a Committee of Public Accounts?

Dr Mitchell: Network Rail, as you know, is an independent private sector company and the Government cannot intervene in its operation and decision making.

Q2 Chairman: An independent private sector company with half its funding coming from the tax payer, to the tune of £3.4 billion.

Dr Mitchell: That is correct, yes.

Q3 Chairman: You say that with a straight face, do you?

Dr Mitchell: Network Rail is a private company but you are correct in saying that most of its funding comes from the Government.

Q4 Chairman: So how are we supposed to exercise control over it as a Committee of Public Accounts if Mr Coucher is not an accounting officer, although he is responsible for £3.4 billion of public money?

Dr Mitchell: The secretary of state is responsible for the £3.4 billion of public money. Our principal contractor is of course Network Rail and we are able to influence Network Rail in that way, but only as a customer.

Q5 Chairman: You still have not answered my question, but we will have to leave it there. Mr Coucher, you are responsible for this body. Can I refer you to figures four and five on page 12? I want to deal first with the rail delays and what progress has been made. I want to ask you why it has taken so long since the Hatfield disaster to reduce the number of incidents and the length of delays to anywhere near pre-Hatfield levels. If you look at figures four and five you can see it has taken a long time to get back to square one, has it not?

Mr Coucher: We have been set a target by the regulator as to what is achievable given the age of the assets, the funding and the level of use on the network.

Q6 Chairman: I might ask Mr Emery about the targets in a moment; I am not convinced that this target is particularly challenging. Whether there is a target or not, you are responsible for this body. How much are you paid to run it, by the way?

Mr Coucher: I am paid, as a matter of record, £585,000.

Q7 Chairman: Plus bonuses?

Mr Coucher: Yes.

Q8 Chairman: So what I want to know on behalf of the long-suffering public is why it has taken so long for you to reduce delays and the number of delays to pre-Hatfield levels.

Mr Coucher: That is because we are not measuring on a like for like basis. We are now running considerably more trains and it means that every single incident we get on the railway does impact a lot more trains. Today we run about 22,000 trains a day and in Railtrack's time it was 18,000 trains a day. It is a much more congested railway and we have consistently beaten all targets set for us by the regulator who is there to determine what is achievable given the age of the assets and the activity on the railways.

Q9 Chairman: If you are doing so well why has the rate of improvement slowed in the last year? If what you said was right and gradually the usage had gone up, you would surely expect the improvement to continue, but in fact the improvements have slowed in the last year; the lengths of delays has dropped hardly at all, there has only been a marginal drop in length of delays. You are responsible for this body, what are you doing about it?

Mr Coucher: We have just completed the following year 2007/2008 and we have taken another million minutes off that target so the out-turn was actually 9.8 and we have continued that downward trend. There were specific reasons in 2006/2007, in particular one day in which we incurred some 250,000 minutes.

Q10 Chairman: Why was that?

Mr Coucher: Because of extreme weather in which we continued to run trains because we believed that was the right thing to do for passengers, even though it would cause Network Rail to miss its targets. We ran trains in this country whilst Holland, Germany and France cancelled the vast majority of theirs. We stand by that decision.

Q11 Chairman: So that is why the improvements have slowed down in the last year, is it?

Mr Coucher: In the last year we have taken a million minutes off the targets, so the final out-turn which is the next block on the curve which you do not have there is actually 9.8 million minutes and this year we are targeting a further 900,000 minutes reduction to 8.9 million.

Q12 Chairman: Mr Emery, Mr Coucher has mentioned this target and your target for delays in 2006/2007 was 10.6 million minutes which was actually less demanding than Network Rail's own target. You are supposed to be the regulator; why have you got a target which is less demanding than the person you are regulating?

Dr Emery: In the determination in 2003 the Office of Rail Regulation set the targets. We expect Network Rail to meet those targets.

Q13 Chairman: I am sorry but you have not answered the question I put to you. You are supposed to be the regulator; you are not supposed to be a pushover. Why are your performance targets not more demanding? Why are they not challenging enough?

Dr Emery: In essence I think there is a bit of hindsight here. The judgment was made by the regulator in 2003; the trajectory on delayed minutes was set for a five year period.

Q14 Chairman: The obvious question then is why do you not review your targets more regularly then?

Dr Emery: We review our targets and as we will be making our announcement for the period 2009 to 2014 tomorrow - our draft determination is tomorrow - we will be setting Network Rail challenging targets for the next period.

Q15 Chairman: Which will be more challenging than what we have seen hitherto, will they?

Dr Emery: Certainly. The Government, in its requirements for the railways from 2009 to 20014, has set out expectations for increased punctuality, reductions in delays; those are part and parcel of the package of measures that we will be requiring from Network Rail as part of our draft determination which we will announce tomorrow.

Q16 Chairman: Dr Mitchell, let us look at the train operating companies. If we look at the targets you set there at paragraphs 1.4 and 1.13 they caused 38% of delayed minutes last year. Are their targets challenging enough?

Dr Mitchell: I believe they are, yes.

Q17 Chairman: Why?

Dr Mitchell: The performance targets have been tightened over the years and the train companies have, in most cases, achieved them. However, in one particular case they did not achieve them and, as you know from the secretary of state's announcement some three months ago, we took action against that company.

Q18 Chairman: Train faults are the main cause of delays, are they not?

Dr Mitchell: They are, yes.

Q19 Chairman: Are train operating companies not operating trains? So if it is their fault why are you setting a target which apparently is not very challenging?

Dr Mitchell: The targets for overall performance are, I believe, challenging. You are correct in saying that train faults are the most significant cause of delay. Having said that, a large number of new trains have entered service over the last few years and, as a result of that, the number of train faults is declining.

Q20 Chairman: Is that still the main cause of delays?

Dr Mitchell: That is correct, it still is the main cause of delays.

Q21 Chairman: Something for which they are entirely responsible.

