Q51 Dr Pugh: What inference would you draw from that?
Dr Mitchell: They are two very different franchises of course. The Merseyrail franchise is a high-frequency urban network serving Liverpool and the Wirral and the line up to Southport, and it runs on an extremely frequent service. The company Serco and Netherlands Railways who run it have been extremely successful in getting quite old rolling stock, dating from the 1970s, to work successfully, and they have done a lot to improve the quality of the franchise. The Northern franchise is a very challenging franchise, it is a very large franchise, it has a very eclectic mix of rolling stock on it and it is a franchise which operates through a large swathe of the territory and across several other main lines, so it is a much more difficult franchise to operate.
Q52 Dr Pugh: You would accept probably that somebody could run that franchise or ought to be able to run that franchise to customers' satisfaction.
Dr Mitchell: Up until quite recently-they have had a dip in performance recently-we have been very pleased with the development of the Northern franchise and we think that Serco-Ned have done a good job in improving what was really quite a difficult franchise. They have recently had a performance problem but we think they have resolved that.
Q53 Dr Pugh: You can still get on the trains at Manchester and find yourself in grossly overcrowded carriages. I have seen young mums with children who have paid good money for a ticket and end up travelling a considerable distance without getting any kind of seating whatsoever, I have seen people go across the Pennines in thoroughly overcrowded trains, all the way. We have got to both agree that that is not acceptable in any shape or form, is it, at the moment?
Dr Mitchell: It is something we are working to resolve. You mentioned the TransPennine route and in fact the franchisee there, First TransPennine Express, which operates between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and the North East as well as other places, replaced the entire fleet with new trains. We are shortly expecting to agree with them an increase in the fleet to alleviate some of the overcrowding problems.
Q54 Dr Pugh: That is an issue I raised directly with the chief executive of Northern Rail, Heidi Mottram, and I had a conversation that went something like this, "Why can you not put on better trains, it is enormously important with a big franchise." Her answer was she would love to do that by and large; however it was subject to franchise agreements with the Department of Transport, so when you go back to tell your constituents why they are getting such am appalling service you end up telling a very complicated story where it is not obvious where the blame lies.
Dr Mitchell: The 200 additional vehicles that are being ordered as part of the fiscal stimulus package, there will be a number of these destined for Northern, so that should help some of the problems you mention.
Q55 Dr Pugh: When you say they are being ordered, they are ordered or they are being ordered?
Dr Mitchell: The timescale is that we have issued the invitation to tender, the tender returns are due in early February and we expect to place the order by the end of this financial year.
Q56 Dr Pugh: This is a full order for these 200 extra trains.
Dr Mitchell: We are ordering 200, yes.
Q57 Dr Pugh: You would accept though that if you do not do something soon, even on the timescale you are working to, you are going to end up on this franchise with the vast bulk of the rolling stock being 30 years old and not having been refurbished as the Merseyrail stock has been.
Dr Mitchell: Yes, the Merseyrail rolling stock is amongst the oldest rolling stock in the country, but you are right in saying that there is some quite elderly rolling stock in Northern; the oldest dates back to, from memory, the late 1980s.
Q58 Dr Pugh: Early 1980s, the 142s, and some of those go back to 1983 at least. Is there anywhere else in the UK apart from the Welsh franchise where they have got trains that are that old?
Dr Mitchell: The Welsh franchise has some of them and the rest are in the west of England.
Q59 Dr Pugh: And the object is to phase them out.
Dr Mitchell: The first objective is to increase the fleet size but, clearly, these will be the first trains to be phased out when we get to that point.
Q60 Dr Pugh: Can I briefly ask you in the interim what the spare capacity in the industry is in terms of stock not currently being on the rails but waiting to be used, could be used?
Dr Mitchell: A very small fleet and a very small number of trains which were operating on Great Western which are in the process of being reassigned to other franchises. They are temporarily out of use and there is a very small number of trains which used to be with South West Trains which are currently being refurbished for use on the Brighton main line.