Thanks everyone, some excellent contributions. Look forward to talking again next week.
We’ve only got five minutes left now, so if all those involved could leave any final comments that would be excellent.
It’s been a really strong debate today, some great stuff below the line.
Thanks everyone!
'With transport the customer cannot choose their destination'
I can see a problem with this suggestion, given questions this idea raises in terms of track capacity, rolling stock, and timetabling. But Tom, an engineer in London, thinks the only way for the franchise system to work is to have genuine competition on every route.
We need to ensure there is a choice of operators on every route. Market forces will only work if there is a choice of which operator to travel with.
With transport the customer cannot choose their destination, so has to buy a ticket from just one company. The current franchise system just creates insta-monopolies as far as the customer is concerned. Customers should be able to choose which company to travel with.
It should be the government’s job to run what cannot be a competitive service (Network Rail), and the Franchise’s job to compete to provide the best service on that service.
For example, Deutsche Bahn should compete with Virgin for customers on the West Coast Mainline. Or, if Southern decides to cancel 300 trains, then Virgin should be free to pick up the slack.
Mark Wilson, who lives in Streatham in south London, and thus within Southern’s area, makes a similar point about competition.
Privatisation works when there is competition. Energy suppliers, TV broadcasters, airlines, banks, etc, may not be perfect but when customers are able to switch providers, there is at least a disincentive to improve or provide a satisfactory service.
With passenger rail, there is no competition; if I want to travel from Streatham Common to Clapham Junction there is one rail line. My alternatives are other modes of transport (bus, bike, taxi) - that means there is no competition and no option for passengers to choose another provider if they are dissatisfied. It would be impossible to add multiple millions of miles of extra track to create this necessary competition.
Therefore, any service where there is a monopoly not by design but by physical limitations should be run by the Government or a publicly-owned body to protect the consumers’ rights. Whether this is renationalisation or mutualisation is by-the-by; we just want to get the service we are paying for.
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And here’s an interesting comment on the byzantine foreign ownership behind many of Britain’s train operating companies.
How does the UK’s rail system compare to transport systems in other countries? Commenters have been comparing and contrasting.
When I lived in Paris I was very curious to see why it was that the Parisan transport system was so much better than I had been used to back in the UK. Even during strikes it was better than the UK service.
It's subsidised, my UK friends said, so I looked into it. Yes it was, but if the subsidy was removed ticket prices would still be half those of the UK. I looked some more.
1. It's publicly owned. More than that it is a proud public service trying to improve How it serves the public every day.
2. It's integrated. Timetables, buses, trams, metros and trains all work together to ensure fast connections and smooth journeys.
3. It improves constantly. Every year in Paris, bus routes were tweaked, say to go to a new hospital, and new lines/stations/escalators were added.
4. There is a plan. In fact for the Paris region there is a 20+ year improvement plan that keeps being updated. It's public so you can comment and ask for tweaks.
5. But most importantly, in France, doing things for the public is understood to be a good thing, to be done as efficiently as possible, for the lowest possible price, with all government skills to be brought to bear on it. No, it's not always perfect, but they are at least trying.
In the UK, it feels as though this "public' service has been sold to the rentier classes to extract as much money as possible from the travelling public for the absolute minimum effort. There is no shame when things go wrong, with everyone else being blamed but the company operating it.
I am left wondering what the British government thinks it is there for, if not to ensure that the country's infrastructure actually works and British citizens have a decent standard of living?
To speak in a language that the "captains of industry" on here will understand. When deciding on how to run an operation you must look to best practice. And for the railways, this means best practice globally. It is quite clear that in Europe alone, it is France, Germany, Spain (for example) that run nationalised railways, and have excellent, fast, clean, modern trains that are also good value for money. We should look to emulate these countries when it comes to our national rail infrastructure. And not continue, what must be considered, one of the most absurd systems currently in use today.
'Only the profits are privatised'
We’ve heard from readers, politicians, rail experts, and passengers aplenty.
And now we’ve got a train driver. Here’s Bryan, from Wales:
The railway industry is already mainly nationalised. In effect, only the profits are privatised. I have worked in the industry under both a nationalised system under BR, a privatised passenger company and presently a freight company. A centralised national system operates far more effectively for obvious reasons. Train Operating Companies are given huge taxpayer subsidies and run trains on the nationalised Network Rail which provide infrastructure improvements and maintenance paid for by the taxpayer.
