Rail privatisation in its current form has been a disaster
Ross Clark
HARDENED commuters braving the 18:00 Manchester Victoria to Leeds service may feel just a little less miserable this evening as they react to the news that FirstGroup is to be stripped of its franchise to runTransPennine services. But boy has it taken Transport Secretary Mark Harper an age to get this far.
Travellers have endured months of delays and cancelled trains. In the last three months of 2022, just 46.5 per cent of services ran on time.
TransPennine services will now be run by an “operator of last resort” – ie a governmentowned company. Harper is right that renationalisation of rail services is no “silver bullet”.
I have no illusions about the old British Rail, an organisation for which I briefly worked in the 1980s. But what will it take for the Government to admit that rail privatisation, at least in its current form, has been a disaster? TransPennine isn’t even the worst rail company at the moment. Figures from the Office of Rail and Road show that in the final quarter of 2022, just 43.3 per cent of Cross Country services and a mere 34 per cent of West Coast services ran on time.
Our national rail system has become a disgrace. It is hard to get around, even when the unions are not on strike, and in spite of eye-watering fares.
AND yet still the Government sticks doggedly to the franchise system. Rail passengers caught with the wrong ticket may be shown no mercy – the Government recently upped the penalty fares they are allowed to levy from £20 to £100. Yet when it comes to the rail operators, they are allowed to fail over and over again before ministers take action.
I am all for free markets and private enterprise, but sorry, rail privatisation simply is not working. In the early years it seemed to achieve something: passenger numbers increased sharply as rail companies sought to put on new services and to encourage us to travel – unlike British Rail which famously reacted to overcrowding on one service in Devon by removing the service from the timetable.
In the early days of privatisation we had a bit of competition – if one rail operator messed up, in many cases there was an alternative. But then franchises were amalgamated which eliminated much of the competition.
The Government then failed to regulate standard fares, allowing rail companies ruthlessly to exploit their local monopolies.
Avanti West Coast charges an astonishing £369.40 for a standard return from London to Manchester on one of its laterunning trains. In spite of these fares, the rail industry still manages to gobble up more public subsidy than did British Rail – taxpayers shelled out £13.3billion to prop up the industry in the year to March 2022.
British Rail may have been a plodding state-run behemoth, offering dirty trains and curledup sandwiches, but it was better at dealing with the unions than are the rail companies and Government between them.
It is under privatisation that unions have been able to bid up pay to a point where train drivers are paid an average basic salary of £60,000 a year – nearly twice the average UK salary. At the same time as being awarded fat pay rises, unions have also managed to frustrate efforts by rail companies to update Victorian-era working practices.
British Rail succeeded in introducing driver-only operated trains on some lines in the 1980s, against union wishes. Yet in spite of the practice proving as safe, if not safer, than having a guard on board, rail companies have all but given up extending driver-only operation, which would improve productivity and bring fares down.
Rather than face up to the unions, the rail companies go cap in hand to the Government, bleating for more subsidy, and ministers cravenly give in.
IHAVE come to the conclusion that the best solution for the railways would be for most services to be brought back under a single, stateowned company which could rationalise fares and services.
But we should keep the openaccess arrangements where private companies have the right to instigate services which are not being adequately catered for. This has achieved a limited amount of competition, such as with cut-price Lumo trains from London to Edinburgh and allowing heritage and community-run services on main lines.
The only question is whether the Government is big enough to admit that rail privatisation was a huge error and should be reversed. Given the time it has taken the Transport Secretary to accept that TransPennine services were unacceptable, my hopes are not high.
‘It is hard to get around even when unions are not on strike’