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While I was once convinced that the future of the railway in the UK depended upon renationalisation, I have been persuaded that this is not where the future lies.
To go down that route will have the inevitable outcome of slowly but surely killing the rail industry, through a combination of government ineptitude, shortterm thinking and strangulation by the trade unions.
My reason for favouring renationalisation was primarily based on what I saw as the absolute mess that was made of the initial privatisation process, and the complete debacle that has come from the initial (and subsequent) franchising competitions.
The fact that the East Coast franchise has now failed for a second time, adds to what happened with the tendering of the West Coast franchise, and only serves to reinforce my view that the whole process is flawed.
In this context, the main flaw is that the Government will always seek to obtain the ‘best price’, which in the case of rail franchising is the maximum return to the Treasury.
I suppose it could have been worse - the railways could have been handed over as a monopoly in much the same way as the gas, electricity, telecommunications and water industries.
I have long believed that it is the role of government to ensure that a range of public services are available to provide the public with those things that are seen as essential services, and that these should be provided for the benefit of all, not as a means of making vast profits for the providers. Public transport, including rail, is just such an essential service.
However, while government should be responsible for ensuring that public services are provided, I do not believe that it is the role of government to actually have operational responsibility for the means of delivery. This is better left to people who at least have some idea of what they are doing.
Therefore, the view put forward by Will Hutton in The Guardian and supported by Nigel Harris ( Comment, RAIL 847), regarding the creation of ‘public benefit companies’ (PBCs) to deliver public services is one that has merit and is worthy of consideration.
There is, however, one major obstacle - and that is politics. The problems with politics as I see it are: a) all politics is now based solely on ‘party politics’ and b) party politics is all about being in power, but nothing at all about what you do with that power once you have it.
It would seem that it is now more about the dynamics of the different groups and factions within the parties (specifically the two main parties), and about what is good for the party, rather than what is good for the country.
The article in RAIL 846 regarding the infighting within the Conservative Party in the period leading up to privatisation of the rail network only serves to prove that when it comes to making decisions of national importance, government will consistently make the wrong decisions, for the wrong reasons, and at the wrong time.
As a consequence, I fear that the Secretary of State for Transport will not choose to create a PBC (or anything remotely resembling one) to run East Coast. Instead, he will choose an option that will both sit well with a majority of his party, and keep him in the good books of the Treasury.
Once again, politics will ensure that the wrong decision is made.
G.S. Mumby-Croft, North Hykeham