Labour and RMT hit out at RDG’s ‘fantasy rail plans’

Both Labour and the Rail Maritime & Transport (RMT) union have repeated their calls for public ownership and control of Britain’s railways, in response to the RDG’s industry plan.

Shadow Secretary of State for Transport Andy McDonald suggested that it was an admission of failure from the RDG that privately-owned train operators had damaged the industry since British Rail was broken up two decades ago.

He added: “The railway needs strategic direction and integration under public control, not more tinkering around the edges of a failed system that is letting passengers down.

“Labour will bring our railways back into public hands, run in the interests of passengers, rather than private profit.”

Meanwhile, RMT General Secretary Mick Cash branded the RDG’s industry proposals as ‘fantasy rail plans’ and ‘bogus propaganda’ that have been put together to: “divert attention from the fact that the RDG’s core business is to prop up the Tory Government and protect the financial interests of overseas private companies that have been granted a license to plunder Britain’s railways for over two decades.”

He described the RDG as being ‘Tory cheerleaders’ and said the only national plan that would properly cater for the UK’s future transport needs was ‘to kick out the private racketeers robbing us blind’.

Cash also accused the RDG of both ‘double accounting on an epic scale’ and ‘fraud’ by including £50 billion of previously-announced rail investment in the industry plan.

He said: “There is not a penny piece of new money in any of this and the cash that is being talked up is British taxpayer and farepayer money that has already been announced and spun on numerous occasions in the past.”