Bias against Virgin's bid to run West Coast Mainline
The Transport Department was biased against Sir Richard Branson's bid to continue running the West Coast Mainline, a report into the fiasco revealed today.
The independent investigation into the rail scandal highlights "significant errors", "weak governance", and a "flawed process" in which "bidders were treated inconsistently". The contract to run the West Coast Mainline franchise for 13 years was originally awarded to First Group over Virgin. However, a legal challenge cited significant flaws in the process.
The move by Sir Richard forced the Government to abandon the decision and re-run the bidding.
The department has previously been accused of having an "ABB" attitude to the franchise, meaning Anyone But Branson.
The report was published by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, who made the decision earlier this month to scrap the West Coast bidding process, blaming mistakes by Department for Transport (DfT) officials.
A DfT statement read: "In the limited time available this is necessarily only a preliminary report.
Inadequate
"What is clear, however, is that in seeking to run a complex and novel franchising competition process, an accumulation of significant errors, described in the report, resulted in a flawed process.
"These errors appear to have been caused by factors including inadequate planning and preparation, a complex organisational structure and a weak governance and quality assurance framework."
Former transport secretary Justine Greening, who presided over the original FirstGroup decision, and her successor, Mr McLoughlin, have both defended the bidding process. Three civil servants were suspended
Mr McLoughlin scrapped the franchise bidding and announced that independent inquiries would be held.
Virgin will run services on the West Coast Mainline until further notice.
