Grayling denies “falling asleep on the job”

Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling denied a charge of ‘falling asleep on the job’, when he appeared at the House of Commons Transport Select Committee’s inquiry into rail timetable changes on October 22.

Grayling (pictured) was questioned by TSC Chairman Lilian Greenwood on whether he should have known that somebody should have been in control of the timetable process. She followed up by asking: “Weren’t you asleep on the job by not having that in place?”

He rebutted the suggestion, saying: “Absolutely not. In my judgement, what we had all the way through was a process of assurance in the South and a process of assurance in the North.

“Four days before the new timetable was introduced, Ruth [Hannant, DfT Director General for Rail] and Peter [Wilkinson, DfT Managing Director, Passenger Services] had the managing director of Northern saying ‘we’ll be fine, we’ll be ready’. Everybody was giving the same message all the way through - ‘it will be a slightly bumpy start, but it will be fine’. We have minute after minute saying that the industry would be ready.

“What assurance should Government put in place? It is not to say ‘right, I’m taking all of you guys away from the leadership of this and I’m putting someone in charge’.

“We should have trusted assurance processes to make sure that things are on track. And that we did, even though it transpired that they were not.

“We had that in the form of the Rail North partnership board with Gary [Bogan, DfT Rail North Partnership Director]. We had representations of both Government and all the combined authorities in the North. It was not just my Department.

“The Rail North partnership board has, for example, Transport for Greater Manchester represented on it. They were fully sighted in all of this. At no point did anyone involved in this come and say that it was going to create the kind of problems that we saw.”