The Debate: Should rail network be re-nationalised?

Jan 8 2008 By Ben Schofield, Daily Post staff

Ben Schofield reports  on calls  for a return to  British Rail days 

IT WASN'T just the trains  that were running behind  time last week.  Though a  journey from Liverpool to  London was two hours  longer than advertised,  engineering works at Rugby were  also behind schedule.

Network Rail, which owns and  maintains the tracks, had hoped  to get essential maintenance  work completed before the New  Year.

But, because of a "planning  error", the network hadn't  drafted in enough specialist  overhead electricians to do the  work.

Virgin Trains boss Tony  Collins called it a "fiasco" after  his company took the unusual PR  step of advising travellers to  avoid their routes.

Network Rail's chief executive  Iain Coucher admitted they had  "let passengers down" and vowed  to haul senior staff into an  urgent meeting this week.

The Rail Regulator could fine  the network millions after  hauling them over the coals.

It was all eerily reminiscent of  last Christmas when delays due  to faulty signals at Portsmouth  landed Network Rail a £2.4m fine.

It was only in 2002 that  Railtrack, the private company  set up to manage the rail  network, was bought out by  Network Rail. £300m of the £500m  deal was bankrolled with  government cash.

Critics have said that, since  privatisation, safety concerns  have grown. Without an over- arching bureaucracy, they say, it's  unclear where the buck stops.

Now, with an ageing  infrastructure relying on private  maintenance staff, some are  calling for a return to the old  days of British Rail, with its in- house teams and lengthy  apprenticeships.

So today, the Daily Post asks:  Should the rail network be re-nationalised?
 
benschofield@dailypost.co.uk

YES: The Argument For - All should be brought together under one body

by Andy Warnock-Smith,  regional organiser, RMT  North West

BRITAIN'S railways are still suf-  fering massively from the disast-  rous privatisation legislation  imposed by Margaret Thatcher in the '90s; this was  fragmentation on a criminal scale.

Public money goes in one end  and private profit comes out the  other. So far, £10bn has been  leached from the industry, while the plethora of  contractors, sub-contractors,  train-leasing companies and train- operating companies involved in  the current system produce a  chaotic, poorly managed network.

The post-Christmas nightmare  of engineering work overrunning  due to poorly managed contracts  and the justifiable anger over  inflation-busting fare rises serve  only to highlight the need to bring  rail back into public ownership  and this is something my union  passionately believes in and  tirelessly campaigns for.

These private concerns and  franchisees are in business to see  how much they can take out of  the industry, not how much  they can put in. This is all "overseen" by a watchdog with two  heads and it is the Office for Rail  Regulation which is turning the  financial screw on Network Rail.  Even if it wasn't just an exercise  in recycling public money - what  is the point of another head from  the same body levying huge fines  when things go belly-up due to a  lack of resources?

The solution is simple and  effective: rail operations,  infrastructure and rolling stock  should be reunited under a single  publicly-owned body, answerable  directly to the Department for  Transport. Couple this with  adequate investment levels, and  we can have the efficient,  affordable railway the economy  and environment crave.

For proof of whether this would  work, look no farther than across  the Channel, where the French  have a rail network to be proud of,  with high-speed reliable links to  all major centres and a healthy  percentage of freight carried by a  publicly-owned network. We owe  it to future generations to take  this step now.

NO: The Case Against - Entrepreneurial spirit has seen huge investment

by Tony Collins, Virgin Trains'  chief executive

EVERY time the slightest hiccup  occurs on the railways, there is an  immediate cry from certain  quarters for renationalisation of  the industry. While nobody would  argue that the existing structure  should be set in stone for all time,  to revert back to a fully  nationalised organisation would  be nothing short of a disaster for  UK public transport. 

Some have this somewhat  nostalgic and sympathetic view of  the last days of British Rail, but  the reality was the railways were  being set up by the politicians for  privatisation so that financially  their performance was starting to  look quite attractive.   

The issue at the time was that  there was insufficient investment  happening on anything like the  scale needed to prepare the  railways for the 21st century.  Since the abortive experiment with the Advance Passenger Train in the early 1980s the much-needed upgrade for the West Coast Main Line had badly stalled with lots of ideas but no progress.   

It took the vision and commercial risk-taking of Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Group to promote and deliver the fabulously successful Pendolino and Voyager tilting train fleets which of course also kick-started the massive West Coast Main Line upgrade.

We are now seeing the rewards of this vision with faster journey times, more frequent trains and a huge uplift in the overall on-train passenger experience. 

As a result, Virgin Trains is now seeing passenger growth on an unprecedented level. On  our own services, we are now  carrying 21m passengers annually  compared with 14m when the  West Coast Main Line passed to  the private sector in 1997. But, of  course, it's not just on my own  franchise where we have seen  massive growth.

The  entrepreneurial spirit of the  private sector has seen massive  investment across the whole of the  industry with more people using  the UK's railways than at any  time since 1946 when there were  no motorways and private car  ownership was the preserve of the  wealthy. 

In fact, despite people wanting  to compare our railways  unfavourably with those in the rest of  Europe, the fact is that we now  have in this country the fastest  growing railway in the Continent.   In the past decade, passenger kms  have risen by 42.2% compared  with the next highest three  nations: Ireland (40.9%), Belgium  (40.4%) and France (33.9%) and Spain (28.3%).   

It isn't just in the areas of new trains that the privatised industry has made such great strides. 

New ticketing technology, safer stations, environmental initiatives and thousands of amazingly cheap tickets have all been launched by Britain's train operators.   

Of course, challenges remain for the industry as  we seek to prise even more people  away from crowded roads and  environmentally damaging  airports and that is how to put  more capacity into the rail  network. 

It will call for some tough  decisions from government but,  rest assured, success will only  come from a firm and honest  partnership with the private  sector.