Meeting of the Parliament 02 October 2019
Since Abellio started running our trains, cancellations have increased year by year, skip-stopping has become part of everyday expectations, the punctuality of our trains has declined and—according to the consumer magazine Which?—passenger complaints have risen to record levels.
Under the SQUIRE regime, which is designed to fine the company for poor standards of service at our stations and on our trains, fines doled out to Abellio have averaged at more than £1 million for each of the last nine quarters.
Earlier this year, I lodged a parliamentary question to ask how much was paid out to complaining passengers. The cabinet secretary confirmed that, in the last financial year, Abellio paid £1,119,818 in compensation to passengers, up from £647,670 the year before.
In March this year, at one of his regular appearances at the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, Alex Hynes, the managing director of Abellio, concentrated on the positive aspects of Abellio. Jamie Greene mentioned some of them—and, yes, there are some. Abellio has increased the number of train services and the number of seats available on its journeys, and—this is perhaps more important to the Scottish Government—it has received less of a subsidy than the previous operator. That last point might explain why the Scottish Government seems so reluctant to take Abellio properly to task for its poor performance.
Under two transport secretaries, we have had three improvement or remedial plans for Abellio. They contained 249 action points and 20 improvement measures; now, we have the current remedial plan, which has nine initiatives.
Abellio’s performance last year was the worst on our railways in 10 years; passenger compensation rose to £1.1 million; and Alex Hynes admitted in the committee that his company will not hit the targets that he agreed to by the end of the current franchise. Instead of penalising Abellio for some of the worst performances on record, why did the Scottish Government waive performance penalties and make advance payments of more than £20 million to the company?
Rather than endless initiatives and little improvement, the public want a railway that delivers the agreed level of service.