First Great Western Franchise

: I am sorry, Mr. Chope. The issue is the franchise specification. I want to read part of it, because it explains and underlines why we are in this situation. It says that the franchise"““will be one of the first in which bids are made against a precisely specified base case.””" In other words, we are in this situation because the Department for Transport has specified precisely what will and will not be provided. I think that we are seeing certain changes—I am thinking in particular of the threat to rural lines and interconnecting services to main lines—because the franchise specification says that the deployment of resources should"““as effectively as possible . . . reflect growing demand in the London area””." The franchise is London-centric, and it does not meet the needs of people in the south-west. Many hon. Members have referred to the issues affecting their constituencies. First, the timetable's is not fit for purpose in terms of capacity. It does not provide enough seating capacity, so on the Westbury, Bath and Bristol Temple Meads to Cardiff Central line, the Exeter St. David's to Exmouth line, and the Exeter Central to Torbay line, there is insufficient capacity to meet demand. The second issue is customer flow. The specification takes no account of existing usage or of some of the improvements that, for example, Wessex Trains made through the wider benefits programme in order to build on growing demand. As the hon. Member for Totnes said, there has been a 40 per cent. increase in demand on rural lines. However, the new timetable has no train arrival at Exeter St. David's from Barnstaple between 7.44 am and 9.40 am. What are commuters who want to go to Exeter going to do? There is no train arrival at Weymouth from Bristol, Westbury or Yeovil before 9.31 am. What about students going to Weymouth college, and other commuters? There is no westbound train departure from Truro to Penzance between 16.24 and 18.40. In other words, one time is too early for Truro college students to get home, and the other is too late for commuters.