Latest news with #renationalisation
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Great British Railways: renationalisation can put passengers back in the driving seat
Government guidance documents rarely feature soaring prose to fire the imagination. But a recent Department for Transport policy update contained one passage to lift the spirits of train users up and down the country. Setting out the future of Great British Railways (GBR), the public body that will oversee a renationalised and reintegrated rail network, its authors observe that 'instead of having to navigate 14 separate train operators, passengers will once again simply be able to use 'the railway''. Last month, this journey back to the future began as the first renationalised South Western Railway (SWR) service departed Woking for London Waterloo, complete with union jack branding and the logo 'Great British Railways: coming soon'. The remaining nine private franchises will be back in public ownership by 2027, by which time a new GBR headquarters will be up and running in Derby. The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, hailed the moment as a new dawn. There can be little doubt that a reset is badly needed. Fragmentation, in the name of competition, was the original sin of the destructive and ideological privatisation of the rail network in the 1990s. The wrongheaded decision to separate the management of track and trains led to confused accountability and buck-passing between train operators and Network Rail. Accompanying marketisation, and the restless search for profit, inaugurated an era in which a baffling profusion of ticket types did little to mitigate the cost of travelling on the most expensive trains in Europe. Poor performance by franchises such as Avanti West Coast and TransPennine Express (taken back into public ownership in 2023) undermined public confidence in an industry crucial to Britain's green transition. A period of disastrous industrial relations, and reduced passenger numbers since the pandemic, have compounded a sense of crisis. It would be foolish to hope for an instant turnaround. The future shape and finances of rail travel are still unclear, following the post-Covid collapse in lucrative commuter and business travel. But having been constituted explicitly as a publicly run 'guiding mind' for the whole network, carrying responsibility for both track and trains, GBR will have the power to rationalise its operations and place the interests of passengers first. A simpler, more joined-up ticketing system should be a priority. Somewhat bathetically, the optics of last month's SWR launch were compromised by Sunday engineering works and the need for a rail replacement bus from Surbiton to London Waterloo. Some things never change. But though free-market dogmatists will have relished that hitch to proceedings, a large majority of the population strongly welcome the prospective return of a vital public good to public hands. Much of their support, however, is undoubtedly linked to a hope that GBR will do something to address the often prohibitive cost of travelling by rail in Britain. On the subject of cheaper tickets, Ms Alexander has been noticeably reticent, pointing to current subsidies of £2bn a year. Labour should think bigger. In the 1960s, Ms Alexander's predecessor in the Department for Transport, Barbara Castle, pioneered the idea of a subsidised 'social railway' in the wake of the deeply unpopular Beeching cuts. After a disruptive and demoralising period, a similar level of imagination is needed today for an industry that delivers crucial economic, environmental and societal benefits.
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Do we really think that Heidi Alexander can run Britain's railways?
What excitement. I travelled into central London today on a state-run train. It was just like old times. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s the government owned and operated virtually everything, not just the railways which were nationalised in 1948. The telephones (BT), our power (CEGB), coal (NCB), steel, shipbuilding, water (various water boards), the buses, even flying (BA). Until 1972 you could go on a state-organised holiday with Thomas Cook. Almost 30 years after the trains were privatised they are being returned to state ownership starting with South Western Railways (SWR). This process is being done in a piecemeal way: when a private operator's franchise expires it is nationalised and will become part of Great British Railways (GBR). SWR happened to be the first in line, not because it is especially bad. Indeed, my own experience is that it has been pretty good other than when the unions went on strike or the already renationalised Network Rail had messed up, which was hardly the fault of FirstGroup which ran the trains until Sunday. Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, took the first People's Train out of Waterloo and declared it to be a 'new dawn' when most of us old enough to remember British Rail see it as a step into the past. Of course nothing had changed. Indeed, the very first renationalised SWR service involved a rail replacement bus: the 05.36 from Woking to Waterloo had to terminate at Surbiton because of Bank Holiday weekend engineering works. The trains bear the same livery and have the same staff. They will eventually be rebranded with a GBR logo though not for a few years. Ms Alexander said there would be a 'cultural reset' for the railway whatever that means. One thing we do know is that the Government will be responsible for ensuring investment in new rolling stock, fare policy and ensuring the trains run on time. The reason BR was privatised was because by the mid-1990s none of these could any longer be guaranteed when the Treasury had competing demands on revenues, not least from a rapidly expanding welfare state. This is even more the case today, so where will the money come from? The