Dr Mitchell: They are, yes.

Q22 Chairman: Other colleagues can come back on rail delays but I will just leave that for a moment. Can I just ask a couple of questions about incident management and lesson learning? Mr Coucher, would you like to look at paragraph 2.9 which you can find on page 16? If we look at paragraph 2.9 we see that 20% of incident reports noted that communications were poor within Network Rail. Should you not do more to improve them?

Mr Coucher: Yes. We always try to improve and improve and improve. There is obviously scope for improvement and we will continue to do so.

Q23 Chairman: Some of these reasons were very basic, for instance mobile phones were not available. It does not sound like rocket science to me.

Mr Coucher: Not all of the network has network coverage with mobile communications. There are pockets around the country, particular in remote parts of Scotland, where there is no signal at all so that does cause us difficulties.

Q24 Chairman: You believe you could do more to improve communications.

Mr Coucher: Yes, and we are currently rolling out a complete mobile communication system which will enable everybody - signallers, drivers and line side people - to be able to talk. That is a big win for the rail industry.

Q25 Chairman: If we look at the incident review process - this is dealt with in paragraph 2.26 - we can see that incident reports are often very carefully compiled. Perhaps they could be used to spread best practice more. Is that right, do you think?

Mr Coucher: I do agree and that is an area where the NAO rightly pointed out areas where we can improve and since we have done that we now routinely look at the incident reports and we promulgate best practice across the country.

Q26 Chairman: Can I just ask you a question about how you work with the emergency services, Mr Coucher? If you look at paragraph 2.22 which you can find on page 20 you will see there that you stopped funding British Transport Police to train other emergency services. Why did you do this?

Mr Coucher: I think that is perhaps a misrepresentation there. We have doubled the amount we give the British Transport Police in the last five years from £33 million a year to £66 million a year and we have changed the arrangements, so we have an all inclusive sum and we had expected that to be included.

Q27 Chairman: They say that eight police forces commented that more training would be beneficial: "Three forces noted that they had experienced difficulties in organising exercises with Network Rail in recent years. The British Transport Police commented that until the late 1990s it had received funding from Railtrack (Network Rail's predecessor) to provide multi-agency training for all rail incidents and confirmed that it would be happy to reinstate such a training programme again". So all this is wrong, is it?

Mr Coucher: No. What I said was that the funding for the British Transport Police we have increased from £33 million in 2002 to £66 million, which includes the provision of training and we are prepared to work with any outside agencies in any kind of training. We are happy to do that at any time.

Q28 Chairman: So the British Transport Police can have enough much money as they want to to help train the other emergency services, can they? This paragraph is giving a wrong impression, is it?

Mr Coucher: There has been a change in the funding arrangements by which we fund British Transport Police and we are more than happy to work with any outside agency in training their people if they are prepared to do so, but we do have 43 police forces out there, the primary interface of course is with the British Transport Police.

Q29 Chairman: Mr Franks, looking at paragraph 3.5 on page 24, why is it so difficult to provide the public with reliable and decent information about delays?

Mr Franks: The most difficult thing is finding out precisely what has happened at any particular time and getting the message across to a large number of customers, a large number of trains and a large number of staff. This whole point is a subject of real review within the industry. ATOC has established a working group to try to improve things; we have issued a code of practice for the whole industry and we are trying to ensure that code of practice is rolled out across all of the train operating companies. It is an area of real focus.

Q30 Chairman: I am sure you recognise it is a real priority with the public.

Mr Franks: Absolutely.

Chairman: It drives them crazy to be sitting in a train and not know what is going on. John Pugh?

Q31 Dr Pugh: One of the great opportunities you have here, if you have been delayed by trains and trains going off the rails, is to get your own back in part. I use the West Coast Main Line quite a lot. I looked through the stats and I find they have the greatest number of significant incidents - I think that is correct from the stats we have in front of us - and most of those are down to Network Rail in origin and most of those appear to fall into various categories: cable faults, overhead lines and signal faults. I have sat here in the past and I have heard quite glowing reports of West Coast Main Line progress and all that sort of thing. Is that not something of a paradox? If I had thought that a lot of money had been spent to little effect given the actual reliability record of that particular line, would I have any sort of case?

Mr Coucher: We have to be slightly careful about the comparison for the West Coast Main Line because it is our geographical area. Our London Northwest area goes from Euston right the way to Holyhead, into the northern parts of Wales, into Manchester and into the Pennines; it is a very, very large geographical area, it does not relate just to the West Coast Main Line. I think your comments about West Coast reliability just go to underline precisely why we need to complete the investment programme. It is very old infrastructure; it is very unreliable. That is why we are trying to replace it. Recent incidents that we have experienced on the West Coast go to underline that. The cable problems we had just a few weeks ago were because cables that were 60 years old were starting to fail and they are due to be replaced, but we know that this causes very significant impact on the travelling public and we are determined to finish this project so that we can give a much better service to the passengers very quickly.

Q32 Dr Pugh: I travel across lines which obviously have been invested in because they are disrupted on a Sunday and lots of other times for good purposes and have been for quite some time. I am assured that the sections I travel on have received very, very significant investment. You are saying that even with this you are still looking at very old equipment on certain on stretches of line.

Mr Coucher: We are gradually replacing it. Not all of it is being replaced of course; there is a rolling programme that will go on for many years. The West Coast is the most intensely used piece of railway that we have out there; some of the track that we put down today will have to be replaced in five years because it is wearing out. It is a constant challenge to keep that railway operating at very, very high levels of performance.

Q33 Dr Pugh: Going back to the point the Chairman made about communication, the point made in the Report is that there are not enough rail staff often available at the time when things go wrong. That is quite understandable because you do need extra staff. If you see people mobbing round Euston when the trains are called off you fear for them to some extent because they are in a very pressured situation and they do not actually know themselves what is going to happen. In terms of good practice guidance that is disseminated, what does that have in it that is not done at the moment? What is that suggesting that people do more of?

