Alstom Managing Director appears before Select Committee to comment on rail franchising

Terence Watson, Managing Director of Alstoms UK Transport business, has today appeared before the Transport Select Committee to give the companys views on Rail franchising.

While Alstom is a supporter of the franchise system, it is also clear that issues over the West Coast Main Line franchise meant that changes should be made in the future. It was also vitally important that the Government establish a way forward quickly preferably by the end of April in order to give investment assurance to manufacturers.

Alstom believes that Rail franchising has helped to deliver significant investment and improvement to the performance of the UKs railways, as well as introducing valuable private enterprise skills to the system, said Mr Watson.

It is also clear that, though the franchising model is not broken, improvements can be made.

The main points made by Alstom in its evidence to the Committee were:

• There is now a credibility issue around UK rail franchising which risks affecting investment decisions by multinational companies throughout the rail supply chain;
• We therefore need a clear statement from the Government by the end of April 2013 about how it plans to take forward the franchising programme;
• The proposed reforms in the Brown Review are welcome and should be implemented over a period of time, but should not be an obstacle to restarting the franchising programme as soon as possible; and
• We believe that more flexibility needs to be introduced to the franchising model in order to allow franchisees more freedom to direct investment and services to best effect. But we also see the need for direct procurement in certain cases for large programmes or new technologies.

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