Railways renationalised: Can Labour get Britain's trains back on track? | The New Statesman 

If a rail company makes a profit they keep it, if they make a loss they get a government bailout. Not exactly free market economics is it?

When it's cheaper to fly than catch a train and the profit is going abroad you know its all gone Pete Tong.

Absolutely agree on the re nationalisation of trains, and utilities also!

If there’s one good thing that’s finally dawned on the population; it’s that the private sector are utterly useless at running services, like energy, water, the railways…the list goes on and on. All they’ve managed to do is to extract money out of these services and enrich their shareholders and themselves; Thames Water is a classic example is it not. Let’s start with Rail, move on with Thames Water (Labour are home and dry with these) then move on to remove the private sector out of the NHS (look at their fees and profits they take out every year! Properly handled we can bring back dentists into the NHS umbrella. It’s time, and we should have 2 or 3 terms in government to do all of these and create a proper social democratic state that will never allow the rump of the Tory Party to ever regain power in our lifetimes…or in my case (I’m 76) my grandchildren’s lifetimes! We can do this; we owe it to them, do we not. My generation in the 60’s and 70’s dreamt of that in our ideal of a society based more on the community and less on the individual. I am one of those who believe that Thatcher was a disaster from which we have still not recovered. Finally here’s our opportunity to rid this country from the curse of selfishness and greed that she laid upon us.

If Labour re-nationalizes rail (which the present system is close to as it is), then please Labour do it for practical, not ideological, reasons. The NHS needs more money as a matter of priority! Resources are few; thanks Tories.

When the railways first started they started to allow the transport of goods over large distances at speed. Passengers were an afterthought and were in effect the cherry on the cake. Until we can get freight off the roads and back onto the railways then there will never be enough revenue to allow for the reduction in fares.

Good idea BUT Labour MUST make sure that the private rail companies don’t asset strip and load debts onto the books of rail companies just before they lose the franchises. And a few select committees won’t wash either.

In England, 4 rail companies have been renationalised - LNER, South Eastern, Northern, and Transpennine. In Scotland, both the rail operators they are responsible for - Scotrail and Caledonian Sleeper, were renationalised. In Wales, their rail operator was renationalised Northern Ireland's railways were never privatised. In London and Liverpool, they have operating contracts for their railways rather than franchises, so Merseyrail, Overground and Elizabeth Line are owned by their respective local governments, but the actual operation is contracted out to a private company.

Looking around the world, the optimal system tends to be similar to the one TfL uses. Some form of service contract. The state owns the infrastructure, sets the fares and the timetable. Hires a company to operate it, and pays them based on performance.

British Rail under public ownership was terrible. I’m interested in an efficiently run service first and foremost, so if it does go under public ownership, ideally it would be run like a commercial business and not a government department….like Deutsche Bahn (Germany) and Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Netherlands) who own bus services in the UK and run excellent services in their home country.

If prices stay about where they are, the government gets to keep the massive profits that most private rail companies make

By good chance my wife & I visited parts of the Fens in eastern England, then Northern England & western Scotland last November, 2023. I am a retired UK citizen & we live overseas. Most of our travelling was by trains, but we also used buses & taxis. All of the transport services were clean & punctual with the very kind & helpful staff. There were no railway cancellations, no delays. We happened to be in the right places at the right time with appropriate Railcard tickets as required. Some people might say we were lucky or very fortunate and yes that could be true, but it shows when ‘things’ are right, how well the railways can operate. However, the UK needs a complete change of direction from the present very tired, morally & financially corrupt broken Tory government!

Great pod, but as we increasingly see the evidence of privatised companies failing the end user while still 'somehow' manging to pay shareholder dividends and CEO bonuses it's a bit frustrating to still hear the continual trotting out of the idea that the private sector is somehow always better.

It would nice to get Water Companies back into public ownership too.

Privatising rail is an obvious mistake ... when focus is on shareholders and sifting excessive profits out of the country is the priority , the passengers and Britain loses out.

"Operators aren't happy" 😂

Prices are high mainly because the rolling stock is procured in a PFI type scheme then leased back to the rail operators. This is very difficult to fix.

If Train companies get renatioalised any profits will go back to the government and not shareholders many from abroad. When the company running the east coast line went bust it was run by the government and made money for the country. Also a public run railway system with realistic fares will help with cutting emissions from cars and help wih cutting co2 emmisions and help to combat global warming.