Mr Franks: There are a number of things. I have a copy here, if you would like to see it. It is quite a comprehensive document but it actually covers information off station, so that is including things like websites and e-services, external media, contact centres and giving information to those places. It includes information at stations and, picking up your point about additional resources, when we take this and develop it into contingency plans or review our contingency plans it is looking at things like whether we can bring people out of headquarters organisations, can we train them to actually assist on stations and give support? It is looking at information on train, providing guidance on precisely when and what type of information we should give on train and it has also got a section on information for planned engineering works and how we should get that information out to customers. It is a very comprehensive document.

Q34 Dr Pugh: One of the points picked out on page 24 at 3.5 is a point made by the train operating companies: "too many rail staff trying to contact the control centre at the same time".

Mr Franks: That is a real issue because obviously everyone is seeking information.

Q35 Dr Pugh: Does that document say something about that?

Mr Franks: Yes, it does, and there is some real innovation in this using the web where we are now able to provide information on what we call a flip chart - an automated flip chart - so that as much information as we can get out to our people is actually available and can be accessed electronically.

Q36 Dr Pugh: Does it say something about a point also made here: "a perceived reluctance among drivers to speak to passengers"? I think all of us round here are very glad to have the drivers or the guards or whoever speak to us; the more chatty they are we, the more we, as passengers, actually like it.

Mr Franks: Exactly. There is a cultural issue in the industry with drivers and getting drivers to actually communicate with customers where there are driver-only operated services. Where we have guards and on-board personnel then that is not so much of an issue.

Q37 Dr Pugh: Rather than protocol it would be quite a good idea to ask everybody to be more forthcoming. I travel on a train to Liverpool very, very frequently and there is a chap on there who not only tells me where I am going and what is happening, but what football he supports and how they have done in the European Championship. That kind of communication actually gives you the impression that you are dealing with a human being who understands the transport experience.

Mr Franks: I support the point totally.

Q38 Dr Pugh: On the question of being able to respond positively to the situation when it occurs, clearly there is a difficulty mentioned in the Report that sometimes the people at the stations have no idea what is going on out there because the information is possessed by Network Rail or whoever is looking at the bit of mangled signalling or cabling that confronts them out in the sticks. How is that being improved?

Mr Franks: One of the big innovations in recent times is integrated control centres where our own train operating personnel are sitting right next door to Network Rail personnel and making the decisions on how to deal with disruptions. That is almost widespread across the country now, that the Train Operating Companies are sitting with Network Rail. So that is one way. The second way is through technology. I would be the first to admit that there is a lot we can still do in terms of technological advance here but, as I said, the guidance that we have issued actually does tackle all of these points. I would be happy to leave a copy behind.

Q39 Dr Pugh: Targets have been mentioned already and clearly you are very sensitive to that because they affect how you are remunerated and so on, but that may be not necessarily always to the advantage of the passenger. Is there any evidence within the industry that actually the targets to some extent do not always help when there is an incident? In other words, it may be sometimes more expedient to the company not to let the train run late but actually to cancel it altogether. It is not useful to the passenger to have that happen but it may actually help you meet targets.

Mr Franks: If a train is cancelled it features in our passenger performance measure as a failure, so it is effectively late; it counts in our statistics. There is no reason for taking that sort of decision other than to try to recover the railway in an effective way.

Mr Coucher: If I could just draw the Committee's attention to paragraph 3.9 which did question whether there was a perception of whether it was in the best interests of the passengers and the Report did not find evidence that we were not doing the right thing. Indeed, on the contrary there are instances where we have made the right decision for passengers even though it will affect the incentivisation regimes of Network Rail.

Q40 Dr Pugh: The Report mentioned difficulties you have with coroners when there are incidents and so on. I did not understand how coroners could generate difficulties for you; could somebody explain to me how?

Mr Coucher: We do sadly get some 240 suicides a year; they are very, very disruptive to the network. The BTP do a very good job in trying to clear these up and they try to get them sorted out in 70 minutes but that does cause us a big problem, particularly if they are very messy. The coroners are the people who decide whether this has been a suicide or not and there are a number of coroners around the country who insist on using their own undertakers and their own people to assert death. That causes us problems in one or two pockets.

Q41 Mr Mitchell: I would just to ask the National Audit Office, why did you not talk to the victims? You have used general surveys from Passenger Focus or whatever it is called, but they are very general. They just say whether there is dissatisfaction and, if there is an incident, was it well-handled. I was involved in a major incident just before your survey began in 2005. There was a big break down on the East Coast Line and the train was stuck for hours in conditions which approximated those on the Bridge on the River Kwai in an overheated train with no information. I could have given you a very graphic story about it. Why did you not talk to the victims?

Ms Barker: We did talk to Passenger Focus and use their information.

Q42 Mr Mitchell: You could have taken an incident and talked to those people who had live through it.

Ms Barker: To be honest it is the practicalities of how much we can do within a period on a study and unfortunately we did not have the time to do that. We had a good source of information from Passenger Focus about passengers' experiences.

Q43 Mr Mitchell: If you talk to the companies and you talk to the Department and to Railtrack and the rest of it, they are all going to put the best possible gloss on it. You need to get the harrowing stories and try to come to some conclusions from that.

Mr Burr: I agree with your point, Mr Mitchell, that it is always better if you can talk to the consumers, the users of the service, and not just to those who provide it. We did try to cover that through Passenger Focus.

Q44 Mr Mitchell: It is not so much the consumers, it is the victims.

Mr Burr: The victims, yes.

Q45 Mr Mitchell: Just one more point for the Audit Office. Why are there no figures company by company? I see on page 15 at paragraph 2.2 the most common incident category was train faults: "with some 48 incidents (65 per cent of our sample)" had train faults. Those are related, presumably, to the up-to-date rolling stock, to the maintenance of the rolling stock, to the way the companies invest in new rolling stock. Surely we need to know that on a company by company basis.

