My Lords, what is not a surprise about this is that the Urgent Question and announcements about train services have come on the last day the House of Commons is sitting before a recess; that is a pattern. My concern about these two contracts is that, although there has been an improvement with Avanti, as the Minister has said, there has been every incentive for it to improve in the short term in order to save its skin—if I can put it that way. Now it has this contract, there will be effectively no incentive for it to keep up that level of improvement, because Avanti has shown over many months that it finds it very difficult to deliver.

So what incentives are there within the contracts to these two companies, Arriva and Avanti, to maintain their improvements? These contracts seem to leave all the financial risk with the Department for Transport. Have the Government built in any additional safeguards for improvement, given the history behind this? Is there any chance that in future the Government will review the way in which they give contracts, so that we do not have this approach, which enables companies to underperform over such a long period?