Why did we sell off the railways? | FT Feature 

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The fact it's cheaper to fly to Europe than it is for a train ticket halfway up the country tells you something is seriously wrong.

He says that sitting in a first class carriage

I realise its not conclusive evidence but surely the fact that foreign state owned railway companies are now bidding for UK contracts tells you a lot about the current state of affairs?

An annual ticket between Glasgow and Edinburgh costs the same as one for the whole German network! Guess which works better, guess which is nationalised

I wish this piece had included some cross-comparison with other countries’ rail systems (France, Spain, Japan, China).

In 26 years from now we will watching youtube videos ''Why did we sell off the NHS''.

Could be worse. In the US they sold the railways to the auto industry, who destroyed them so we would drive or fly instead.

Portillo sitting in first class, commenting, says it all.

I would suggest the reason passenger numbers have gone up is people are forced onto them. Living in the south i have to say that my service is worse and considerably more expensive than BR ever was. They recieved less subsidy than now and if Mr Portillo chose cattle class in the rush hour rather than 1st off peak he may offer a slightly less pompous opinion

Plenty countries do it just fine - either we did it wrong, or we're morons The current privatised system is an embarassement

Michael Portillo misses out the reason why British rail (Nationalised railways) was ran very poorly and lead to unreliable service. The main reason was massive underinvestment and piss poor management by the Government at the time, of which he was bloody part of!! Also, we still plow millions of taxpayers money into the railways to this day, whilst the private companies that run them reap massive profits! Michael Portillo your full of utter crap as always. The guy can never ever admit the times when he, and especially the Tory government he was a part of at the time, failed us!

Portillo smugly claiming the rise in passenger numbers as a win for privatisation is really imbecilic when population pressures are so obviously the main factor. Equally, the idea that the public system was bad because public bodies are inherently bad seems like pure ideology. If he was right the Tube and London Overground should be basket cases. There is amazing irony to have someone sitting in the comfort of first class during off peak hours and waxing lyrical about how wonderful the whole experience of rail travel today is...

I had to laugh at the insinuation that the increase in passenger numbers is down to privatisation. Correlation does not equal causation. The passenger numbers have increased largely because commuting by car in the last 25 years has become considerably more painful. And it's not just because of the increase in traffic, but the cost of fuel, insurance, and if you work in a city, the cost of parking is ridiculous. The train is cheaper, quicker and more convenient. Or at least, it was. But let's also look at the decline in numbers. Train usage had been on a downturn since the mid sixties, when car ownership turned from being aspirational to entirely feasible, and then on to almost essential. Of course, given the choice between a car and a train back then, the car would always win because of the sheer convenience. It didn't help that trains were decrepit, but even if they were glorious bastions of luxury transportation, they'd still have struggled. The turning point for trains was always going to be that where there were more cars than the road network could handle, which I feel happened some time in the late nineties and the graph on train usage in this video appears to back that up.

I remember being stuck on a BR train between Sheffield and Manchester because of a points failure. We sat there for about two hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for an engineer to show up. By the time we got to Stockport one passenger was screaming at the conductor. "But you're a representative of British Rail, aren't you? I've probably lost ten thousand pounds because you couldn't get me to Manchester on time! The sooner you lot get bloody privatized the better!" Then a few years after privatization I was trying to get from Yorkshire to Manchester again, but the Arriva train staff had gone on a no-warning strike and I found myself stranded for a few hours at Barnsley. Never made it to Manchester, I had to give up and go home on a bus. I don't know if Britain will ever get its trains sorted out. It seems like nationalization v privatization is the wrong debate. There's something deeper wrong with the system.

Nice for him as he rides first class

British rail was never as bad as it's being claimed. It was run very efficiently and they used to design and build their own trains including the HST that was so good and reliable it is still being used.

