Grayling blames the unions for fare rises

RAIL unions are to blame for fare rises of as much as £200 on some of Britain’s busiest services, the Transport Secretary has suggested.

Season tickets are currently set using the RPI measure of inflation, which is today expected to be confirmed at 3.5 per cent.

The rise will add £200 to season tickets to London from Southampton from January, £189 from Canterbury, £182 from Milton Keynes and £178 from Oxford.

Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, wants to pin fare rises to the lower rate of CPI, which currently stands at 2.3 per cent.

However, the rail unions are refusing to use the lower level of inflation to set pay rises for staff.

In a letter to union leaders, Mr Grayling warned that the approach is “difficult to justify”, adding that industry costs must not rise faster than ticket prices.

He said: “I support paying rail staff decent wages for the hard work they do, but I also now believe it is important that pay agreements also use CPI and not RPI in future when it comes to basing pay deals on inflation. It is difficult to justify using a different measure of inflation in the rail industry to the one that is widely used across services like the NHS. I think it is time to move the industry onto the same basis as elsewhere.”

Mick Cash, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said: “If Chris Grayling seriously thinks that front-line rail workers are going to pay the price for his gross incompetence and the greed of the private train companies, he’s got another thing coming.”

The price rises for season ticket holders come despite months of chaos following the botched introduction of new rail timetables earlier this year.