Ms Barker: The data we had was on the basis of routes and, given the sample size, if we had broken it down by companies I think it would probably have been misrepresentative, there would not have been a big enough sample size. The best thing for us to do was to do it by routes; that was statistically more valid. You might have more than one train company operating on a route and given that we were looking at a constrained period that might not have been a fair picture of what was going on with particular companies.

Q46 Mr Mitchell: Mr Mitchell, does the Department have company by company information on who is investing, whose trains are most likely to break down, who has the ancient rolling stock? Certainly when it comes to Grimsby we have been served by ancient, appalling stock. First Group has now put in some new rolling stock, but the adequacy of that service and the rolling stock was appalling. Do you have company by company break down information?

Dr Mitchell: There is a body called the National Task Force which is made up of representatives of Network Rail and the train companies and attended by ourselves and the Office of Rail Regulation. They review, on a company by company basis, how companies are performing across a whole range of issues, including the performance of the rolling stock. However, you are correct in saying that over the past few years this feature has declined in importance as new rolling stock has been brought into use.

Q47 Mr Mitchell: I cannot see from the Network Rail point of view that it is any achievement to have got the rate of breakdowns and problems back down to the level it was before 2000. That is no achievement.

Mr Coucher: We are proud of our contribution to pushing rail punctuality to the highest level it has been in recent memory. The trains are now running at 90% punctuality; that has been a huge effort by the entire rail industry and we are proud of our record.

Q48 Mr Mitchell: The improvement has not gone on, has it?

Mr Coucher: We are now running considerably more trains; it is a lot more congested out there and that means that every time you get a single failure it does cause more delays, but on a like for like basis it is performing in many parts at pre-Hatfield levels.

Q49 Mr Mitchell: Mr Franks, I would like National Express to put trains on to Grimsby so I will be very deferential. I have had a brief experience of this disaster but there are others that have happened when the cables get tangled on the East Coast line and the whole line is put out. It struck me that a lot of the problems were those of the operator because as a passenger first of all I am struck by the fact that supplies - water and food supplies - just were not available. The trains do not carry enough supplies to cope in case of a breakdown.

Mr Franks: There are a few issues there. On the point about supplies on the train, we should carry enough supplies. You referred to the incident in GNER time when there was a big problem when the train overheated; because the train was stranded for a long period of time the air conditioning was not working.

Q50 Mr Mitchell: They ran out of water within a quarter of an hour.

Mr Franks: Yes, they did, and there were a number of lessons learned. As a consequence the trains now carry big supplies of water in the guard's break van. There was a very deep inquiry into that particular incident I remember well because it was brought and shared with the industry.

Q51 Mr Mitchell: In that incident a helicopter had to bring in bottles of Perrier water which was slightly humiliating, I thought, for the train company. The other thing that struck me - we were several hours on the train in overheated conditions - was that nobody knew what to tell us. Staff were running up and down but nobody could tell us anything. The passengers were anxious to know but nobody could give us any information. You are very adept at huge announcements when people get on the train telling you to get off if you do not have this ticket or that ticket or you have got an advanced booking ticket; announcements flood out that you should not really be there. However, in this particular incident announcements dropped off.

Mr Franks: That was before we were operating that piece of railway.

Q52 Mr Mitchell: I accept that.

Mr Franks: There was an investigation and a lot of lessons were learned. What I would say is that the guidance that we have issued from ATOC to all industry partners actually does pick up a number of these issues. It picks up a number of things that have come from previous investigations and I hope you will find that it is properly implemented across the industry and we have a group making sure that the recommendations of the guidance are implemented. When implemented you will see a difference in the way we handle these things. Sometimes things have not been done well; we want to make a big difference.

Q53 Mr Mitchell: We were eventually pulled or towed or whatever back to Peterborough. Peterborough Station was milling with thousands of people because all the trains had stopped and they were just being disgorged there. We were told to go to the Peterborough Railway Hotel which was crowded out. Five minutes after my arrival they ran out of meat pies. There was nobody from the company in a position to tell us what was going on. I accept again that this is your predecessor but it seemed to be a major weakness that nobody was coordinating anything and giving the information to the passengers.

Mr Franks: We have been running the East Coast Main Line now for six months and in that period of time one of my urgent tasks has been to review all of our contingency plans up and down the line. There was a good reason for that because soon after we took control we had the overhead wires down on a number of occasions and as a consequence we have had similar types of incidents to deal with. Because of that, as I said, we have reviewed the contingency plans up and down the East Coast Main Line and our contingency plans do address the issues that are shown in our guidance notes. I hope you will see a difference in the future.

Q54 Mr Mitchell: Moving on to Mr Coucher, the Report finds at 2.17 and 2.19 that often the emergency services do not know who to deal with and there seems to be inadequate communication between Network Rail and the different emergency services. Is this being put right? What are you doing about it?

Mr Coucher: We had already picked up on that but on the basis of the NAO Report we have gone back and looked at precisely what we do here. We recognise that this was a weakness. I know the Report highlights many failings here but in general a single emergency service will not have anything to do with the railway for months and months - maybe years - before they have to deal with something significant. We recognise in that period of time that phone numbers may have got out of date and we need to do more in that area. We have looked at this and we have a rolling programme to go out and re-brief emergency services. From our perspective there are one or two slight issues to deal with. We do have co-located controls with our operators so that they can be geographically separated from the incident itself - for example trains as far as Carlisle are controlled out of Birmingham - so we need to work more closely with the local areas. Yes, it needs to be put right and we will do so.

Q55 Mr Davidson: Can I ask about compensation to passengers? Do we have figures about how much has been paid out in compensation for delays to passengers by company?

Dr Mitchell: I am afraid we do not have a figure broken down by companies. We can send you a note on that.

