Rail minister Claire Perry has resigned, the Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed.
Claire Perry promoting a flexible ticketing product
Ms Perry, MP for Devizes, had come under fire for her apparent support for rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which runs the struggling Southern service in Surrey, Sussex and Kent.
However, in a Commons debate on GTR on Wednesday, Ms Perry said that, having been to London Bridge and Victoria stations many times and travelled on the operator's trains, she had ‘been ashamed to be the rail Minister’.
She added: ‘I suggest that successive rail Ministers over many years in many Governments should share that sense of shame.’
Ms Perry was also responsible for the beleaguered South East Flexible Ticketing programme, which promised to promote flexible and multimodal travel across London and the South East region but appears to have achieved very little and may be the subject of an inquiry by the National Audit Office.
A DfT spokesman confirmed that Ms Perry has resigned but offered no further comment.
At the time of writing, Ms Perry was listed as a minister on the DfT website.
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