Tuesday 20 July 2010

Villiers vignettes... apology accepted

Regular readers may recollect that Eye took the Saviour of the Jammy Dodger to task on Monday 12th July for misleading the House about rolling stock orders.

Clearly someone has been reading Eye, for lo and behold Cruella had to deliver this Ministerial Correction yesterday (19th July):

Theresa Villiers (Minister of State (Rail and Aviation), Transport; Chipping Barnet, Conservative)

I regret to inform the House that there was an inaccuracy in the answer I gave to parliamentary question 4042 on 7 July 2010, Hansard, column 265W, about what new rolling stock orders have been placed for each rail franchise since 2007.

The table was incomplete and omitted the order, placed in April 2009 by National Express East Anglia, for 120 new EMU vehicles.

The full table is reproduced below.

Franchise Order date Type Vehicles
Southern May-07 EMU 48
London Midland Aug-07 EMU 148
London Midland Dec-07 DMU 69
Chiltern Railway Jan-08 DMU 8
Southern Mar-08 EMU 44
Virgin West Coast Sep-08 EMU 106
National Express East Anglia Apr-09 EMU 120

Just fancy that!

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic, the HLOS Vehicle Finder General...

There you are Theresa, doesn't that feel better?

Now what about the 8th June table you published?

Yes, the Table with the double counting I mentioned to Philip Hammond's SpAd at the time?

And has the civil servant responsible now been transferred to work on TramTrains?