politics are problematic as well. Ms Alexander says the re-nationalisation means 'moving away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failing passengers, and moving confidently into a new really is a watershed moment.' We shall see about that. When the carriages start to look run-down, the fares go up and trains are late because the drivers are on strike for ever bigger pay rises from a Labour Party they have helped to bankroll there will be only one body to blame: the Government. She added: 'Of course, change isn't going to happen overnight. We've always been clear that public ownership isn't a silver bullet.' Indeed, not. In fact it is invariably a dead hand because nationalised industries have none of the market pressures faced by commercial operators. But it must be conceded that the railways – and to an even greater extent the water industry which became a massive rip-off of taxpayers – do raise legitimate questions about the efficacy of privatisation. It is worth remembering how radical this was at the time. In a speech to the Tory Reform Group in 1985, the former prime minister Harold Macmillan, then 91 and with just a year to live, pronounced a characteristically patrician verdict upon the privatisation programme of the Thatcher government. It was, he said, like selling off 'the Georgian silver'. His speech was widely ridiculed: here was an essentially Edwardian figure unfashionably wedded to the notion that the state could run industry and public utilities better than private companies. Yet 40 years on there is a resurgence of Macmillanesque hankering after a sepia-tinted world when the trains were run from Whitehall, electricity was provided by the Soviet-sounding Central Electricity Generating Board and water board chiefs were appointed by civil servants. But it cannot be denied that the sale of the public utilities did not create the benign market conditions – or the mass share ownership – that had been envisaged. Privatising 'public good' industries upon which everyone relies and which are natural monopolies was always fraught with difficulty. Since the scope for competition was limited, regulators were needed to protect the interests of consumers and they have not done their jobs properly. It was also hoped that moving these businesses into private hands would ease the pressure on the taxpayer; yet the subsidy to the railways is greater now than at the time of privatisation. On top of that, the UK state relinquished control of utilities only for foreign government-controlled companies like EDF to move in and take over. But even though privatisation was not as propitious as had been hoped, that is not an argument for their return to state ownership, as the unions propose and many people unhappy with their performance would like to see. This is not an ideological point but a pragmatic one: the old system was inefficient, costly and beset by institutionalised inertia. Since privatisation, there has been investment that would simply not have happened had the utilities remained in state hands – especially after the financial crash of 2008 when the biggest spending cuts were in capital projects. The failure of privatised utilities to perform well does not mean they will do better in state hands. In fact, history suggests otherwise. Nonetheless, the benefits still need to spread beyond the boardrooms of a few multi-national cartels. If privatisation of industry and utilities was the challenge 40 years ago, today it is the desocialisation of public services like health and education, with a move towards a social insurance scheme in the former and vouchers in the latter to provide greater choice. No political party is proposing such a radical approach and are just harking back to a world that has long gone. If the answer to the failings of privatisation is re-nationalisation, then the wrong questions are being asked. After all, Macmillan's error was to imagine that the family had any silver left when, in reality, it had already been pawned several times over.
BBC News
27-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Rail users watching renationalisation 'with interest'
Rail users in the South West say they will be watching "with interest" to see what changes could be delivered after South Western Railway was was brought into public ownership on Sunday and the Department of Transport is now responsible for it until the Great British Railways is created later in the Duncan, chair of the Salisbury to Exeter Rail Users Group (SERUG), said "it's really about is there going to be change".The government has said it plans to renationalise nearly all passenger rail services in England by 2027. The government said seven more companies, including Great Western Railway (GWR) which operates services across Devon, Cornwall and beyond, will be renationalised by 2027 as each of their contracts end – or sooner if their performance is judged to be Reddaway, chair of the Avocet Line Rail Users Group (ALRUG) which represents passengers on the Exmouth to Exeter railway, said the group was "not expecting a lot of change immediately".He said the group would "watch with interest" to see what happens to other renationalised train operators before GWR is taken in by the government said on Sunday it cannot guarantee train tickets will get cheaper under Reddaway said: "The Avocet Line Rail Users Group is not surprised that the government is unable to guarantee cheaper train tickets after renationalisation."There is a great need to simplify the very complex rail ticketing which has been promised for some time." Mr Duncan said plans for developing the Devon Metro were key in which half-hourly trains would travel between Honiton and Exeter."Devon Metro is critical," he said."Exeter is a huge growth city in the UK but to enable that to be done you have to put a bit of double-track back."Everybody's agreed it can be done except the politicians won't find the money for it."
