Corbyn: We need public ownership of our railways
When the M.E.N’s Charlotte Cox joined Jeremy Corbyn on a rail journey from Manchester Victoria to Leeds, we found ourselves on an old Northern Rail Pacer. The outdated train, which Northern has promised to phase out, was branded by Mr Corbyn ‘a truck which belongs in the Eighties’. But it was the perfect case in point for his campaign against ‘Tory rail mayhem’ – his labelling of the ongoing crisis for commuters around Greater Manchester. It follows months of timetable problems, delays, disruption, overcrowding, Northern strike action and Sunday cancellations. His party has pledged to commit £10bn to Crossrail for the North – routes linking major northern cities. Here’s our Q&A with the Labour leader...
You’re travelling the proposed Crossrail for the North route today. What kinds of stories have you heard from passengers along the way?
Some people get confused on tickets. Different companies have different ticketing arrangements – that leads to confusion.
Also the lack of connectivity and inter-relationship between the companies means if a train is running a bit late, the next company won’t wait for it because there’s no incentive to do so. The incentive is to leave on time, which means the passenger loses out at the expense of the finances of the operating company.
The train we are on is an historic train, it’s really very out of date – it was built as a truck about 30 years ago. It’s ridiculous. The journey today is from Liverpool to Hull via Manchester and Leeds and it’s going to be about three hours.
The train time from Manchester to London is about two hours and it’s much further. That says it all.
On Monday, you released figures on rail disruption and overcrowding - the proportion of passenger trains across the country that were cancelled or significantly late has risen by 50pc since 2010, under the Tories, and overcrowding has increased by over 25pc on the top 10 most overcrowded peak time routes. Where does the answer lie?
The answer lies in timetabling that works, integration that works, but it also relies on having longer and more trains to cope.
There are many cases where there is more than 100 per cent capacity used by passengers. The worst are some of the commuter lines with up to 300 and 400pc capacity which basically means sardines packed on to a train. This has to be better than that.
What we need is proper regional planning of the network so we actually have integration of train, bus and tram. We need investment across the north.
Crossrail for the North investment would mean this line would be electrified.
There would be greater capacity because, partly, we’d have extra trains but also you’d need to build into that some passing loops and better signalling so you could integrate that with more stopping services at more rural places along the route.
Do you think Transport for the North should be given more powers over things like rail franchising and rail routes in the north?
Absolutely. The issue has to be decision-making by people in the north about what they want on trail. Steve Rotheram [Liverpool mayor] and Andy Burnham have made it very clear that they want better connectivity right across the north. It has to happen but it does require national investment to do it. The local authorities don’t have the capacity to make that investment. The disparity of four to one between the north and south-east has to change, hence regional investment alongside national investment is our proposal.
The recent timetabling fiasco has affected TPE and Northern passengers – and there were delays and disruption before that. Chris Grayling has said these train services aren’t his responsibilty. Do you think that’s right for a transport secretary?
Well, he is the transport secretary, rail is within his purview, and in effect they decide on what the regulated fares are – they decide on all levels of investment, they hand out the franchises and in the case of the southern franchise they do that whether they run the trains or not. It’s ludicrous, he cannot evade responsibilty. He is the minister.
Mr Grayling has also said on the subject of returning the railways to public ownership that this would cost more to the public purse because the bills are currently picked up by operators. What would you say to that?
At the moment we heavily subsidise the private running of our railways and there’s about £700m taken out of the railways by rail operating companies in their own profits and many of those companies are actually state railway operators from the Netherlands, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore and so on.
Surely we need public ownership to stop that money flowing out of the railway system and also to ensure we get integrated transport.
Public ownership of the railways means we’d get that integration. We are just spending even more subsidising private companies than British Rail ever received in its subsidies.
Railways need huge investment and that’s what we pledge to do. Privatisation of rail was a huge, huge mistake made by the John Major government.