A fully staffed railway

MICK CASH: General Secretary, RMT

If last year has shown us anything, it has starkly demonstrated the importance of a properly staffed railway.

For far too long, staff have been treated as a cost to be cut, rather than an asset to be invested in. The consequence has been years of emptying out stations, closing ticket offices, outsourcing and cutting cleaning jobs, and chatter about driverless trains.

Now, all the research shows that the secret to rebuilding passenger trust in train travel is going to be a fully staffed railway.

That means we need to see more staff in stations, more (not fewer) drivers, and at least one Guard on every train.

It means rebuilding depleted cleaning complements, with cleaners employed directly as an integral part of the railway family - as they should always have been.

It means rebuilding railway catering to make train travel attractive again.

And it means protecting and expanding the valuable engineering jobs that maintain and renew our rails.

This year should also feature the final end of the privatised model of train operation. Everyone knows the game is up - the emperor is not only naked, he’s getting hypothermia.

The public is funding the railways completely, taking pretty much all the so-called private risk that justifies profits.

The Government says it wants more integration and co-operation between all the parts of the railway. There’s a name for that kind of railway, and it’s an integrated publicly owned one.

Instead of reinventing ‘guiding minds’ and building in complex incentives to make profit-seeking companies behave more in the public good, why not go the final mile and rebuild a proper publicly owned railway?

At the very least, the Government needs to make good on the promise of devolution and let devolved bodies run the services they co-manage in the public sector if they want.

Lastly, I want to see joined-up thinking about infrastructure investment, decarbonisation and recovery.

Network Rail has just had a £1 billion cut in its enhancement budget, and the Government’s drip-feed approach to Transport for London has led to the mothballing of Crossrail 2. This is the wrong direction of travel.

Electrification and the opening of new lines could be massive levers of economic recovery that bring thousands of new, skilled engineering jobs just when we need them. They would be major inroads towards meeting our decarbonisation targets and open up new freight paths to encourage mode shift from the roads.

Taking back control of our railways could give us huge power to help rebuild Britain.