"Dire state of rail travel in the UK" - it all depends on the type of trip you undertake and where in the UK you undertake said trip. Let's start with - as you've said, the UK - the smallest chunk, Northern Ireland. Straight away, you've got the issue there's (a) different track gauge (b) there's no lines West from Derry or South from Derry to Eniskillen or for that matter, West from Belfast < > Dundalk < > Dublin Connolly, Enterprise corridor & there's no Iarnrod Eireann station at Dublin International so as to facilitate NIR/IR Enterprise services to it (nor is there a station for Belfast International, the one near Lough Neagh). Wales and TfW - (a) quite simply, Welsh geography mitigates against the most vital infrastructure project there can be, a West of Wales Mainline so not every train needs to go back to Swansea > Cardiff > Newport then North either on the Heart of Wales line or out, via Birmingham, North (b) Wales needs electrified railways, not simply an electrified line from Severn Tunnel Junction to Cardiff Central Scotland & ScotRail (a) full electrification for one (b) Edinburgh and Glasgow; both need something like TfL where everything locally is ran under one ticketing structure. England (a) Labour need to positively explain why we need HS2 - more capacity around B'ham means more track availability elsewhere to run stopping services (b) HS2 needs to go to Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds (c) full electrification (d) a new M62-corridor Express railway to lift traffic off the M62 (e) look at reopening the Woodhead line between Sheffield and Manchester (f) EuroStar service running from Leeds For me though, I don't care *who* runs the trains so long as they work, I don't want politicians running trains in the same way I don't want Brain Surgeons trying to be administrators in hospitals. Yes, under the umbrella "UK Rail" (or certainly "British Rail" for most services bar Scotland's internal railways and Wales internal railways ), with all one colour scheme bar those exceptions noted and one fare structure, but the people running the actual trains could be JR East or SNCF or RENFE as far as I'm concerned, so long as the interface organisation that's currently called "Great British Rail" set the overall strategic direction of service for passengers & for freight.

I’d rather they took the water back first. Everyone would benefit from it.

I wonder what the tory press have to say about this. Not used a train in years, much rather get the train so I can drink. But cheaper to get a hotel, pay for parking and fuel.

The quality and delivery standard of railways is absolutely superb in SE and NE Asia. Just look at the Japanese nuclear-powered trains, the Chinese High-speed trains, the Singaporean subway linked to the MRT network, Monorails and LRT in Malaysia, etc. Absolutely outstanding.

There are literally no inherent benefits to privatisation of industry where a natural monopoly exists. Except in the very short term. Hence why privatisation of telecoms worked and water and rail havent.

5 out of the 12 rail companies are bk in public ownership already and they are giving a better service than the private ones .

Always enjoy listening to Freddie

Tory privatisation of the railways has been a horrific waste of money.

People complain that air fares are cheaper than train fares. All airlines are private companies.

It’s been proven that the railways are profitable when nationalised with quality of service and cost more appealing to customers. With privatise franchise model, the loses are enormous. From my understanding, no service provider has been profitable. It’s disgusting what the government is wasting tax payer money on. Makes me so sad. I don’t even want to look at my pay slip these days.

It has never made any sense to sell any required public service to the private sector. The result is always the same, short term boost of investment to get the deal in the first place and then they bleed the service dry. Their aim is to deliver the minimum service at the cheapest possible price and make more money every year. There is no effective competition and no real market forces, it doesn't work and never has. The post office is another example, now flouting contract to focus on the most profitable area of the business. Saying prices won't fall is not the point, if its in public hands then at least the money is being invested in the service itself and not calved out as profit. It also means the government in better times can run the service at a loss as a public good. None of this can happen if its in private hands without government investment/subsidisation anyway

Its worrying that you can fly abroad (if Europe will still have us) for the same or less than what you pay to go around the Uk is very worrying. I am am lucky i dont need to use the trains very often. But if I had to use the rail net work i think cost would a consideration. As would being able to get to where I need to pay.

I’m paying £650 a month for my train ticket to commute to London everyday. This is the only policy that matters to me. I hope Labour have the guts to make this policy happen and reduce the fare prices drastically.

Prices are high because of the money paid to owners in dividends.