Q56 Mr Davidson: That would be helpful. Do you know how many incidents occurred in which compensation was paid?

Dr Mitchell: Yes.

Q57 Mr Davidson: Can you tell me what it was?

Dr Mitchell: We can supply that too. We do not have detailed figures.

Q58 Mr Davidson: Give me a feel for it as a percentage of journeys for which a compensation claim ends up being payable.

Dr Mitchell: We do not have that data to hand.

Mr Franks: I can give you a feel in terms of revenue that we hand back to customers. Using an East Coast example we will be paying back about 1% of our turnover in compensation to customers, about £5 million per annum.

Q59 Mr Davidson: For how many of your journeys do you think payment would be due? Is it only 1%?

Mr Franks: We offer compensation to anybody who has been delayed for more than 30 minutes. If their journey has been delayed for an hour or longer then they get much bigger compensation. For a journey delay of 30 minutes they get half of their ticket price back.

Q60 Mr Davidson: That was not the point I asked. What I was asking was what percentage of the journeys that are undertaken are eligible for compensation?

Mr Franks: I would need to give you a calculation to give you that answer.

Q61 Mr Davidson: I am presuming it is much more than 1%.

Mr Franks: It is, yes.

Q62 Mr Davidson: What percentage of those passengers that would be due compensation actually make claims?

Mr Franks: Again that is a very difficult question to answer because we do not know precisely who is joining and alighting from trains at particular times.

Q63 Mr Davidson: You must have a feel for it.

Mr Franks: No. I could do a calculation and give you an answer if you want me to.

Q64 Mr Davidson: I think that would be helpful. What I am concerned about or interested in is to what extent the pockets of the operating companies depend upon people not claiming the compensation that they are due and about which they are not made aware. Can you give me a feel for that at all?

Mr Franks: Perhaps I can answer the question slightly differently. The performance regimes within our access agreements and the payments we pay back to customers absolutely incentivise us to get the performance right on the railway. I will use an East Coast example because I know it well, but we could find ourselves exposed to a £10 million to £15 million payment to Network Rail and a £5 million payment to customers in a typical year if we do not get things right.

Q65 Mr Davidson: I do understand that, but you are also incentivised to make sure that passengers are aware of their right to claim. Network Rail will know the system for claiming, but at the moment there is not much effort made by the operating companies to tell passengers that they are entitled to claim. Is that correct?

Mr Franks: No, it is not correct. Again if you were to travel on a train that has been delayed for 30 minutes on the East Coast you will be handed out a delay repay form on the train.

Q66 Mr Davidson: Of the times that I have been on either the East Coast or the West Coast and there have been delays I have never received a form indicating to me that I can claim.

Mr Franks: I can only comment in this regard in terms of the services I am operating, but that is certainly the case.

Q67 Mr Davidson: I am genuinely surprised by that answer. You are saying to me that the rule that you are trying to apply is that everyone who might be eligible would actually be handed an application form to claim back compensation.

Mr Franks: Absolutely.

Q68 Mr Davidson: That would be, to take the London to Glasgow line, as little as 30 minutes of a delay.

Mr Franks: I am using my East Coast as an example here, so if you came on the East Coast from Glasgow then if you had been delayed 30 minutes or more then you would be entitled to claim a refund.

Q69 Mr Davidson: How do you know whether or not that is actually taking place?

Mr Franks: I certainly know how much money I am handing back to customers.

Q70 Mr Davidson: That does not count because it could be that you are either paying a large amount from one train or a small amount from a large number of trains. It does not necessarily follow that forms are always handed out. Do you have figures, for example - I think it would be helpful if we had a note on this - which indicate which trains were delayed and then being able to compare whether or not you had any claims for compensation from those particular trains. Not just yourself as your particular company, but for the industry as a whole, because presumably if there were trains which had been delayed by an amount which would then lead to a claim being payable but in fact no claims were made, it would be reasonable for us to assume that the forms had not been issued.

Mr Franks: I can answer for National Express Group companies.

Q71 Mr Davidson: Can I clarify something? I understand that you are not here from National Express; you are here from the Association of Train Operating Companies and therefore you are liable to answer for all companies, not just for yourself. Sliding out of it by saying, "It wasn't me, guv, it was somebody else" is not really clear enough.

Mr Franks: I have not tried to slide out of it. What I would say is that I think if it is an industry response to this you might need to ask Dr Mitchell from the Department. I can certainly provide data from the train operating companies that I operate.

Q72 Mr Davidson: You are not here representing only your company. You are here, as I understand it, representing the Association of Train Operating Companies and therefore presumably speaking on their collective behalf rather than as an individual. Is this being passed to Dr Mitchell?

Dr Mitchell: We can possibly help you. We are quite happy to ask the Association of Train Operating Companies for the data you have requested and we will get back to you on that.

Q73 Mr Davidson: Would you normally collect that?

Dr Mitchell: No, we would not normally collect that data.

Q74 Mr Davidson: So if I had not been raising this you would not be asking for it. If I had not raised this with you there is no check on whether or not the train operating companies actually issue the forms to passengers who are delayed by an amount for which compensation would be payable.

Dr Mitchell: We do not carry out a check. I know it is only a number of instances that I can tell you about, but I am a regular passenger on the East Coast Line and I can recall four or five occasions when I have been issued with delay pay forms.

Q75 Mr Davidson: They will recognise you!

Dr Mitchell: No, not at all.

Q76 Mr Davidson: A little flag will go up when you are on the train.

Dr Mitchell: No, I do not think so, but I can say in support of Mr Frank that it does happen when delays occur. What I cannot say of course is that it always occurs on every train and that is why we would offer to get the information for you from the Association of Train Operating Companies.

Q77 Mr Davidson: It would be helpful if you got it not only collectively but also by companies to identify whether or not there is any company that is particularly poor. I take it that yourself or the National Audit Office will actually check that the figures you are getting back in are correct on that. Can I just clarify about the publicity for eligibility to claim? Is there publicity provided only at the point when the delay occurs or is it provided beforehand? From my own experience I have never had any publicity provided to me about eligibility to claim.