The increase in passengers has nothing to do with privatisation - that is false correlation and Portillo knows this. Some sectors within a country should be nationalised - you wouldn't have a private police force. I personally believe a government can do anything more efficient and cheaper than a private company can, if properly run. A capitalist economy is the only real one can work, one where people are rewarded for their work. We do not want a state owned supermarket, but we don't want a private police force and we certainly don't want a private railway system. If you want it privatised then it should receive no public subsidy, but oh wait we tried that with Railtrack, and look how that ended out - quite literally fatal. BTW the most efficiently run franchise in the history of the railways as we know them today was East Coast, a government run franchise that paid over £1 billion back into the treasury - and "nationalised railways don't work". If persons in government say they can't run things in government they shouldn't be in bloody government. I could go on for ever about how privatisation is constantly misrepresented as great. No the railways were not run acceptably in past government hands, and I do not want us to see a return to that. But private ownership should never happen to key services, the railways being one. Just because your train was late doesn't mean railway technology is crap - it's false correlation. Just because past governments have incompetently & corruptly managed the railways doesn't mean a state railway has to be crap....

"The railways are in decline. Something must be done. Privatisation is something. Therefore it must be done.

I'm sure the Train Networks look great from your vantage point in First Class Mr Portillo.

This happened here in New Zealand in the 80s, sadly after 20 year's with absolutely no infrastructural development, the government had to re purchase it all back but at a huge cost plus billions of dollars to get it safely and securely into operating, now so many huge range of development is being done, sadly the original sale was to the government's friend's whom sold it on,

Portillo : "Trains were old" - wrong, some were brand new and designed to run at 140 mph, as BR was about to start running trains at that speed until this was cancelled by privatisation, UK Trains still, run at a 125 mph maximum. Under BR new trains were manufactured when the government allowed it and the trains they replaced were cascaded and reused on lesser services, this being a sensible way of reusing expensive resources. Post privatisation the government still controls ordering new trains and older trains are often scrapped. ... "they were very often dirty", - Some older trains were dirtier, but BR was only given 1/3 of the amount of money that UK rail has today and so had to cut corners somewhere. (Source : DfT (UK government, Department for Transport) - UK Rail costs around 3.8 times the amount that it did in BR days, allowing for inflation .... "and the most famous symbol was the curly British Rail sandwich, because the standard of catering was so poor" - It wasn't, BR sold thousands of sandwiches each day and hundreds of cooked meals. Post-privatisation, the standard of catering on the majority of trains is non-existent and it is impossible to buy sandwiches on trains. The hundreds of BR buffet & kitchen coaches have been replaced with a hand-full of kitchen coaches on a few long-distant services, the majority of train services today have no catering at all, and for the remainder a small trolley tries to work its way down the train offering a very limited range of pre-manufactured snacks and as they have no fridges, no sandwiches. ... "so it was universally acknowledged that the nationalised industries were giving an extremely poor standard of service because they had no accountability" - wrong BR was answerable and accountable to the DfT who also controlled what money BR was allowed. BR gave an excellent and very cost-effective service given the comparably small amount of money it was allowed. Today's private railway is costing the UK tax-payer 3.8 times the amount and it can be argued that as UK Rail today is run by the DfT, who are answerable to nobody. Finally, it is Interesting to note that the interview with Lillian Greeenwood took place on a HST, a train that was built by BR in the late 1970s - one of the old dirty trains that was running when privatisation was introduced, although despite privatisation, it is even older now. The coach they were sitting on (a BR Mk 3 coach) comprises a rigid aluminium honeycomb construction, that won awards as a world-leading design in the 1970s. 25 years of privatisation with the same dirty old trains. The interview with Michael Portillo took place on one of the fleet of brand-new 125 mph trains that run out of Paddington station. British Rail had advanced plans to electrify the lines out of Paddington in the 1990s and introduce new 140 mph trains, but privatisation saw these plans cancelled with no plans to increase the line speed above 125 mph. This line, however, was partly electrified a few years ago, around 20 years later.

Let's give it to corporations who pay zero tax.

That was a great little film, and the kind of political independence/lack of agenda that the FT does so well. One of the comments interested me - the idea of a state/NFP competing for a franchise. You can do so for marginal cost on a level playing field. If it is successful and if it manages to deliver better value than private TOC's whilst delivering a decent service, then the model can be tried with additional franchises. If not, then the market finds its level.

Running a passenger railroad is an extremely capital_intensive business. It may be that a state_controlled model is the optimum means of doing so. But regardless of whether it's govt or private owned there should be accountability and standards for excellence.