Any profit is then creamed off by the franchise holder which is often a foreign multinational company. This money does not circulate within the British economy but probably helps to fund employment or investments outside the UK or even worse make the wealthy wealthier. In my personal experience the number one motive for profit often conflicts with the costs of operational safety systems. The entire UK railway industry should be nationalised as a good deal for the taxpayer and above all to end the conflict between public safety and profit.
We’ve had a response to an earlier reader contribution from Ross Easton at Network Rail. He writes:
Bridgitte Lin suggests “delays are nearly always down to the infrastructure”.
However, this is not the case. One third of delays can be attributed to the infrastructure and we are investing more money today than we ever have done in upgrading the 20,000 miles of railway in Britain, much of which was built in the Victoria era.
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I’ve consistently called for rail to be brought back into public ownership
After two decades, the private sector has not delivered innovation and investment as promised and remains dependent on public subsidies, despite turning over up to an estimated 90% of operating profits to shareholders.
The Rebuilding Rail report estimated that about £1.2bn is lost each year from fragmentation and privatisation. Some of the biggest profits go to European state-owned rail companies: money that should be reinvested to improve our own services and reduce fares.
I’ve consistently called for rail to be brought back into public ownership, with passengers having a greater say in the development of the system. This is no throwback to a 1970s British Rail. For example, in the five years that the East Coast Mainline was run by the public sector it returned almost £1bn to the taxpayer, as well as increasing passenger numbers and improving punctuality. No wonder a government ideologically obsessed with privatisation was so embarrassed by this success that it bundled it back into the private sector as soon as it could.
My private member’s bill to bring rail back into public ownership will be introduced again in the next session of parliament, with a second reading due on 20 January. I hope my fellow MPs will support an integrated rail service run for passengers, not for private gain.
Nick Tudor, 28, from Manchester, has a third way: mutualisation.
Private ownership doesn’t work well because rail franchises provide monopolies and don’t incentivise investment.
Public ownership has difficulties around efficiency and providing good quality services.
I think a better solution would be to hand ownership over to mutual trusts - owned by workers and passengers of the area but also government and private individuals / companies with an interest in the service can have a stake, provided that the overall majority isn’t owned by private investment.I think this would harmonise the service and focus the organisation on delivering value for money to the customers whilst also taking the views of those that work for the company more into account - an issue that has clearly affected Southern.
The context in which companies operate must be laid down by the state
The privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s was both a triumph and a disaster. There is no doubt the freeing of railway marketing, pricing and investment turned a slow decline in passenger business into steady growth. That has continued ever since. The rise in demand resulting from mobility and road congestion made this probable. There is no doubt privatisation helped.
What was disastrous was the ineptitude of government regulation, and a consequent rise in subsidy. The division of the railway between infrastructure and train operation was a mistake. It increased legal and bureaucratic costs, wiping out supposed gains in efficiency. Investment was centralised until Whitehall oversight was more extensive and centralised than under nationalisation. Ministers today intervene more than ever before, in everything from ticketing to investment and even industrial relations, as now in Southern.
What is needed is not renationalisation but a ruthless review of the rail regulatory framework. Network Rail should be broken up and allocated to regional companies. Those companies should know exactly what is expected of them, and their revenues and profits regulated. There is no reason why private enterprise should not provide a dynamic service, but this is a naturally monopolistic service. The context in which companies operate must be laid down by the state.
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Michael Sanders is also a Southern commuter, a public sector worker who lives in Brighton. He worries that renationalisation is an easy answer that could easily go awry if implemented hastily.
We know what chaos top-down reforms have caused in the NHS and education. Now it is happening to Southern/GTR: the ticket office closures and conductor reforms were imposed by the DfT when the franchise was renewed in summer 2015; and as Peter Wilkinson of DfT put it, anyone who disagreed with those reforms could “get the hell out of his industry”.