Mr Franks: It appears in our Passenger Charter.

Q78 Mr Davidson: How many passengers do you think read that?

Mr Franks: That is where it is recorded.

Q79 Mr Davidson: So really that means that no information is provided.

Mr Franks: Other than in the way I have described, we would hand out the forms on trains.

Q80 Mr Davidson: Can I ask about attacks on staff related to delays? Obviously you monitor attacks on staff. Is there a pattern by which it is identifiable that attacks on staff are more numerous at times of delay?

Mr Franks: There certainly are a number of instances recorded where staff have been assaulted as a consequence of passengers being unhappy about disruption.

Q81 Mr Davidson: Is there a pattern to that at all? Is it a particular line? A particular area? A particular part of the country? Or is it entirely random?

Mr Franks: Again I would need to go and check statistics but I think it is probably random.

Q82 Mr Davidson: Could you do that? I think it would be helpful for us to know whether or not there was any pattern there. In terms of delays, which operating company is worst and which is best, and how do you define that?

Dr Mitchell: There are figures which are published on a monthly basis and it will be no secret that First Great Western was, until recently, the poorest performing company. As a result of that the secretary of state took action to enforce an improvement plan. Generally speaking the most up-to-date figures I have for period 13 - which is most of March this year - the cumulative position for the whole of the train industry showed the best performer as Chiltern Railways achieving a 95% public performance measure, which is a measure including not only lateness but cancellations as well. The worse performer was National Express East Coast at 82.6%.

Q83 Mr Davidson: Do I take it that there should probably be a correlation between the bad figures from the National Express and the amount paid out in compensation, and that generally we would expect that those were the best records?

Dr Mitchell: Yes.

Q84 Mr Davidson: If there is anything that does not correlate to that then there would be something wrong.

Dr Mitchell: One would expect that except that, as the table on page 47 of the Report at appendix four indicates, there are variations, but with that proviso yes.

Q85 Mr Davidson: The final point I would seek to clarify is about train faults and the relationship between the operating companies and the leasing companies. Is there any sanction in these circumstances applied to the companies from whom the trains are being leased or does it all fall on the operating companies?

Mr Franks: It all falls onto the operating companies.

Q86 Mr Davidson: So there is no responsibility for the leasing companies at all then.

Mr Franks: No.

Q87 Mr Davidson: Are any of the faults traceable back to the leasing companies or are they all the responsibility of the operating companies?

Mr Franks: The most common problem that could be associated with a rolling stock company would be where they have undertaken heavy maintenance, which is their responsibility, and there may be a warranty issue with a piece of equipment that has been installed on a train which then causes delay on the network, but that becomes our accountability.

Q88 Mr Davidson: Can you then claim the money that you end up paying to somebody else back from the leasing company or are they getting off scot-free?

Mr Franks: They do not take any responsibility for any compensation that we pay.

Q89 Mr Davidson: Being a leasing company is the best position of all in these circumstances.

Mr Franks: Well it is certainly better than being a train operating company if they cause a delay.

Q90 Mr Davidson: Who allowed this position to develop, that the leasing companies can lease the trains but they have no accountability for the fines that are applied to the operating company? It does seem to be a trifle unfair.

Dr Mitchell: The leasing companies effectively purchased the rolling stock from British Rail in the mid-1990s and the terms on which they are then leased back were determined at the time. The leasing companies own the rolling stock but they do not take any responsibility for the condition of the trains. It is left to the operators to maintain those trains in good condition.

Q91 Mr Davidson: Does that seem reasonable to you?

Dr Mitchell: They are not regulated.

Q92 Mr Davidson: That is not what I asked you. Does that seem reasonable to you?

Dr Mitchell: That is the position we have inherited.

Q93 Mr Davidson: I know that; I am asking you whether or not that seems reasonable to you.

Dr Mitchell: We have made a complaint to the Competition Commission about the position of the rolling stock companies and the Competition Commission is considering our complaint as we speak.

Q94 Nigel Griffiths: Dr Mitchell, you said the newer rolling stock is more reliable; what is the sort of history and pattern of replacing rolling stock over the past decade or two decades?

Dr Mitchell: The majority of the new rolling stock came into service in the early part of this century, that was to replace the slam door rolling stock on the electric lines south of London. That is the biggest single influx of additional rolling stock that came in. However, I think it is fair to say that every company in the country has seen an influx of new rolling stock, so much so that we now, I believe, have the youngest rolling stock fleet in Europe.

Q95 Nigel Griffiths: I notice the Report says that passenger rail services are being used more heavily than at any time in almost 60 years which must be putting some strains on it. I am interested to know the impact of Hatfield on your operations. Can you tell us something about pre-Hatfield and post-Hatfield?

Dr Mitchell: No doubt Mr Coucher will wish to comment on that particular issue because, as you are aware, the Hatfield incident arose from a track defect which then caused multiple speed restrictions throughout the country and that led to a major reduction in punctuality of the railways. It has been a major challenge to get back to pre-Hatfield performance and we have now set the high level output specification for the next five years from 2009 to 2014, an even higher target for the railways of 92.6% right time, which compares with the current performance of about 90%.

Q96 Nigel Griffiths: What were the reasons for Hatfield? What caused the Hatfield incident?

Mr Coucher: A piece of rail on one of the high speed turns cracked and failed due to a concept called rolling contact fatigue.

Q97 Nigel Griffiths: How widespread was that throughout the network?

Mr Coucher: Immediately after Hatfield Railtrack then put in an investigation programme which uncovered huge amounts of problems with this concept called rolling contact fatigue and that has largely been removed now.

Q98 Nigel Griffiths: What had caused the fatigue?