UK: we have terrible railways US: hold my beer

This video did not talk about how these “private railway companies” are owned by foreign states

It's not so much nostalgia and more seeing what other countries of similar populations and size are doing. Germany and France both have state owned railway that function much better and cheaper, they also have invested in UK Railway which helps subsidised rail fares in there home Nations.

4:28 that is simply the greatest transition in a video ever.

"one man was attacked with an umbrella" brilliant

These are the most expensive trains in Europe, no, no investment in infrastructure, pork projects like the high speed rail to the north. I don't live there, the majority of UK's population will not use that train but we are funding it through our taxes And despite the high fares, still the population is the one paying for infrastructure that they don't use

We need a graph of the government expenditure on the railways before and after privatisation to see how things have changed. Also there was no comment on the pillage by private industry of the ripe railworkers pension fund.

I know why. Tories smelt money. When they bankrolled the refit of the entire signalling system with unproven radio based technologies, that project was the most expensive engineering project in the world. It didn't work at all and they had to rehire the old BR staff to supervise the re-implementaion of the original system. We now subsidise the railways to the tune of 200% of what they were subsidised before privatisation. Dr. Beeching advised 50% of the stations were mothballed and so we lost half the destinations, cutting of swathes of the country, markedly seaside resorts. Beechings findings were based on route usage and ticket returns, ignoring the larger overall infrastructure and how that affected subsequent routes, let alone overall economic impact. I remember travelling on an intercity from Kings Cross when I was young and it was chaos. These days, given the money our family had back then, we would have been going down the motorway to save money in our Ford Cortina estate with missmatched door and bonnet and flight safety belts in the back. A far more arduous journey than having to stand for a few stops outside of London. Portillo says, "get your Super 8's out if you think Nationalisation is good". So why is the rest of Europe's railways run by the government and better in every respect? Since this video Virgin gave the route back to the government and the DfT run east cost line is now the most profitable in the country - only one other operator actually turns a profit and it's the GWR but that profit is negligible. It's pure Tory ideology when you sack every single British Rail employee in one go and wonder why these fancy new inexperienced companies, bloated with management botch everything. National Express were given the east cost line before Virgin and they won the contract by undercutting every other bid in what is in hindsight an unrealistic target to meet but rather than simply give NE more money like they do nowadays, they took the line back then sold it to some other company with much less ambitious targets. The railway system is an economic driver, providing that service is accessible by the majority. Businessmen travelling to and from London are the only target market for the current system so ticket prices don't make sense unless your company is paying or you expect to make back that money directly from profit gained form that journey. Less immediate returns from rail travel such as family cohesion or tourism is completely ignored. As Thatcher said. "There is no community." I think that was it.

Has that guy (who travels 1st class) ever seen Abelio's trains, or some trains in the northern part of the country? They are dirty and old but they are private so hey ho. Also, when it is cheaper to fly or drive and pay for parking rather than taking the train, there is something very wrong with the model imposed.

as an American, privatisation has been the root of all evils: the Prison industry, the health care industries (insurance and pharmaceuticals), etc...

I think the biggest problem is lack of interconnected routes. Everything is focused on only going to or from London! If you want to travel east to west, in some cases you have to travel right into London from up to 100 miles away, to travel by train to somewhere that’s possibly only 20 miles away as the crow flies! And we wonder why the network is overcrowded?! An example; Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. Places close to each other, not well connected by road or rail, but has numerous commuters between the two areas. The country roads are blocked to a standstill at peak hours. All the railway needs is 50 metres of track at Manton Junction to create a triangle and therefore a connection from Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. That’s all it needs! But without it, you have to either travel up to Leicester and across on a slow train from there, or into London and then out again to Peterborough up the east coast! All this over 50m of missing track that could easily be put in!!! It’s farcical but hasn’t been done because it doesn’t benefit London. This is just one example. There are hardly any fast East-West routes! HS2 seems to have an open chequebook for the first phase from London to Birmingham (duplicating existing routes!), but the later phases connecting places like Manchester and Sheffield are in jeopardy, when they currently have only very poor connections! It’s a joke.

How is it that Japan Rail, divided into segments with separate private owners, can run a seamless, punctual and efficient service with affordable fares but Network Rail cannot?

