Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what financial penalties train operating companies are subject to if a train is cancelled due to (1) a train defect, or (2) a lack of train crew, broken down by each franchise awarded since June 2010.

The Department holds all its franchised operators to account for their performance through a Franchise Agreement. Each operator’s performance is measured against a set of benchmarks, which includes cancellations; however, these are not disaggregated down to individual types of cancellations, such as train defects. Specific cancellation causes are not connected to set penalties; any expenditure we require operators to incur to improve performance for passengers is linked to their overall performance.