Mr Coucher: Just the speed of trains going over the rails and the problem had not been picked up.

Q99 Nigel Griffiths: Figure 16 on page 29 indicates that the annual number of incidents causing delays is actually at an eight year low. Is that right?

Mr Coucher: Yes.

Q100 Nigel Griffiths: I am not sure in the Report why eight years were chosen as the sort of timescale. Was there something horrendous the year before that?

Ms Barker: No, it is fairly standard to look at Hatfield and then look at performance thereafter. It is just a way of looking at it.

Q101 Nigel Griffiths: What has been the trend in passenger satisfaction?

Dr Mitchell: Passenger satisfaction is currently running at a very high level. It is approximately 80% of people being satisfied or very satisfied with performance, but of course I would be the first to admit that that is an average figure across the whole of the railway and may not necessarily reflect the position on individual services or individual lines.

Q102 Nigel Griffiths: One of the things that I did find distressing and shocking, although not as terrible for the train crews and the emergency services, is the number of fatalities and incidents. If I look at table 21 in appendix two, am I right in interpreting that the external fatalities and trespass amount to what is almost one year of delays, a delay of 522,000 minutes?

Dr Mitchell: Yes.

Q103 Nigel Griffiths: In Sussex I see the problems that are highlighted in paragraph 23 on page 36 where fatalities on the Sussex route caused over 40,000 delay minutes, that is a month of delays. Am I interpreting the data from the Report correctly?

Mr Franks: This is a continuing trend. In East Anglia alone this year there have been more than 50 fatalities.

Q104 Nigel Griffiths: Can more not be done to prevent such fatalities?

Mr Franks: It is an incredibly difficult problem. We have been working with the Samaritans, particularly in East Anglia, because it seems an extreme set of circumstances there. We have tried to adopt a number of things, providing contact details and alerting our staff and training our staff to look out for potential signs that somebody may be attempting to commit suicide. There are some things you can do, but it is a really difficult problem.

Q105 Nigel Griffiths: The Jubilee Line at Westminster in particular is like the Moscow Underground and does have a non-access closed door system. Has that been considered at all for stations or do fatalities take place mainly away from the stations?

Mr Franks: It is a mix. Some are at stations; some are away from stations. It would be an incredibly expensive exercise to try to protect people on every single station. It is not an easy thing to do.

Q106 Nigel Griffiths: I see train crew causes, which are fourth highest for causing delay minutes. Presumably that is a mixture of non-attendance, sickness or what?

Mr Franks: It can be but it can also include displacement of train crews because of other disruption earlier on on the network.

Q107 Nigel Griffiths: Knock-on effects.

Mr Franks: Yes.

Q108 Nigel Griffiths: The examples that the National Audit Office have helpfully given us, the case studies, you clearly seem to be in the hands of the emergency services. If we take case study three, they seem to be able to respond fairly quickly to a potential incident around acetylene gas cylinders. These must be difficult problems to get to grips with.

Mr Coucher: Yes. Fire is a particular concern for us. There was a change in the fire regulations which extended the cordon zone which fire officers would put around a burning fire to 200 metres. Regrettably, because of the nature of the railway, we do get a lot of industrial work sites along the side of the railway and we have been caught with that a number of times. You can see from example three just how impactful these things are. We have been working very closely with the London Fire Brigade to look at new ways in which we can use technology - remote robots for example - to reduce the impact of these but they are disruptive. We have got some great ideas of how we can reduce it and hopefully we can roll those out in the next few months or years.

Q109 Nigel Griffiths: I think it might be helpful to have a summary of that in a note.

Mr Coucher: Of course.

Q110 Nigel Griffiths: On fatalities, I notice it is not listed in the 44 categories and I presume that it is not in the top 44, but there are dangerous operating conditions obviously for contractors. Do you have at your fingertips the trend in terms of fatalities on railway lines by staff and contractors working and whether action that you have taken has eliminated those?

Mr Coucher: I can certainly provide that. These are all the categories of delays, not just the top 44. We have worked long and hard to improve the safety of our workforce over the last four years. The safety record of the workforce is at an all time high. The previous year we had zero workforce fatalities for the first time in the history of the British rail network but sadly since then there have been one or two instances and we are constantly looking for ways in which we can improve safety for our workforce.

Q111 Nigel Griffiths: On page 35 the NAO make the pretty sensible point that shows that the routes that have the highest number of incidents and delays also I think have the highest loads and they are contrasting London and the Northeast and Scotland. Do you monitor a per mile usage or per passenger usage figure that shows you that some areas are actually much better at dealing with incidents than others and if that is the case are you able to showcase and adopt best practice from those areas?

Mr Coucher: That is precisely what we do do. A lot of the efforts we have done to reduce delays over the last four or five years have been based on identifying best practice and rolling it out, not just in dealing with incidents but providing the best ways of maintaining the asset to reduce the number of failures in the first instance. I have countless examples I could provide - but I am sure you would not want them all - about how we are taking best practice and rolling it around the country. The charts are slightly misleading here because they are not normalised by the number of train movements but we could do that for you as well. You will find that although places like Sussex and Wessex have relatively small numbers when you normalise the number of trains, they are actually similar in terms of complexity.

Q112 Dr Pugh: We touched briefly on the weather and I think you said proudly that you were running trains in times when Holland and so on were taking them off because of bad weather. That is not the perception of the British passenger; the British passenger often thinks that when trains go off because we have some freak weather that over in Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and all those sorts of places the trains carry on regardless and there is something quintessentially British about the fact that we take our trains off during bad weather, which is precisely the times when we do not want to use our cars. You gave us the anecdote - I was impressed but it, it was not what I expected - but is there any hard data that either you have or the NAO have that show whether our system is more vulnerable or less vulnerable to bad weather?

