East Coast train services renationalised after failures
TRAIN SERVICES on the railway which connects Yorkshire with London and Edinburgh will be renationalised within weeks following the termination of the Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC) franchise, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling announced yesterday.
From June 24, trains on the East Coast Main Line will be run by the Department for Transport (DfT) under an Operator of Last Resort provided by a group of private companies under the historic London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) banner.
Mr Grayling stressed passengers would see few changes apart from the livery on the trains.
The dramatic move was seized on by Labour as evidence that its policy of nationalising Britain’s railways had been vindicated, with several MPs in the Commons chiding Mr Grayling to say he had “renationalised a railway”.
But Mr Grayling stressed that he would stick to a commitment to turn the railway into a publicprivate partnership in 2020.
Critics claim the decision to end the £3.3bn contract early is a “bailout”, but Mr Grayling insisted that “taxpayers have not lost out” and only the firms have “made losses at this time”.
The Transport Secretary said Virgin and Stagecoach had “got their bid wrong” in 2014 and were now “paying the price”, losing nearly £200m in meeting their contracted commitments.
But he sparked anger among Yorkshire MPs after allowing Virgin and Stagecoach, which jointly ran the line, to continue bidding for future rail franchises, leaving open the possibility that they could return to the line.
Former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said the new public operator should be allowed to bid for future contracts so the railway could potentially stay nationalised beyond 2020.
He told The Yorkshire Post: “I’m glad that it’s been nationalised because it would have been completely wrong to reward a failing private company.
“The East Coast state company was a huge success until it was abolished by the Government and this gives us a chance to resurrect it and get a better deal for the travelling public and staff.”
Lord Adonis said Mr Grayling was right not to strip Virgin and Stagecoach of their passport to bid for franchises and said they would find it hard to win contracts in the future anyway due to the “severe damage” done by this collapse.
“The fact of the matter is they haven’t got this contract so clearly they’re not in a great position to get future contracts either having walked away from £2bn-worth of commitments to the taxpayer,” the Labour peer said.
“And the Government wouldn’t have had a legal position to take away their existing franchises, I know that because I have been there myself.”
Several Yorkshire MPs spoke in during Mr Grayling’s statement on a line which is vital for transport in the region. Labour MP for Leeds Central Hilary Benn poked fun at Mr Grayling, an opponent of public ownership, saying he “could have made a considerably shorter statement if he’d just got up and said ‘for the time being I am re-nationalising the East Coast Main Line’”.
Labour former Minister and Don Valley MP Caroline Flint called on the Government to block future bids for rail franchises from Virgin and Stagecoach – a suggestion which was rebuffed by Mr Grayling. Ms Flint said: “Shouldn’t there be a consequence from this and Virgin and Stagecoach should be denied bidding for other franchises?”
Labour MP for Bradford South Judith Cummins said the whole saga “smacks of a pattern of failure and incompetence” and Mr Grayling as Transport Secretary “should take responsibility”.
VTEC is the third private operator to fail to complete the full length of a contract to run services on the East Coast route.
Service were run publicly for six years between 2009 and VTEC’s takeover in 2015.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham asked Transport for the North to investigate Northern Rail after being bombarded with passenger complaints about its service.