The gap: between government promises and the real world… Photo Vladislav Gajic/shutterstock.com.
The Labour government proposes to return most of Britain’s passenger rail services to public ownership. This will not of itself bring about changes and improvement to those services. New transport secretary Heidi Alexander said that existing private operators will now be transferred to the government-owned passenger train company at an average of one every three months.
On 25 May 2025, South West Railways will join existing operators LNER, Northern, TransPennine and Southeastern in public hands when the contract held by First Group and Hong Kong based MTR expires.
Alexander told parliament, “I will be monitoring very closely the performance of all existing train operators who run services under contract…” But the Labour government has an inconsistent approach to returning passenger rail services to public ownership and control. And its plans are silent on some key services.
The Govia Thameslink Railway contract, which covers Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern trains across a huge swathe of south east England, expires on 1 April 2025. The Chiltern contract for services from London Marylebone expires on the same day. Neither has yet been slated for renationalisation.
Renationalisation will in any case do nothing in itself to significantly improve services for the passenger. Trade union Unite, for example, has continually warned about the risk to jobs and the wider rail industry with stop-go order books and private companies in control of investment decisions.
• A longer version of this article is on the web at www.cpbml.org.uk