I used to study and live in Coventry, as a Foreign student. On weekends use to travel to Birmingham for Indian curry and shopping. I think the railway (Coventry -Birmingham route) was overloaded with people standing, especially during the morning hours, and with very few foods or beverage purchase facilities. However, on longer trips/routes, Virgin trains and other liner services had better services like food and bar counter drinks, from which you can select miniature versions of Gin/ whiskey etc. Overall British railway is not bad but just a bit congested.

And here in India, our regime is incessantly moving towards privatisation of railways across regions. They have deferred partly due to covid, but some cunning elements will bring it some day or other. Learn from others !!

I enjoyed this short film, It's a much bigger and more complex subject though and it simply cannot be tackled in 15 minutes....maybe a series!

Look up the Beeching cuts, and find out how well the government ran the railways when they owned the entire system. They ripped up 1/3 of all railway lines, and closed over half of all stations in the UK in the 1960s alone. Pure vandalism. Creating a private monopoly called "RailTrack" that owned all the railway infrastructure was a stupid idea. We should firstly change the laws on planning permission, so it's as easy as possible to build new railway lines, then second we should break up the railway lines into dozens of different companies, so they actually have to compete against each other on a route by route basis. For example, you can get to London from Birmingham either by Moor Street-Marylebone, or from New Street-Euston. Same with Worcester-London, you can either take GWR through the Cotswolds and Oxford, or you can go via Birmingham New Street with London Midland. If there were genuine alternatives, then train companies wouldn't be able to rip-off their customers, because they would simply use another provider. Private companies don't "always do things better", but that's not the point. Privatization should mean that people who aren't involved aren't forced to pay, which is why the current system is such a shambles. Private companies should not receive a penny of taxpayer money.

Late, poor service, expensive... Just get it fixed ffs. Don't care why it's privatised. Put the customers first for once

If Crossrail is delayed for the 100th time, there’s probably something wrong with government ownership

I live on the Windermere Branch, the other day (5th April) our ENTIRE daily service was cancelled. Any time there's an issue around Manchester etc we suffer

At the time this video was released I was happily crisscrossing the UK on trains. Two years before I spent two months in Japan with a Japan Rail Pass and a Suica card for the Tokyo subways. Absolutely amazing! What really bothered me about the UK, and France, was passengers had to wait and stare up a signboards waiting for the moment it would tell them which track their train was going to be on-- then they had ten minutes to race to their train. Every time I was in a major station I saw exhausted commuters being subjected to this this passive-aggressive incompetence. I was told it had always been this way, nationalized or not. I had a huge backpack, so several times I asked a train employee if they knew which track my train would be on. Only once was the answer I got incorrect. In Japan, also with myriad private train companies, I could buy (or reserve with my Rail Pass) a ticket for a specific seat in a specific car for a specific date and time months in the future. Painted on the platform number on that ticket, is the train's number, car number and whether this spot is the front or rear door. And that's where it will be. That's how to treat passengers with respect and keep high standards. For me the litmus test for public or private is, will this same nonsense continue? Trains are political only because a lot of money is involved. What railways really are is a specific range of practical functions; with necessary human accommodation. It's not political, it's pragmatic, or it's just incompetent noise. How do you know if they're doing it right? Well, take a trip to Japan, are your trains running as well? (Or China, also excellent trains). The symmetry of the neglectful public employee is the PR nonsense, covering over equally callous money grubbing. (btw the class war in the UK? Congratulations you all lost. But in the contest for the stupidest leader? We (US) won that race to surrealism.) It's interesting that some passengers in this video are grumpy at Richard Branson. I'm quite a fan of Virgin, I flew to and from Heathrow on a Virgin plane, and traveled on several Virgin trains while in the UK. My experience was of course, limited. (They did leave me at the Belfast port expecting a bus....) On one hand he seems to want his companies to treat customers well, but of course he's also another billionaire. What might be interesting would be to collect all the complaints about the two Virgin rail companies, give this list to Branson and say, 'you're going to run all the trains in the UK that have lost their franchises, for the government. Do a good job and you'll be paid. Just as communists seem to make good capitalists, some capitalists would probably be good socialists. btw the views out of the train windows? The UK wins! Shinkansen trains have sound barrier walls that block a lot of the view, and kudzu vines growing everywhere create a green 'wall'. And yes I know most of this is a lot of nonsense. Cheers.

