Q151 Mr Williams: I want to be sure the Department is as protected as it can be so I would urge you to consider that. That is all, thank you.
Dr Mitchell: We will give consideration to that.
Q152 Chairman: That must be the answer of the week, Mr Paine, that there will be more than us in a mess if the bonds collapse. None of these are in Iceland, are they?
Mr Paine: I cannot recall the exact location but I do know there are none there.
Chairman: Before we go into private session we have got three quick supplementaries from Mr Curry, Mr Mitchell and Mr Bacon.
Q153 Mr Curry: I suppose it is possible that the Bank of England of course could buy up this corporate paper, could it not, as part of its quantitative easing? It would be quite funny at the end of the day, good quality corporate bonds, the Bank of England is going to buy them up.
Mr Paine: That would be a matter for the operating company.
Q154 Mr Curry: That is an aside. If later this year year-on-year inflation were to come out at minus 2% what would the fare adjustment be according to the franchising agreement?
Dr Mitchell: On the current arrangements it is RPI plus one so you can do the maths.
Q155 Mr Curry: They would have to cut fares.
Dr Mitchell: Yes.
Q156 Mr Curry: Secondly, when I use the train- most of the time I drive because getting from Audley End to Yorkshire by train is rather like trying to get to Moscow under Napoleon and with 900 square miles of constituency you need your car-but what I do find when I get to Leeds is that very often the train stands outside Leeds because it is early. I suspect there is significant over-timing on some of these services in order to build in a cushion against arriving late. When you deliver franchises do you do any checks as to the realism of the timings in the train timetables because I suspect that over the last decade there has been very little improvement in the actual journey times to some of these destinations?
Dr Mitchell: Of course there has been a very major improvement in punctuality.
Q157 Mr Curry: But if they are giving themselves longer to get there of course they are going to be more punctual.
Dr Mitchell: If I can just explain, the checks that we ask Network Rail to carry out when we are letting a franchise are to determine whether the timetable proposition from the bidder is viable and part of our franchise evaluation is to see whether the plans set out by the various bidders are indeed deliverable, and Network Rail help us with that work because only they have that expertise.
Q158 Mr Curry: But deliverable in terms of being efficient and not deliberately inflating the times to make it less likely you arrive late.
Dr Mitchell: We do not have evidence of that but obviously a train company will seek to deliver an attractive service to the public, and the idea that you sit outside the station for five minutes every time would not be an attractive option.
Mr Curry: It happens.
Q159 Mr Mitchell: I do not often go to Europe in case I become infected with something like Euro enthusiasm or something like that, but when I do go, particularly to France or Germany, I am always struck by how much cheaper, more efficient and better invested those railways systems are than ours. Why is that?
Dr Mitchell: I do not necessarily accept that that is the case. The level of punctuality, for example, now bears comparison with Europe.
Q160 Mr Mitchell: The fares are consistently lower.
Dr Mitchell: The standard fare in many countries is well above some of the discounted fares that are available in this country; it depends which fare you compare with. If you compare an any time first class fare in this country with a similar type ticket on the continent you will usually find that the fare in this country is more expensive, but there is a wide range of discounted fares available in the UK which is not generally available on the continent.