But it was never truly privatised from the start it was franchised and doom to fail. The TOC's could only compete on price for their franchise and nothing else. Other countries have gone down the privatisation route but only the freight trains have been privatised not the passenger trains which have remained under state control because it's too politically difficult to successfully privatise passenger trains. One TOC went bust and that franchise returned to the government whereupon it made a profit so the idiot government re-franchised it again. If it had been properly privatised then the train operator would have had control over timetables, fares, track and signal maintenance, stations and trains but they had none of that. The franchise operators are double dipping for not only are they charging high fares but the government is using taxpayers money to "prop" them up. Re-nationalise the passenger trains and leave the freight trains in private franchise hands.

Enjoyed it. Thank you. On top of your nice presenters, it might be a good idea to include people from the industry & the union.

Like you all a lot. Professional, intelligent, forward thinking. I don't live there, however you help me prepare and understand the crazy that might be coming across the pond. 😂❤️

A potential danger for Labour is that nationalised railways will encourage the already fairly assertive trade unions to be even more assertive and demand higher pay. And a Starmer govt gets into a big ding dong with the RMT etc...

So young this lot! Not enough wisdom/experience to draw on … like a university student common room

The first railway was in 1804 in Wales.

Tenner says they'll be sold again within the decade.

The urban railways of West Yorkshire need to be electrified to match London. The British Transport Commission of the post war Labour Government was responsible for an integrated transport system of road, rail and waterways, including ports. Under the BTC were the Railway Executive, the Road Executive and the British Ports Authority. How are the proposals different? Will the Government sell bonds to fund investment in electrification to match Switzerland?

If implemented correctly, this can work, but for the public to maximise the full benefits, we need the rolling stock as well! Get it done!

Why not take the train? I lived 5 minutes from a station, and my office was 5 minutes from a station on the same main line, about 30 miles away. Taking the train was more expensive, more stressful, less comfortable, and less reliable, than driving my car solo, through traffic jams everyday. Trains are only rubbish. Renationalisation can't make it worse.

Strikes are a symptom that shows how degraded the railway industry is in this country. They did not cause the issues we're suffering from. Just look at Southern before the strikes, that was a total failure and an indicator of where things were going.

Well they never have done whenever they have been in power before. Labour are in the pockets of the unions, as always, the railway unions are among the most powerful and beligerant of the unions. Its a fantasy that a Labour will be able to sort out Britain's railways!!!🙄🙄

5:40 "Completely unfunded" and "Where's the budget" are completely laughable in the face of crashing out of the EU with 0 (zero) plans, forecats, COAs. Especially when money is made up, as long as the project improves GDP and happiness more than the cost of creating the money there's no problem.

They make profit out of them - they are monopolies. How's that going to work? the same as the utilities. A monstrous waste of money going to the 1%. Look at water!

The problems with the rail system will not be solved by changing the people in charge. They relate to the complexity of the system, the age of some elements, our geography, and the simple fact that rail travel is not as sustainable as often thought. Once you factor in consumption outside the trains and consider services where there are not many passengers you end up with something that is too expensive for just about everyone and has to be subsidised. There must be better technologies than rail -- certainly rail as currently done.

You get delays in Germany and Italy, and the US and Australia have awful rail infrastructure and trains. The reasons the railways are so bad in the UK and expensive is the unions holding the industry to ransom for ridiculous pay rises

love travelling with Transpennine Express. Always cancelled and get your money back. Free travel.

It's risky. They would need to spend a lot of public money to regain control of the industry and there is no guarantee that civil servants will be any better at running rail than the people currently doing it.

How much would it cost the government under a nationalised system to reduce fares to european prices?

They were never on time and were out on strike continuously. No change just a hell of a lot of money wasted.

The EU Single European Railway is becoming cleaner every month. Switzerland, Lux and Belgium approaching 100% electrification. UK only 38%. We still rely on dirty diesels polluting our stations. Clean Air is a Human Right - recent ECtHR case.

You believe a Starmer promise? Wow!

Privatisation has transformed railways for the better, locos, carriages, stations, safety..... everything vastly superior to the disaster of nationalisation.....which guarantees big tax increases and investment collapsing.

Sums Britain up..paying more for the crappiest service..

