West Coast Main Line fiasco should put renationalisation on the agenda

ONE wonders what can possibly go wrong next for the Tory-led Coalition at Westminster. There is now the humiliating climbdown on the award of the West Coast Main Line rail franchise to FirstGroup. The bidding process has been discovered to be flawed. If the process is now seen as flawed, are there questions to be answered about the previously-awarded franchises? You could not make up the list of mistakes that this Government has created and it may have opened up a whole new can of worms on the award of previous rail franchises.

Fortunately for the Coalition, no ministerial heads need roll. The minister at the time of the award of the franchise to FirstGroup, Justine Greening, has moved on and it is officials of the Department for Transport who will now pay the price for the flawed process. Interestingly, Ms Greening appeared very keen to get the West Coast franchise signed off in August during the parliamentary recess.

Now that the bid process has to be re-run, Virgin’s stance in challenging the earlier decision is vindicated and it will be interesting to see if West Coast mainline rail services will continue to be run by Virgin after December or if, like the East Coast mainline, it will be nationalised until the new franchisee is announced. If the latter happens, there would be two nationalised rail companies, high-profile ones at that, under a Tory-led Coalition Government. Who would have thought it possible?

If Ed Miliband is smart, he will put rail renationalisation back onto the Labour Party’s manifesto. Fred Landery, 45 Sycamore Drive, Hamilton. YET again we taxpayers are being rolled over. We are going to be compensating the four bidding companies for the West Coast line – First, Virgin, Keolis-SNCF and Abellio – to the tune of £40m, £14m to Virgin alone. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin says he is angry and the mistakes in the franchising process were deeply regrettable and unacceptable. He is nowhere near as angry as I am. It is about time we ensured that, if you mess up in government, you own up and fall on your sword. Moira Currie, Annandale, 34, McIntosh Drive, Elgin.