Hold an inquiry into the conduct of Philip Rutnam of Department for Transport.

During the time that Mr Rutnam has been Permanent Secretary there have been many failures of major programmes, including the collapse of the East Coast Main Line Franchise, the West Coast Main Line refranchising case, the failing electrification of the Western Line, the use of inappropriate gantries for electrification through an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the catastrophic Southern-Thameslink management contract.

These have cost tax payers enormous amounts of money and caused huge pain to travellers, and there are other scandals. For example, the DfT has accepted in writing that it has allowed Govia executives to make money personally from running a penalty fares appeals service that is supposed to be independent and seen to be independent, but is in fact just part of Govia.

Instead of a franchise, Mr Rutnam's DfT put in place a contract with Govia to run GTR where Govia takes no risk - and when it fails to provide a service, the tax payer picks up the bill. The daily distress caused by the DfT's failure to deal objectively with Govia, particularly on Southern Trains, is in my opinion a damning indictment of Mr Rutnam, but he has not been held to account, so we have to have a proper, totally independent enquiry into Mr Rutnam’s conduct.

The current internal Civil Service processes are, in my experience, ineffective and opaque and do not provide any scrutiny of the behaviour of senior civil servants, as they are currently in charge of the processes.