LMAOOOO the advert for this video is "why do we sell the raiways" love me a good raiway

BR was a disaster because Portillo and his mates didn't get Orient Express service. Trains are not meant to be Concord, they're meant to move ordinary people from A to B cheaply and efficiently. In other words, they are a public utility.

Atlee's government had to nationalise the railways, the war had devastated them and the companies were effectively bankrupt. Lack of investment in the 1960's and 70's had degraded the service. Yes allow private companies use the rails (freight etc), however, the main passenger provider should be the government. Letting it transition from franchise to public would be cheap...

When some in some country someone "Let's privatise the railway" the answer is "Great Brittan" an the discussion ends.

I don't see how going back to a nationalised system and all its problems (underinvestment and no accountability to customers being key ones) will be an improvement. The privatisation has clearly brought improvements, the numbers speak for themselves. Instead, the system should be reformed in ways that reduce fares if possible without taking them into government ownership.

Should have asked Portillo why it's ok for foreign state-owned entities to run our railway services but not ok for British state-owned entities to do so. Or why he believes that a UK state-owned railway operator would be as bad as BR was, when BR received less subsidy than the privatised TOCs do now. Or why the east coast main line had a good service when it was briefly renationalised, but a poor service before and since.

Clever. Misspelling the ad on purpose so people click on it to flex their grammatical muscles

One of the options only hinted at is the QuANGO; while the BBC is often criticised, it's well regarded globally for quality of output. If rail is going to be a perpetual halfbreed of public and private, why not use the same model that has worked so well elsewhere?

There's no competition ? What's Rifkin talking about ? You have to use the particular operator, and pay extortionate fares or drive, which is eminently cheaper, which is not what public transport should stand for.

Sir Richard Marsh said that there were (then) 125,000 people running the railway, and 30 million who know how to! Nothing has changed.

Government should be in the business of regulating business as opposed to being in the business of being in business.

"privatization" is a religion of its own. It's a way to induce the inequality(giving certain individual an opportunity to get rich). Inequality is certainly growing in England, so it did its purpose. Railway gave the country a empire status(as a public project, the profit wasn't the goal but the boosting of the economy was) and they gave it away so willingly. The invented the technology and were exporting the technology but now they are importing it from another country which used to buy the technology from England. Privatization virus is now spreading in US even quicker, and look how their economy is doing.

BR got me to & from school every day and up to London on a regular basis - no problem.

I went to Luxembourg recently. Paid 4 euros to go 65 miles. And guess what? Nationalised trains!

Really enjoyed this, however wish the editor would have left some of the names up for a few more frames. It's difficult, especially for older people to read the names of these individuals and places so quickly when introducing them.

It really get's my goat up when they say Do you Remember the 70's Yeah we didnt have computers! and AI was the stuff of sci-fi. Are you seriously telling me Mr Portillo in 50yrs we havent evolved...and now we are smarter we can keep an eye on the crooks better

No mention of successful nationalised railways in places around the world. Why do some politicians think that we can manage a Brexit despite not believing we can even manage a nationalised railway like in Japan for example?

What's funny is that it strikes me as severely short sighted to assume that more people are riding trains today because it somehow became more attractive and not, as is happening in the US that wages are stagnant and rail has become a more affordable option. It kills me when politicians and businessmen overlook dwindling resources of consumers in justifying the privatization of public programs, especially since such privatization is always accompanied by a relative reduction in quality and availability while they're deeply subsidized by tax payers. The US prison system is a prime example. Adding a profit motive is not the answer to services essential to people.

oh the HORROR of not having a table on the train //rolls eyes//

I always assumed it was the last frantic bit of asset stripping done to benefit the Tories and their mates who no doubt had their share of profit from the cheap sell off of surplus land owned by the railway.

So glad Portillo lost in 1997

The railway owners were forward thinking, building connecting all over, subsequent wars and economic turn down, resulted in the end. But if our governments were forward thinking, yes rip up the rails and infrastructure to save money but keep the land. Then in decades time reinstate the rails when populations grow. But alas our governments only think five minutes ahead.

Where can we find this 1992 memo which is mentioned around 8:00? What were the other options explored?

What’s a raiway?

Privatisation has been a fecking disaster.

