THIS week’s report by MPs on rail travel – “lack of vision”, “no long-term strategy” – could not have been more damning. Yet it still ducked the big question.

According to the Commons transport committee, passengers face years of overcrowded trains and sky-high fares because the industry is incapable of planning for the future.

Key routes – including the West Coast line linking Liverpool to London – are close to saturation, a problem that 1,300 extra carriages across the country cannot begin to tackle.

The only solution – a network of European-style high-speed lines – is not on the agenda, because the industry has a depressing antipathy to “grand visions”.

That all seems pretty clear, so what is this big question I accuse Riverside MP Louise Ellman, and the committee she chairs, of ducking?

It is summed up in this conclusion in the report: “The sheer complexity of the industry has made it prone to unnecessary cost escalation and waste.” It is, of course, the fact that it is privately-run. More than a decade after John Major’s calamitous decision to privatise the railways, it is crystal clear that it is impossible to build a modern network while it remains in numerous, fragmented, expensive, inefficient, private hands.

Just one fact proves this. From next year, the Government will pump £3bn a year into the railways – but £800m is lost at the other end in private profit.

I know what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t it be hideously expensive to buy back franchises from the likes of Virgin, money that could be spent on high-speed lines?

Not so. The majority of the 19 rail operating franchises expire between now and 2013. Why not let Network Rail take over and operate them in the same “not for profit” way that it manages the track?

That set-up would mean that, when Network Rail announces a profit – £1.2bn last year – all that money is ploughed back into better infrastructure, instead of into paying dividends.

Across the other side of the world, in New Zealand, the railways were similarly privatised in the 1990s. Likewise, infrastructure investment has wilted, despite huge taxpayer subsidy.

At the start of this month, KiwiRail was born – putting the industry back in public ownership. The country’s Labour government said privatisation had “been a painful lesson for New Zealand”.

KiwiRail proves it can be done – with political courage. Which means, of course, it won’t happen here.

***

ONE Tory MP on Monday’s welfare-to-work privatisation: “As somebody who likes to think that he is on the right wing of the Conservative party, I am thrilled to hear today’s statement, which is great news.”

Need I say more?