Avanti West Coast should be stripped of contract - Starmer

Avanti should be stripped of its West Coast Main Line contract, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said.

Since cutting the number of trains between London and Manchester in August it has come under fire.

Sir Keir said the service provided by Avanti West Coast was "simply not good enough", adding that it must improve.

Avanti West Coast apologised for problems due to reduced services while the government said it would mull all options before contract renewal talks.

Sir Keir was asked on BBC Radio Manchester whether Avanti West Coast should lose its contract if it did not urgently increase services.

The Labour leader agreed, adding: "I use those trains and know how frustrating it is."

The operator reduced its timetable from seven trains per hour to a minimum of four per hour on 14 August and suspended ticket sales due to "severe staff shortages".

This involved running just an hourly service in each direction between Manchester and London plus additional services at the busiest times.

Avanti started to run extra trains on its key London-Manchester and London-Birmingham routes from 27 September.

The operator also said services would be boosted again from 11 December, once nearly 100 new drivers had completed their training.

Greater Manchester's mayor Andy Burnham has written to the transport secretary, urging her to force Avanti West Coast into increasing services.

He said he wanted at least two trains per hour to run between Manchester and London by the end of October.

In his letter to Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Mr Burnham said Avanti West Coast should lose its contract if it could not comply.

Mr Burnham said the company's plans would cause too much disruption to passengers.

"This would mean two more months of chaos on the West Coast Mainline in the interim, with resulting damage to our city-region's economy," he said.

"If 11 December is to be acceptable, Avanti must also commit to providing a consistent two trains per hour service between Manchester and London by end of this month, as a staging post to full restoration of the timetable.

"Unless this happens and is clearly communicated, train travel between our most important economic regions will continue to be chaotic, forcing people into their cars or into abandoning plans to travel entirely.

"Without this commitment, I will be unable to support a new contract for Avanti."

Avanti West Coast said it was already delivering on its commitment to increase the number of services between Manchester and London, with three or four trains an hour departing Manchester Piccadilly at the key times of the day.

It said it remained focused on providing a reliable train service and restoring a full timetable of three trains an hour all day between London and Manchester in December.

"Our revised timetable, with no reliance on overtime, is also proving more reliable - in the last week we have run 300 trains between London and Manchester with approximately one in 30 of them cancelled mainly because of short-notice sickness.

"That compares with one out of 13 trains cancelled back in mid-July," the operator said.

"Nevertheless, we know at the moment we're not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience this is causing."

A Department for Transport spokeswoman said: "The problems facing Avanti are a prime example of why we need to modernise our railways, so passengers benefit from reliable timetables that don't rely on the goodwill of drivers volunteering to work overtime in the first place.

"Government will consider all options when Avanti West Coast's contract expires on 16 October."

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