Mr Coucher: I do not have the statistics for that but I can explain that we do a lot of benchmarking work. A lot of the European companies come to us to see how well we manage autumn. Autumn has been a problem in the past and there has been a lot of hard work with ourselves and the train operating companies because it is a joint responsibility. We have improved that. We still struggle from extreme weather conditions; it is difficult to run trains when the railway is under water.

Q113 Dr Pugh: To be fair, our weather is probably no more extreme than weather of most mainland continental European countries.

Mr Coucher: It is much more variable so we get swings in weather conditions which change in a matter of hours rather than the more benign type of weather. The weather in Switzerland, for example, is much more predictable and they do have systems and processes designed to cope with their weather.

Q114 Dr Pugh: Is it possible for you to share with us the results of some of your benchmarking exercises?

Mr Coucher: Yes, I would be happy to do that.

Q115 Mr Mitchell: I see from the Report that delays - passenger mile delays or whatever - are up 30% in the period concerned due to vandalism and theft. This is largely attributed to cable thefts in the Northeast. Why is that? Is it that the scrap metal dealers live by the railway track in Geordie-land? Or is the cabling more exposed there? What are you doing about it? I know a kind of glad song of praise for Geordies goes up at Doncaster Station every time the train is a couple of hours late because of cable theft. Why is it?

Mr Coucher: In the last few years the price of copper has risen dramatically.

Q116 Mr Mitchell: Yes but not particularly in the Northeast.

Mr Coucher: It has risen dramatically and we have seen a significant increase in the amount of cable theft and the specific target areas - we are not entirely sure why this might be - are the Sheffield and Nottingham areas. Those are the most prevalent areas. We have had instances in the Northeast but we are working long and hard with the British Transport Police. It costs the industry millions of pounds a year in sorting repairs out and causes huge amounts of disruption to passengers. It is a real problem we are having to wrestle with now; I do not think it is specific to certain people around the country, but there are parts of the railway which are more easily targeted, particularly where there are freight only lines which are scarcely used. If you are trying to be a cable thief in the Southeast where there are trains moving every few minutes you do not get much chance to work. It is where they are lightly used and exposed.

Q117 Mr Mitchell: Have you got on top of it now? The stoppages have not been as frequent.

Mr Coucher: It is a difficult problem to get on top of. We put a huge amount of resource in, along with our customers and with the BTP to try to keep it in abeyance. It looks like it is coming down but it could change drastically. There has been a lot of hard work targeting thieves and the scrap metal merchants. We are using helicopters and doing anything we can to try to track this down but it is a real problem and it particularly affects the operators on the East Coast.

Q118 Chairman: I see at appendix two on page 33, Mr Coucher, that incidents are analysed by category. There is an incident there: vegetation management failure. What does that mean?

Mr Coucher: The railways are a wonderful natural corridor covered with a lot of trees and when it rains and branches fall down they can either fall onto the overhead line or they can obscure signals and we have to fix them. One of the solutions is to cut these things back but we appreciate that is somewhat sensitive in many areas.

Q119 Chairman: Mr Franks, what difference have you made in the six months since you have taken over from GNER as far as the public are concerned?

Mr Franks: I can give you a couple of very quick examples. Our National Passenger Service goals have improved from 82% to 86% in our first go, and our performance has also improved quite significantly such that in the last period of results which have just been published we have managed to get a PPM score of 89.5%. So performance is getting better.

Q120 Chairman: What about the way the staff deal with the passengers?

Mr Franks: I would like to think there has been some improvement. GNER in their time did a good job with the staff on the East Coast Main Line and I think towards the end of the franchise some heads went down; I think some heads have come back up now. I would like to think that we have made an immediate impact but I think there is always a lot to do to keep that going.

Q121 Chairman: Do you mind if I ask a purely personal question? Mobile phones drive me absolutely round the bend on trains. Why do you not have a quiet coach in first class as well as second class? Or extend quiet coaches generally? There is nothing worse than people who just witter inanities into their mobile phone endlessly.

Mr Franks: It is a difficult balance because there are a limited number of seats in first class and a lot of people want to use the space to actually work.

Q122 Chairman: We are in the era now of blackberries and texting and all the rest of it. It is not necessary for people to have lengthy meetings on their mobile phones, is it?

Mr Franks: It is a difficult call. Some people would say that but other people would say they want to be able to use their mobile phones.

Q123 Chairman: So you are not going to do anything about it.

Mr Franks: I will certainly take the point you have made.

Q124 Mr Davidson: Perhaps you could have a special section for boring calls and another for interesting calls. Some of the calls I hear are actually quite interesting. People obviously have far more exciting lives than I do! Going back to the question of compensation Dr Mitchell, I see in paragraph 3.12 that there are negotiations under way to have harmonisation of compensation as part of the franchise agreement. Do you have any idea when that is likely to take place and are you meeting with any resistance?

Dr Mitchell: I would not say that we are meeting with any resistance, but we have so far got to delay the pay arrangements with a large number of franchises. I can give you the list here if you wish: Arriva Cross Country, East Midlands Trains, Chiltern Railways, First Capital Connect, Gatwick Express, London Midland and the two National Express East Anglia and East Coast franchises. We would expect, to answer your question directly, to complete that when we complete the full round of franchises.

Q125 Mr Davidson: None of the new arrangements are worse than the best of the previous arrangements.

Dr Mitchell: No, that is correct. In fact there is a fair amount of evidence that the individuals who are delayed are getting a better deal from the new arrangements than they were out of the more generalised season ticket discounts and other arrangements that applied before.

Q126 Mr Davidson: Just to be clear, the new arrangements are better than all the old arrangements, are they?

Dr Mitchell: We believe so, yes.

Chairman: Thank you very much gentlemen. As trains become more popular they become more crowded and we are still looking at 10,000 days of delays suffered by travellers so there is a lot of hard work still to be done, but we are grateful for your efforts. If one thing comes from this hearing I am sure we would like to stress the absolute vital importance of sharing information as quickly as possible with passengers. Thank you very much.