Virgin Trains goes to court
- By Richard Branson -
- Aug 28, 2012
Virgin Trains has started Court proceedings in respect of the decision to award the West Coast Main Line franchise to FirstGroup.
We had hoped that Parliament or an external review would be able to scrutinise this badly flawed process before the franchise was signed.
However that opportunity would be denied if the DfT follows through with its determination to rush through the process before Parliament returns next week.
That ignores the wishes of more than 150,000 people who signed the Downing St e-petition in 10 days, the Labour Opposition, two important Commons committees and many backbench Conservative MPs who wanted a debate before the decision is taken., not a postmortem afterwards.
We have not taken this decision lightly, but it is the only course now available to try to unravel this sorry process.
By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group
