£50m cost of West Coast rail contract failings

CIVIL servant failures over the West Coast rail contract will cost taxpayers at least £50 million, a report by MPs has said.

There was a lack of leadership at the Department for Transport (DfT) and a failure to get basic processes right, the report from-the-House-of Commons Public Accounts Committee said.

MPs said they were concerned these basic mistakes could be repeated in future projects.

The repor t said the department failed to learn from mistakes in previous projects and senior managers failed to apply common sense. They also said senior managers “missed clear warning signs”.

The committee said: “We are astonished there was no senior civil servant in the team despite the critical importance of this multibillion-pound franchise.”

The MPs added they were also “astonished the (DfT) Per manent Secretary (Philip Rutnam) did not have a detailed understanding and oversight of the (franchise) competition”.

After DfT errors in the process had been identified, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin scrapped the bidding. Instead, Virgin will run the West Coast service until November 2014, prior to a new bidding process.

The repor t said the department’s “blinkered and rushed approach meant the competition was not run properly” and that it had been a mistake “not to have a single person responsible for the project from beginning to end”.

Committee’s chairwoman Margaret Hodge said the errors had “landed the taxpayer with a bill of £50m at the least”.

She added: “If you factor in the cost of delays to investment on the line, and the potential knock-on effect on other competitions, the final cost to the taxpayer will be much larger.”