Trains boss gets £800k bonus despite soaring cancellations

The boss of Britain’s biggest transport company is being awarded an £800,000 bonus – nearly double the size of his salary – even as train cancellations soar, The Telegraph can reveal.

Graham Sutherland, 60, will receive the performance-related payout despite First Group’s three rail companies cancelling tens of thousands of trains over the last year.

His performance targets for the year included ensuring the billion-pound, London-listed company made “progress” on diversity, and on environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns – the latter having been described as “woke capitalism”.

Mr Sutherland is in line to receive the £800,000 bonus on top of his salary of £567,000. His total pay packet for this year including pension contributions and other benefits adds up to £1.4 million.

Yet just over 61,000 trains were partially or fully cancelled across Avanti, South Western Railway and Great Western Railway – the three train franchises owned by First Group – over the last year, analysis of Office of Rail and Road figures by The Telegraph shows.

This is an increase of one fifth – 19.8 per cent – compared with the 12 months immediately before the Covid pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020, sending train usage plummeting off a cliff.

Thirty thousand employees

A First Group spokesman said the business was the “fifth-best performing company in the FTSE 250” last year, having recorded profits of £200 million – and paid out £1.6 billion in wages to its 30,000 employees.

“Rail financial performance was not driven by our DfT [Department for Trainsport] rail contracts, where we earn low management fees of around 0.5 per cent, but by our open access companies Hull Trains and Lumo and other services which saw an increase in profits to £37.7 million,” continued the spokesman.

“In the past year, we also invested more than £120 million, primarily in our First Bus electric fleet and infrastructure which benefits customers and the environment.”

Many of the factors behind delays and cancellations, such as bad weather and problems with Network Rail infrastructure, were outside First’s control, the company said.

Performance bonuses

News of the chief executive’s bonus payout, which shareholders will approve in a vote at the end of this month, comes after civil servants signed off on millions of pounds in performance bonuses to First’s three train companies this year.

The company did not deny it had been “pleasantly surprised” by the bonuses and was expecting to receive less than the £13 million of taxpayers’ money handed to it.

The DfT did not respond to a request for comment.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, condemned the size of Mr Sutherland’s bonus and said: “So poor performance is rewarded for the CEO whilst five years without a pay rise [for train drivers] is acceptable for the staff?

“We know who the hypocrites and bad actors are – those who have plundered the industry for 30 years.”

Speaking to The Telegraph on Thursday, he said: “Hopefully we are about to get a government with a real green integrated transport system offering value for the passenger, taxpayer and those at the sharp end who deliver it.”

‘Woke capitalism’

Corporate focus on Left-wing social goals instead of a company’s stated purpose has been criticised as “woke capitalism”.

Writing in The Telegraph in June, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the long-serving Conservative minister, defined woke capitalism as an over-focus on ESG and diversity which threatened economic growth – and thus the nation’s prosperity.

“The damage that woke capitalism does is immense: it means employers can’t hire people on merit, they must tick boxes and meet quotas instead,” said Sir Jacob.

Steve Norris, a former transport minister in John Major’s final Conservative government of the 1990s, said Mr Sutherland’s pay should not have been linked to ESG goals.

“It’s disappointing that First Group doesn’t appear to recognise that its principal job is to run trains and buses profitably.

“That is what its shareholders are entitled to expect. And that surely means any bonuses for already well-paid bosses should be geared around how well the company achieves those clear objectives.

“Ensuring high standards in terms of ESG and diversity should be taken for granted in a major PLC, not the basis on which the CEO is paid.”

Louise Haigh, Labour’s new Transport Secretary, said: “This new Government will deliver the biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation.

“We won’t stand by and watch while failing rail firms cash in on passenger misery.

“That’s why we’ll be setting out plans to bring rail franchises back into public ownership as they expire, creating Great British Railways and putting passengers first.

“And we’ll be closely monitoring the poor performance of operators to hold them to account.”