The irony is that if Southern was truly privatised, it would have the flexibility to meaningfully negotiate with the unions and make concessions - as it is, because the reforms are contractual obligations, they can offer nothing significant without the government agreeing to modify the contract. Nationalisation, under a Conservative administration, would result in these ‘reforms’ being inflicted across the British rail network. That isn’t to dismiss the concept of nationalisation - in the long-term, I believe nationalisation of the rail industry is potentially beneficial. But simplistic advocacy of the concept as a panacaea for our current ills, without really understanding the background to the current situation, or considering the potential pitfalls, does nothing to advance the idea as a viable possibility.
Do we need controls over prices?
An interesting comment from one person below the line:
Another long suffering Southern commuter here. The main issue is the model of Southerns franchise - a listed company (with the associated responsibilities to provide a return to shareholders) having no control over ticket prices, so it's only method of providing increased returns is by slashing costs. This has been done by methods such as removing trolley services (almost overnight, last year) and not employing enough drivers (and relying on overtime to fill their rosters). They are an awful company who hold their passengers in contempt.
On the other hand there is the inevitable march of progress. Thameslink run DOO trains on the same line without any negative implications. Ultimately, the next generation of trains after this may well be driverless. The RMT is anti-progress, and their action is only about protecting jobs or roles that will become obsolete. It happens in every industry. For them to dress this dispute up as being safety focused is utter crap - their short notice sickness driving short notice cancellations has made the trains/platforms/concourses incredibly dangerous through overcrowding - some of the scenes inside carriages with broken down air conditioning and packed to the rafters give lie to the RMT's claimed motivations. They are an awful union that hold Southerns passengers in contempt.
Therefore neither protagonist has the solution here - and as other readers have mentioned the nationalised Network Rail is another basket case. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done...I assume along the lines of other rail franchises where they have control over pricing etc rather than just running a service for a fee.
Privatisation was a terrible idea, but renationalisation is not a panacea
Rail privatisation was a terrible idea. It caused a series of accidents in the short-term, which fortunately have now been dealt with by added safety measures. Additionally, in the long-term it resulted in hugely increased costs and profits for a private sector that took no risk and made little investment. However, renationalisation is not a panacea that will bring about massively reduced fares and more punctual trains. Network Rail is already in the state sector in any case and bringing the rest under government ownership will take time. No government would attempt to buy back the rolling stock which is leased out to the train operators. That is simply uneconomic. Overtime, more trains could be ordered direct by the government or its agencies but as carriages last 30 years or so it will be a long time before these can be all in the public sector.
In terms of train operations, the issue is more complex. It was a mistake to separate operations and infrastructure as, traditionally, the two are so interconnected. Bringing back franchises in-house and gradually recreating an integrated railway would be a good idea. However, as these franchises are likely to have many years to run when a new government takes over, renationalisation will remain an aspiration rather than a reality. There will be benefits in terms of efficiency by bringing together operations and infrastructure, and no longer having to pay profits to the private sector, but these will be fairly marginal. There are many other transport policies which a Labour government should focus on.
'Renationalising the operating companies is a red herring'
A counterpoint view from Bridgitte Lin, a passenger - or customer, if you prefer - from Retford.
The railways are already nationalised and have been since 2003. Yes, there are private companies running train services on them, and private companies own the trains, but cars are privately owned and haulage and coach companies are private. Does that mean are roads are privatised? Of course not.
Season ticket prices are set by the government. The operating companies press ‘go’ when nationalised Network Rail tell them to, and ‘press’ stop when they tell them to. Delays are nearly always down to the infrastructure.
The overall subsidy to the industry has gone up, but the subsidy per passenger journey or per passenger mile is roughly the same, and anyway the vast majority of it goes to Network Rail.
Discussion of renationalising the operating companies is a red herring - what we need are new lines like HS2.
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'The frustration is the one-size fits all model'
Here’s a view from Dan in London, via our online form, which is still open for contributions.
Dan works within the rail industry. He thinks renationalisation should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The frustration is the one-size fits all model. Some operators such as Chiltern and the open access operators have done good work renewing poorly served parts of Britain and being innovative. TFL have shown that improving services and capacity through its improved Overground services can unlock huge amounts of potential, which if tax and impact on the economy of east are taken into consideration have surely paid for themselves.
