On The Right Track

Diane Abbott writes:

My uncle Mackie was my favourite uncle and was a railway porter at London’s Euston station. He was devoted to his job and would boast happily that he had never taken a day off sick in his life. Ever since, however, generations of committed railwaymen and harassed rail users like myself have been ill-served by successive governments’ chaotic policies towards the railways.

Recent fare rises (and the even bigger ones in the pipeline) go to show that when it comes to the railways the Government doesn’t know what it is doing and long-suffering rail commuters are paying the price. Transport Minister Philip Hammond has been hinting at huge price rises but Britain already has some of the highest train fares in the world.

They are not just hitting us all in the pocket they are bad for the environment and wider society. Since 1997 train fares have gone up by seven per cent but the cost of motoring has dropped by 13 per cent and the cost of domestic air fares has halved.

It is almost invariably cheaper, for instance, to fly from London to Glasgow than take the train. Consequently people who might actually prefer to travel by train find themselves forced to use their car or take a plane. How does this make sense when the Government claims to be concerned about the environment?

Cutting rail fares 20 per cent would increase rail travel 17 per cent, which would be good for our pockets and for the cause of climate change. Instead fares are set to rise even higher. One thing that makes this worse is the difficulty in getting your hands on the cheap fare deals.

Not even the people who work for the train companies can work out the system. A survey by Which? last year revealed two-thirds of station clerks failed to quote customers the cheapest fare.

The chaos extends into management. Rail union TSSA (Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association) is in dispute with Network Rail because of what it claims are serious management failings. Among the allegations are a series of inappropriate payments to managers. There were apparently 95 compromise agreements signed by network Rail with managers in the period 2007/2008.

Compromise agreements are normally an indication that a member of staff has agreed to go by mutual agreement. If Network Rail had to let go of 95 managers then it really is in a mess. Further to this there are allegations of sexual harassment against network Rail’s head of human resources Peter Bennett. All of this would be just about bearable if the railways were genuinely private but they continue to cost the taxpayer billions.

We subsidise train operators to the tune of £1billion a year and subsidise network Rail by £4billion. Yet managers continue to pay themselves fat, private-sector salaries and bonuses and the companies continue to squeeze the travellers. That is why I believe it is time to take the railways back into public ownership. It was a mistake to privatise them in the first place as it’s allowed private companies to profiteer without regard to public interest.

My opponents in the battle for the Labour leadership are the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. They all claim that it would be too expensive to bring the railways back into public ownership but they are wrong, it would actually save the public money. For one thing network Rail is effectively state-owned already. The rail infrastructure was effectively renationalised when Railtrack went into administration in 2001.

Network Rail debts are underwritten by the Government and the company is partially funded by it. Network Rail was described at the time as being “nationalisation in all but name”. New Labour’s administration at the time did not want to call it the renationalisation of Railtrack because they were terrified of being seen to go against the private sector, even when the taxpayer was getting a bad deal. More duplicitously they also wanted to avoid compensating Railtrack shareholders. So they let Railtrack go insolvent and then took it over.

It would cost nothing to bring back train operations into public hands. The Government would have two options: either it would not renew the franchises when they expire or, as the companies got into financial difficulties, they could be taken over. Additionally private-sector train operators receive a huge direct subsidy from the Government.

This is just subsidising their profits. It would be cheaper and in the public interest to operate the trains directly. The current mess doesn’t serve the general public, the taxpayer or the rail commuter. The Labour Party that I would lead would start listening to the public for the first time in a long time. On the railways, as on other issues, I would introduce policies that made sense instead of running scared of big-money interests.

I do not have the corporate backers that my opponents have. So this summer on the leadership campaign trail I have travelled to every corner of the British Isles by rail, from the Highlands to the South coast. I have marvelled at the beauty of some of the wonderful Victorian stations and the kindness and efficiency of so many staff.

The railways are too dear to the British people to be left to rapacious private companies. let’s stop these huge fare rises and make the railways the people’s railways once more.