That isn’t quite how it works though. The DfT state what they want to see in a franchise in a range of aspects. Then the owning groups put together bids that meet these objectives for their best price and quality ratio and the DfT get to make their choice. Managers and employees who work at the company involved get no say in this process or any of the commitments made to the DfT.
Once the DfT has chosen the contract offer it likes the most, it awards the franchise and the promises made by the company offering the contract become commercial and failing to deliver them costs legal financial penalties or forces them to spend more money in compensation. For instance, ‘we will put plug sockets in all trains by 2019’ would be contractual, not optional or dependent on if there is any cash. Not doing it makes the company in breach of their contract. It’s down to the managers at the TOC to put into place what they have been contracted to by their owning company’s bid. They can scratch their heads, disagree with the issue they have to implement (like DCO) but they can’t change it. The best they can do is interpret the detail of the agreed bid so that the result in practice meets the contract with the DfT on one hand and works for the company on the other.
In fact, the franchise for Northern explicitly said that the bids had to meet 50% of trains DCO. Presumably, the DfT thought that otherwise all of the bidders might just not offer any changes on the status quo. Perhaps Northern was rightly seen as the most challenging.
None of the other franchise tenders offered by the DfT have required a contracted number on new DOO services. They have just talked about efficient working being looked on favourably. Therefore for all the other TOCs, it was the bidding companies that made the offers to introduce DOO to various levels to appeal to the DfT to choose their bids. GTR, GA, SWR are clearly implementing promises their owning groups made in the bids, now contracted in their agreements, about how they would operate trains with cameras on the side of them with drivers in full control - and how they would use the guards differently, which will be their own separate commitments.
The RMT are keeping it simple for the press releases and blaming the government because it’s the most straightforward message, but in fact negotiating with either the TOC or the DfT will get them nowhere as neither actually has the option to cancel parts of their contract just because they don’t like them. In fact, the contracts are working just as the DfT and TOCs intended with the RMT striking, the contingency plans working on the strike days, and the financial impacts being picked up by the government.