BR in its last year of operation cost the taxpayer to subsidise the regional railways & Network South East sectors £439m pa. InterCity / railfreight / RES parcels all stand alone business sectors requiring no subsidy or cross subsidisation. The tory government giving BR no money to buy new rolling stock, the money coming from asset sales & fares, with the government authorising BR to spend its own money with a 8% rate of return demanded on the investment, so 31 IC225 trains for the ECML doing the work of 39 IC125 trains, 2 car sprinters doing the work of 6 coach trains, the singling of lines to save money, the huge land developments at Liverpool St to bring in the money. So as you can see when it was nationalised it was run as a very efficient set up. Privatisation was meant to set the railways free of government control & in the begining it did. What can be argued now is that the railways are not privatised enough as the DfT macro manages every TOC down to the what seats can be specified for the new train fleets. Even BR not suffering that level of interference / oversight. So nationalising the railways isnt that hard, the problems being with the leasing companies & the freight hauliers. take DB Cargo the German state owned freight company who cant afford the electricity to run electric locomotives to haul freight trains, who have a fleet of channel tunnel freight locomotives that when they are maintained at Crewe depot, they have be towed by a diesel locomotive from Crewe to Dollands Moor in Kent. Locomotives designed to haul freight be it on the 25kv / 750 dc from Mossend in Scotland to Calais, yet confined to HS1& the channel tunnel. Just had the issue with Trans pennine express of its 12 strong fleet on new mk5 nova 3 sets taken out of service to save money, with passengers being crammed onto the trains they where meant to replace , the new fleet parked up in MOD yards & towed to Longsight depot in Manchester to be serviced , again woeful wastes of money. Privatisation has been nothing but a mass exercise in wasting money. Customers on the ECML & GWML seeing the new Hitachi IET trains, for the first time ever new trains being introduced that have not seen services speeded up or a step up in quality, again these trains being afflicted by cracks in the bodyshells because of poor design / lack of basic engineering competence in designing rolling stock & the Dft minions who just dont have a clue except how to count every penny. With privatisation the idea that third rate bus companies who struggle to run buses properly like First / Stagecoach/ Go Ahead & National Express should be running trains was laughable. Anyone who ever endured First Manchester buses knows full well you wouldnt let First group run a model railway let alone a real one. As for Stagecoach a company with such a toxic brand it had to hide behind Bransons Virgin brand.

If Labour doesn't nationalise the rolling stock, then it won't make a blind bit of difference.

Get the trains right and they'll be odds on to be re-elected in 2029

"The grown-ups back in charge" again. Who thinks this is persuasive line? As for 'Great British Energy' and 'Great British Rail'. neither are actually nationalisations when you look at the details; both are rebranded privatisations. However, politically, they may help to persuade some of the more gullible Labour voters (and whatever sort are there?).

S.B.N- stop background noise

Work where you live - that should be Labour's policy.

Rail and bus services need work.

Pollie :-) I did, but it was a lot more complex than you seem to suggest….life is never as simple as Daily Mail headlines! Jim Callaghan was a far better PM than his successor I’m afraid: his mistake was not to go for the Election earlier than he did when he was way ahead in the Polls. And to be honest; I think even Mrs Thatcher must be turning in her grave at the horror and incompetence of the current right wing extremists that control her once admirable Tory party.

Unlikely.

Like the new presenter

I would rather have tax cuts

A Labour policy from Labour! What have they done with Keir Starmer and who is this imposter?

Of course Labour can do it because if they can’t then nobody can! Labour need to restore public confidence that we can turnaround the awful dire mess the Tories have spent the last 14 years creating. Positive Mental Attitude must be the new mantra. If you don’t try to improve a situation then you’ll never know how many barriers you can overcome!

Where is Andrew Marr??

The rail network is already nationalised as are some of the rail operators. Anyone that thinks we will get an improved service while we cancel new track is in for a shock.

Comprehensive reporting per the usual!

No, but I'm sure Labour will get the trans back on track.

This presenter is TOO YOUNG to remember when the railways WERE nationalised: Ceaseless strikes, work-to-rules, sympathy-strikes, walk-outs, flying pickets, cancellations, more strikes and even more strikes

Lets also consider reducing MPs pay: are back bench MPs really worth £96k+ for a few photo ops in the local paper, the odd local surgery, and jeering at the other side in parliament. Are we really getting value for money from them🤔.

Why are you propagating this myth? The rail network is no less nationalised today than the NHS is.

They're promising everything to everyone. It's bollox

Thanks for this nteresting debate. But where was Climate Change? - for which we really need the railways to attract people out of their cars? And not just rail - lots of people are using their cars because ther just isn't a practical (or possible) way of getting where they want go (and when) by public transport, so one big win aLabour government could aim for is better integration with buses.

They should be telling people how they're going to save England ? Stammer gets in, game over for the UK