Govt accused of hiding evidence that could terminate Southern Rail contract

14 October 2016

The government has been accused of deliberately hiding evidence of the poor performance of Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), a subsidiary of Southern Rail.

A report published today by the Commons Transport Select Committee admonished the Department for Transport (DfT) for refusing to make available data that will be used to decide whether the company’s performance is meeting the standard required to keep its contract.

Southern is currently embroiled in a dispute with RMT, members of which are protesting against planned cuts to guard staff, which they say puts passenger safety at risk.

The government said it would not release the data until six to eight weeks after RMT’s industrial action has ended, which could push its publication back until the end of the year.

GTR has been under fire for recent cuts it has made to its train service, for which both the company and Ministers blamed workers for ‘taking too much sick leave’ and for collectively organising to try and protect their jobs.

The Select Committee stated in its report that the number of cancellations Southern made to its service in August should be “grounds for termination” of the business’ contract.

Southern has claimed that RMT’s strikes are the reason behind its poor performance, but the Committee is unable to verify whether or not this is true, because DfT refuses to release the data.

“Until we recently managed, after several attempts and considerable time and effort, to extract information from the Department, GTR’s contractual performance benchmarks, and data relating to GTR’s performance against them, were entirely opaque,” the report states.

“It is completely unacceptable that changes to the contractual benchmarks were not published in an open and transparent way. It is also unacceptable that the data required to scrutinise GTR’s performance against its contractual benchmarks are not made readily available. The Department’s evasive and opaque answers to our questions hindered our inquiry and delayed publication of this Report.”

The report also noted that GTR had been given a major contract by DfT despite the fact it was too short staffed to deliver the services required, branding this an “unacceptable” move by the government.