Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answers of 16 December 2015 to Questions 19325 and 19326, how many staff in his Department were employed on a contract basis to procure the (a) Northern and (b) TransPennine franchise agreements; and what the total cost to the public purse was of those staff.

The Department employed six individuals as contract staff at various times (sometimes covering the same role consecutively) for the Northern competition, and five for the TransPennine Competition. Costs of those staff were £1.203M and £1.275M respectively.

These costs however need to be set against the context of the deals achieved, whereby for Northern the amount of annual subsidy will be reduced by £160million by the end of the 9-year contract and for TransPennine the Government will receive £400million in premiums over the life of the franchise, compared to the previous situation where the franchise was subsidised.