The basic problem with the railway has always been there, regardless of whether it's been nationalised or privatised. For the most part it's been appallingly managed and suffered from chronic underinvestment. It's so typical of Britain. We want brilliant services but aren't willing to pay the money to invest in them.

Michael Portillo: who's put the money that has made the improvements to the railway you hail? The public purse. It's also a classic tactic to deliberately underfund a service to then justify privatizing or closing it or whatever else

Why did we sell off the railways. WE didn't. The Tories did, simply to make their cronies a shed load of money. Meanwhile millions travel to work every day in over priced cattle trucks.

short answer: tories

The privatisation of the railways was a huge disaster, but not as bad as the Beeching cuts, as is devastated the rail network and provided a killer blow to the UK economy, along with putting severe strain on our road networks.

are we all forgetting that the best railway network in the world is almost completely privatised? in japan, trains are run by private corporations that own track trains and all.

I liked the trains that had compartments

Why? Neoliberalism.

I live in London and it used to cost me 1/4 of my monthly salary to get to work, it was a total joke!!!! and constant delays!! all because each part of my journey is owned by a different company

I have some Giles cartoons in a book with British Railways posters. One shows a snail pulling a train with the caption, "British Rail - We'll get you there eventually". Another has, "Worried about arriving late?? Travel by British Rail and be sure!!" British Rail was always the butt of jokes on TV, Radio and newspaper cartoons. Like the saying goes, "Many a true word said in jest". One radio sketch had Bill Oddie as a (not) very helpful BR ticket office staff member and John Cleese as a passenger trying to buy a ticket, with interruptions by station tannoy announcements, the best of which was, "The train arriving at platform 2 is Stephenson's Rocket. British Rail apologises for the delay to any surviving passengers". Ah, the good old days of BR (Badly Run).....

When I lived in England in the mid 80s, British Rail was terrible.

Be careful, you might be invaded if you nationalize something.

The great thing about commuting on the trains is that they are a magnificent reason to work from home that managers struggle to argue against.

So if it was bad, then sack the people in charge. That doesn't' require privatisation.

They could have just privatised the buffet cars and the first class carriages, so the people who want to pay for luxury can do so, while their operators can compete in a positive auction to subsidise the rest of the system which runs on a national timetable and ticketing regime.

Amazing FT. You misspelt 'railways' in your ad banner. 'Why did we sell off the *raiways* ' apparently. Pathetic.

People trot out all the time the fact that subsidy has gone up, but ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of government spending on rail goes on infrastructure improvements, and that many more trains run now, compared to BR, which has increased costs. If you expand a loss making service, you just increase the loses. Remember, the only part of the railway that will ever really pay its way are the intercity services. The increase in frequency and capacity on commuter and regional services has been good at matching demand, but requires heavy subsidy.

"Trains were old & often dirty." Don't expect a train to look good if the money isn't there!

Can you please drop the "we", it was the Tories, you know, the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

If you want to get to point of this "debate" Noam Chomsky sums it up in 30 seconds. Just watch the first youtube video "Noam Chomsky on Privatization"

The real problem with the privatization of the railways is that there is no competition and, consequently, half-capitalism does not get anywhere. Either trains from different companies run on the same line, which keep prices low and offer good service to attract customers, or keep the whole system under state control; giving the individual lines does not lead to anything. Look what happens in Italy, the only trains that offer a good service are those that have to compete with a rival company (Italo).

How can companies be accountable to passengers when commuters have no choice but to use the same service every day?

I rarely use trains (I don't travel much anyway) so why should I subsidize people earning big money commuting to cities?

lol, the railway still belongs to the British public.

I have used rail transport in most of western EU and I have to say that the worst, more unreliable and expensive railway system is by far the British one. It is ridiculous how bad and expensive it is.

The problem now is the state of our roads, infrastructure and congestion is so bad that so many people need to use the railways, I would have thought that Portillo would have seen this whilst making his TV programmes, but he is still a Capitalist at heart, and he will never admit they were wrong.

So some people can make a fast buck at the Taxpayers expense, as always, and boy, have they!

And people still voted for the conservative again..... British people clearly asked for this!

Privatisation = the privatisation of profits and public ownership of bailouts/ losses

"Power to the hand of the people" is not the same as "Power to the hand of a person."