Petition Punish walking away from rail franchises with a ban on bidding for Government contracts

During the recent furore over the decision to award the West Coast Main Line contract to FirstGroup it has emerged that FirstGroup intend to bid for the new Great Western franchise, despite the fact that they walked away from the old franchise early to avoid more than £800m of premium payments to the Taxpayer.

Effectively they will receive no or very little punishment for cheating taxpayers out of money promised when they were awarded the franchise, a situation that is all the more disturbing given the huge payments they have said they will pay towards the end of the West Coast franchise they have recently been awarded.

This is an e-petition to call on the government to ban companies that walk away from rail franchises from bidding for ANY form of government contract for a significant period of time, for example 25 years. This will ensure that companies only bid what they can actually afford to pay, or be prevented from making money at taxpayers' expense.