For inter city services with strong competition and *good* regulation there is no need for the private sector not to be able to run a good, innovative and successful railway. Where trapped commuters are stuck with no alternative on a poor service with low levels of customer service and no real scope/incentive to make key investments a TFL style operation allows difficult decisions regarding investment and service patterns to be made for the benefit of all.
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Renationalisation is not the answer, just look at the southern mess
If you want an idea of what the railway could look like after being renationalised then you need only look at the Southern mess. GTR, Southern’s contractors, are in most ways agents of Whitehall. They have to give all the ticket money direct to the government and are just paid a fee. Even the delay payments to passengers are paid by the department for transport. This may not be nationalisation but it certainly isn’t privatisation either. Every detail of the service has to be agreed with officials. It was Whitehall’s terror of the rail unions that led to the bone-headed inflexible response to the April strike (causing the current mess).
The problem with either nationalisation or this kind of privatisation is that they both lead to centralised inflexibility and disdain for passengers.
It leads to poor labour relations and neither seems to lead to any kind of responsiveness. Or imagination come to that.
Is there another way? My own preference would be for a wider group of potential franchisees, which were transparent enough for users to influence, and for everyone to see clearly where resources are going. Some of those bidders ought to be mutually owned, preferably by their staff (in a similar way to Waitrose or Welsh Water). They could hardly do a worse job than now. Staff have proved themselves in the recent crisis dealing with furious passengers, unsafe platforms and no information with courage and imagination. It’s time we harnessed that for the wider railway.
David Boyle is the author of Cancelled, a book about the Southern crisis.
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Welcome to our debate
It’s been a week when the state of Britain’s fragmented rail network has again been on the agenda, with strikes on Southern and a planned one on Virgin East Coast services. What’s more Eurostar workers are expected to walk out on Friday over work-life balance. Even before this passengers on southern trains have complained of weeks of delays, cancellations and a reduced timetable amid staff shortages. So, what’s going on with our rail services and how can it be improved?
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has a solution: renationalisation. Corbyn said the “misery” that those travelling to London on southern rail have faced makes a “very good case” for a change of ownership.
“I want to see Southern back in public ownership. I don’t believe it’s fulfilling its obligations under the franchise it was given, “ Corbyn said.
He has also argued that rail renationalisation would bring to an end “rip-off” fares, arguing that with regional transport authorities would focus on the interests of travellers over profits.
However, others claim that private expertise allows for our rail services to be run more effectively, with improvements in customer service and ease of booking.
Some argue that the answer is longer franchises. South West Trains, operating out of Waterloo and owned by Stagecoach, has arguably benefited from being the longest-running franchise.
But with fares rising above the rate of inflation because of the cost of massive upgrades in track and stations which for years were starved of investment, there remains public appetite for major change. Still: if fares were to fall, money would have to come from somewhere, and Theresa May’s government seems unlikely to instigate such radical changes to the network.
What do you think? Join us to debate from 12pm-2pm today.
Itching to share your views already? You can contribute via the form below.
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The railways are nationalised, in a way. It's just that it's not the UK government that owns them.
76% of MTR (Crossrail and half of London Overground) is owned by the Hong Kong government.
Arriva UK Trains (the other half of the Overground as well as Alliance Rail Holdings, Arriva TrainCare, Arriva Trains Wales, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, Grand Central, Tyne & Wear Metro) is owned by Deutsche Bahn AG, which is owned by the German government.
Keolis (owns 45% of First TransPennine Express and 35% of Govia, which runs Thameslink and Great Northern, London Midland, Southeastern, and Southern and Gatwick Express) is owned by French National Railways Corporation (70%) and the Quebec Deposit & Investment Fund (30%).
Abellio (owns 50% of Serco-Abellio, which runs Merseyrail and Northern Rail, and runs Abellio Greater Anglia and Abellio ScotRail) is owned by the Dutch national rail operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
Heathrow Airport Holdings (Heathrow Express, Heathrow Connect) is owned by, amongst others, three sovereign wealth funds - Qatar Holding (20%), Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (11.20%) and China Investment Corporation (10%) - and Quebec Deposit & Investment Fund (12.62%).
Hong Kong, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Qatar, Singapore, China and parts of Canada clearly think that state-owned railways are a good idea. Especially if they run the UK's railways, and the profits then subsidise their domestic services...