The Sun
26-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Renationalising railways is plain loco… it will be the same old misery for passengers while handing more power to unions
ACCORDING to the Government, the renationalisation of South West Trains on Sunday morning marked a 'new dawn for rail'. It was a Sunday morning, however, which ended like so many do for rail passengers: With the first service soon grinding to a halt and passengers ordered out onto a rail replacement bus. 3 3 Does anyone other than avowed socialists really expect much to improve under the Government's renationalisation programme, which will involve most services in Britain over the next couple of years being branded under the name ' Great British Railways '? It may have escaped some passengers' notice, but train services in some parts of the country already have been renationalised. Local services in the North of England, for example, have been run by the Government under the name Northern Trains since 2020, after the Conservative government terminated the franchise held by Arriva. Services in Wales have been run by the Welsh government since 2021 and those in Scotland by the Scottish government since 2022. How is that experiment coming on? In the final three months of last year, Northern Trains had the fourth worst punctuality record of any operator, with just 50.6 per cent of trains arriving on time. It had the second worst figures for train cancellations, with eight per cent of trains not even making it out of the station. Next down the list was Transport for Wales, with 7.6 per cent cancelled. In Scotland, nationalisation by Nicola Sturgeon did absolutely nothing to improve labour relations, with almost constant strikes in the years since. There has been a distinct change in culture, with the whole network being closed down at the slightest hint of strong winds. Train drivers' strike causes rail travel chaos as many areas left with no services Nor have the renationalised railways proved to be less grasping when it comes to setting and collecting fares. I don't have much sympathy for genuine fare dodgers, but Sam Williamson was trying to do the right thing when he bought a £3.65 return to Manchester with a 16-24 railcard. No one who is old enough to remember British Rail will be fooled into thinking, as the Government and unions would have us believe, that nationalisation is a panacea for our awful rail service Northern's phone app was quite happy to sell him the ticket, but little did he know that deep down in the company's Byzantine rules was a clause saying that railcards can only be used before 10am if the original fare would have been £12 or more — although that rule doesn't apply in July and August. Got that? Williamson was pounced upon by a ticket inspector and was about to be dragged through the courts when, after a public outcry, the company realised that perhaps, after all, its ticketing rules are unreasonably complicated. No one who is old enough to remember British Rail will be fooled into thinking, as the Government and unions would have us believe, that nationalisation is a panacea for our awful rail service. At least the privatised rail companies seemed to want us to travel, luring us with cheap tickets and by opening new stations. I still remember British Rail's response when a rail service in Devon was reported to be dangerously overcrowded. Rather than find an extra carriage or two it scrapped the service altogether. It was British Rail's Chairman, Richard Beeching, lest anyone forget, who closed down half the rail system in the 1960s. Many other services were run down, reduced to a skeleton service. Trains were old and dirty and the catering a stock joke for comedians. 3 British Rail did have one big modernisation project — developing a tilting train which was supposed to run at speeds of up to 155 mph from London to Manchester and Glasgow, but that was scuppered in part by the unions who refused to drive it, demanding it should have two drivers. It is bizarre that the railway system, under privatisation, receives more subsidy than it did in British Rail's day It is true that privatisation never brought us all the benefits it was supposed to. The decision by John Major's government to grant monopolistic franchises allowed rail companies to bid up fares to ridiculous levels. The same companies found it easier, rather than take on the unions, to nod through fat pay rises and then go begging to the government for extra handouts. It is bizarre that the railway system, under privatisation, receives more subsidy than it did in British Rail's day. But none of this is going to be solved simply by taking the railways back into state ownership. The real purpose of nationalisation is to throw red meat to Labour's old faithful — those who never accepted Tony Blair's rewriting of the party's constitution to take out the clause demanding public ownership of the means of production. Labour's sacred cows While Blair was prepared to slay Labour's sacred cows and embrace a more entrepreneurial economy, Starmer is taking his party backwards into its 1940s comfort zone. He may preach 'growth, growth, growth', but has anyone seen a Labour policy in the past 11 months that is calculated to achieve that? Renationalisation of the railways certainly isn't going to do the job. Even transport secretary Heidi Alexander admits it isn't going to reduce fares. All it will mean is that the unions will be in charge of the railways even more than they are already. It will be more fat pay rises for their members as they take advantage of a pushover Labour government — and the same old misery for passengers.
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Renationalised rail is just one sign of Britain's slide back to the 1970s
SIR – The gradual renationalisation of Britain's railways (report, May 24) will simply result in more taxpayers' money being wasted. Last time round, British Rail lost vast sums of money every day. It will be no different now. We can also look forward to more industrial action. Tim Sayer Bristol SIR – We are going back to the bad old days. Take the 'Great' out of the Government's Great British Railways, and we are simply left with what we had before. It will not work. Jeremy Clarkson (Magazine, May 24) is right to say that this country has 'fallen off a cliff'. Jack Marriott Churt, Surrey SIR – Northern Rail was nationalised on March 1 2020. It has continued to offer a very poor service to the public. Together with St Helens Council, it started a project to improve the town's Lea Green station. This was supposed to have been completed in 2023, yet some of the new facilities are still not open. Does anyone really believe that nationalisation is going to improve our railways? Chris Lewis Widnes, Cheshire SIR – It is strange that Sir Keir Starmer, famously the son of a toolmaker who made it to the top of the legal profession, so despises aspiration in others. Nik Perfitt Bristol SIR – Angela Rayner's declaration that she has 'no desire' to lead the Labour Party ( May 25) surely marks the beginning of her leadership bid. As Sir Keir Starmer becomes increasingly unpopular and detached from the electorate, Ms Rayner will build a hard-Left coalition financed by the trade unions. Sir Keir can expect a brutal coup worthy of the Borgias. Mike Tickner Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire SIR – Michael Miller (Letters, May 24), addressing the prospect of further tax rises, asserts that they are the 'membership fee to live in a civilised society'. I want my money back. Jane Moth Stone, Staffordshire SIR – I do not think taxing the rich is considered an 'evil', as Michael Miller suggests. Over-taxing them, however, is simply foolish, because they will leave the country, taking their money with them. In any case, Britain's wealthy already pay a substantial share of tax revenues. Making the 'pips squeak' is counterproductive. Rosanne Greaves Oakham, Rutland
