I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Scott of Needham Market, for their amendments in this group—Amendment 2 and Amendment 10 respectively. The amendments seek to test the Government’s approach of transferring services as existing contracts expire. I also thank my noble friend Lord Liddle for saying that the intention is to get rid of franchises and for explaining why. He is right. I should also say that I and the Government do not believe that we should either pay compensation for termination or keep paying fees to owning groups of train operating companies when we do not need to.
I am happy to begin with a reassurance about the Government’s position. We will not hesitate to take decisive action if Avanti, CrossCountry or any other operator’s poor performance means that the contractual conditions that allow for early termination are met. The contracts we have inherited from the previous Government make it far too hard to get rid of an underperforming operator, but if we have the opportunity to put passengers out of their misery by ending a failing operator’s contract early and bringing their services into public ownership, we will do just that. In those circumstances, we will not wait for those contracts to expire.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, asked whether the public sector operator will have the capacity to take in services from a failing operator whose contract has been terminated early, at the same time as other planned transfers. I reassure them that current contracts allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate this. All but two of the current contracts with private operators give the Secretary of State significant discretion to select an expiry date within a range of possible dates specified in each contract. The Secretary of State simply has to give the outgoing operator a minimum of 12 weeks’ notice of expiry. This means that if a contract can be terminated early for poor performance—be it by Avanti, CrossCountry or any other operator—the Secretary of State will be able to adjust the planned expiry dates of other contracts if necessary to ensure that the failing operator’s services can be transferred as quickly as possible without overwhelming the public sector operator. Of course, we also need a programme of return that is reassuringly steady for the good management of the operations as they come back into public ownership. I hope those observations will be sufficient to persuade the noble Baronesses not to press their Amendment 10.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, my previous comments address the first part of his Amendment 2. The Government will not hesitate to exercise its contractual rights if an operator’s poor performance means that the conditions for early termination are met. The Secretary of State, my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds and I have all made the Government’s position on the matter very clear and on the record. There is no need for a statutory obligation to cover this point.
The noble Lord knows very well that I cannot accept the remainder of his amendment because it would substantially delay the programme of transfers to public sector operation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, thanks to decisions taken by the previous Government, the two most poorly performing operators currently have the longest contracts, with terms that make it very difficult to terminate them early for poor performance. I cannot say quite what the cost is, but I will write to my noble friend Lord Snape to tell him the rough quantum. In fact, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would mean it would be impossible for the Secretary of State to exercise any contractual break clause, as defined in his amendment, until after the worst-performing operator’s contract had ended. That could be as late as October 2027, so it is difficult to see this as anything other than a wrecking amendment. I hope the noble Lord will prove me wrong by withdrawing it.