Asks for transparency regarding contract criteria, engagement with unions and Scottish Government, alternatives considered, and whether it's time to put railways back into public sector.

As a regular user of Avanti services, agrees with performance improvements and asks about extent to which this new contract moves away from micromanaged national rail contracts that have been in place since covid.

For the second time in two days, the Government have been dragged to explain the rail network. The Minister has confirmed that passengers could suffer up to nine more years of Avanti West Coast and eight more years of CrossCountry. What performance metrics were considered when the Government made these decisions? Did the Government consider the operator of last resort? Is their plan really to allow for another decade of failure under the Tories?

Does the Minister accept that failures of Avanti have led to consumers voting with their feet, resulting in overcrowding on other lines such as Chiltern? What reassurance can he give that there are incentives for Avanti to win back trust?

Is this contract awarded on the basis that it is less crap than before? Avanti was second worst performing operator with 48% of trains running on time. Is this ideologically driven and a nonsense?

The decision will be badly received in north Wales where passengers have endured substandard service from Avanti. Will the Government guarantee they will cancel Avanti’s contract if it fails again?

Once again, Transport Ministers cannot find friends on their Benches. Will the Government guarantee cancellation of Avanti’s contract if it fails again?

Improvements in punctuality and reliability have been welcome. Can the Minister raise issues of ongoing capacity problems at Preston station with departmental colleagues?

Yes, the service has improved but from such a low level and it's still woeful. Does the Minister truly believe this is good for passengers?

Holyhead, the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in UK, needs reliable service from Holyhead to Euston. How will Ministers ensure this?

Data shows that the number of trains cancelled across the rail network continues to rise and is at the highest level since records began in 2014. The Minister keeps referring to July’s figures, knowing full well just how bad August’s are—in fact, statistics show that trains in Ukraine are running more reliably than our services here, despite that country’s network clearly being under considerably greater pressure. These problems do not stop with Avanti: persistent issues on the west coast main line have a knock-on impact on any east-west services crossing that line. When will the Minister accept that the current system is simply not working?

I declare an interest as a long-suffering user of the Avanti service on the west coast main line. In 2021-22, Avanti had the most customer complaints of any operator and it is consistently rated one of the worst-performing operators on the rail network. Despite that, Ministers spent an eye-watering £4 million of taxpayers’ money in bonuses to company executives for customer experience and acting as a good operator. Can the Minister explain when it became Government policy to reward failure?

As a regular user, I recognise that the Avanti service has improved in recent months—although frankly, it would have been hard for it to get much worse—but given the sustained poor performance in the past and the August performance figures we have just heard about, this contract award feels very premature. Would it not have been better to wait and ensure that we see proven, sustained improvement from Avanti before awarding such a long contract?

This decision is as embarrassing as it is baffling. The Minister talks about improvements, but my constituents have not seen those improvements. He talks about reducing the number of cancellations: with Avanti having cancelled half of the services from Chester directly to London, that will obviously reduce the number of cancellations. Yesterday, for example, Avanti started a train from Crewe rather than from Chester. That presumably does not count as a cancellation, but that is absolutely no consolation to someone in Chester. It seems to me that the Government know that the companies are playing with the figures and are prepared to accept a second-class service for the people of the north.

The right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) and I have worked for many years on the issues surrounding rail connectivity covering Chester and north Wales and, since I arrived in this House in December, I have not seen any improvement. The Minister talked about micromanaging situations, but the reality is that the Government do not seem to have understood what happened to Chester and north Wales during the summer. As the right hon. Member said, the decision was taken to cancel through trains, which fundamentally affected tourism and the visitor economy, not just for Chester but across north Wales. To be honest, that smacks of gaming the figures, and my constituents and residents across north Wales are absolutely staggered that this contract has been re-awarded to Avanti West Coast. I simply do not understand that. This is so business-critical and important to local residents and there has been a failure to take into account the realities of travelling across Cheshire and north Wales.

The Government have ensured the immediate future of Avanti West Coast, but the same cannot be said for Great British Railways, which has an office but no powers. We urgently need a body to provide oversight and accountability to fix Britain’s broken railways. The Government are in favour of that, so can the Minister confirm that legislation to create Great British Railways will be announced in the King’s Speech?

Avanti manufacturing director, Andy Mellors, told the Transport Committee that Avanti would be cutting staff at Glasgow Central station by more than a third and closing its ticket office. Why does a company that delivers such a poor and expensive service, and that holds its customers in such contempt, deserve to have its contract renewed, potentially for almost a decade?