On the eve of the Parliamentary recess, the
Coalition Government announced that they were launching a bidding competition
that will see the privatisation of the East Coast mainline, which has been in
public ownership since 2009.
My Parliamentary colleague, Ian Mearns, immediately
tabled a parliamentary motion supporting a publicly owned railway system run in
the public interest, rather than private profit, which I have co-sponsored.
There have been a number of significant improvements since the East Coast
mainline returned to public ownership.
The £640 million that has been generated in
premiums and profits since 2009 has returned to the Treasury instead of
expanding the profits of train operators. Since 2009 East Coast has seen an
increase in passenger numbers, and achieved an overall satisfaction rating of
92%, the highest score since the Passenger Focus Survey was launched in 1999.
There are those who would oppose nationalisation
out of hand, but could they honestly say that the affordable and reliable state
run train services in France and Germany are not better than our privatised,
expensive and overcrowded service? An assessment by the Campaign for Better
Transport found that the cost of season tickets, with underground transport,
from a commuter town to a capital, is nearly ten times more expensive in the UK
than in Italy, while the same journey is less than a third of the cost in
France, Germany and Spain.
There is nothing more ideological than in the
face of multiple market failures, the fiasco over the tendering process for the
West coast mainline, which cost the taxpayer up to £50 million, and
overwhelming public opposition, that the Tory Government remain wedged to this
disastrous policy.
There is a strange coalition emerging with those
on the left and right wing of the political spectrum, believing that the
railway privatisation experiment has been a complete failure that and has led
to higher rail fares, a fall in public satisfaction, and the continuation of
subsidies at a rate higher than those that were received by British Rail.
We cannot afford to continue with the privatised
railway. According to the Rebuilding Rail report of the Transport for Quality
of Life, the cost of having a privatised railway has been at least £1.2 billion
a year. I am not surprised that surveys calling for the nationalisation of the
railways regularly poll above 70%.
We need a radical alternative to privatisation,
and if we are to deliver a modern, environmentally sustainable transport
network, fit for the 21st Century. I can see little alternative but
to bring the railway back into public control, so that they are run in the best
interest of the public, rather than the profits of train operators.
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