Why is there now an obsession with re-nationalisation?

[Journeyman]

Doesn't the political culture making closures very difficult to implement date back to the reaction against Beeching ? And wasn't it legislation from 1968 on which made it less bother ib legal terms to keep routes open than close them ?

Some of it was down to a reaction against Beeching, but there were still quite a few closures in the seventies and eighties. Alton to Winchester in 1973 and Tunbridge Wells to Eridge in 1985 spring to mind, along with a flurry of minor station closures right into the nineties. The Railways Act 1993 and subsequent franchise agreements did a lot more to protect services, because privatisation was so controversial. The Major government was clearly scared of public reaction if new operators wanted to slash services, so made a point of making it extremely difficult to do so.

 

[underbank]

That said, some franchises are lumbered with more than their fair share of dead ducks, and I do wonder how wise it was to split TPE from Northern, the former taking busy and profitable routes and leaving the latter with a bunch of Pacers and routes that make enormous losses.

Trouble with the likes of Northern being forced to do the unprofitable routes in Cumbria/North Lancashire is that they have no real interest in improving them as they get the subsidy so little incentive to innovate to improve passenger numbers. Same with the proliferation of Pacers and single coach Sprinters and infrequent services - they've just drive away passengers making numbers even worse. I work all over the North of England, based in Carnforth travelling over as far as York one way and Ravenglass the other, Carlisle the most Northerly point, and could feasibly use the train nearly every day. In reality, I use the car most days due to the painfully slow journey times on stoppers made worse by the timetable. Is there really no demand or is the reality that the train service isn't good enough so people don't use it?

 

[driver_m]

Rather than full nationalisation, maybe we should have a regional controlled version of the big 4. Run them on a co-op model, and keep them arms length from the government so that they're not hampered by the short termism that plagues our governments. I'd like a BR return but I know that the minute a big Tory govt gets in, it would look to hive it off. So keep it away from their clutches, labour included. The key for me is to involve the people who normally never use a train, we've all heard the misleading stats about how only x% use the railway, so give them a stake in it. Either have a free return ticket once a year, or something that gets people thinking it's theirs too, not just those of us who work/take an interest on the railway. Everyone on here, will naturally have an opinion, and no doubt there'll be people who totally disagree with me, but I think I can say that we all want this fantastic industry to prosper .

 

[Moonshot]

Rather than full nationalisation, maybe we should have a regional controlled version of the big 4. Run them on a co-op model, and keep them arms length from the government so that they're not hampered by the short termism that plagues our governments. I'd like a BR return but I know that the minute a big Tory govt gets in, it would look to hive it off. So keep it away from their clutches, labour included. The key for me is to involve the people who normally never use a train, we've all heard the misleading stats about how only x% use the railway, so give them a stake in it. Either have a free return ticket once a year, or something that gets people thinking it's theirs too, not just those of us who work/take an interest on the railway. Everyone on here, will naturally have an opinion, and no doubt there'll be people who totally disagree with me, but I think I can say that we all want this fantastic industry to prosper .

It has prospered....over the last 20 years. In its simplest terms, the railway is a means to an end in getting people from A to B....and its doing that right now with record numbers of passengers using the network.

 

[underbank]

The key for me is to involve the people who normally never use a train, we've all heard the misleading stats about how only x% use the railway, so give them a stake in it. Either have a free return ticket once a year, or something that gets people thinking it's theirs too, not just those of us who work/take an interest on the railway.

I agree fully with that. Just quietly scrapping the Pacers and a slightly better timetable isn't enough to get people flocking onto the Bentham line nor Cumbria Coast. It needs proper marketing which the likes of Northern simply aren't able/wanting to do. Just look at all the publicity around the WCR trains on the Windermere line - the local media is buzzing about it. The S&C action group have made a massive improvement to that line in terms of publicity, better facilities, etc meaning increased passenger numbers. The govt quangos and franchises should be forced to be more proactive and find ways to drive new business, not just sit back and watch the subsidies roll in!

 

[swt_passenger]

I'm not entirely clear, but there will be an executive/director layer above the operational team, where SNC/E&Y people now sit (Robin Gisby etc).
They will replace the VTEC executives who have moved on (except David Horne).

Alternatively, the operating company East Coast Trains 'executives employees' are all staying, including David Horne, and only the parent group executives, ie those directly employed by Virgin and Stagecoach are all out.

Unless an organisation tree ever gets published, I can only surmise what it all means...

 

[driver_m]

It has prospered....over the last 20 years. In its simplest terms, the railway is a means to an end in getting people from A to B....and its doing that right now with record numbers of passengers using the network.

It has prospered if youre a director of a ROSCO, a driver like me, etc, but we now have falling passenger numbers, open revolt at some of the TOCs, freight is all over the place, and the fare paying punter is paying more and more .To not deal with that is to bury your head in the sand. The population has boomed in this country, so you would expect numbers to go up as a consequence anyway.

 

[Moonshot]

It has prospered if youre a director of a ROSCO, a driver like me, etc, but we now have falling passenger numbers, open revolt at some of the TOCs, freight is all over the place, and the fare paying punter is paying more and more .To not deal with that is to bury your head in the sand. The population has boomed in this country, so you would expect numbers to go up as a consequence anyway.

Fares wont be getting cheaper as policy is to put more of the cost directly onto the passenger. Current numbers are a blip in my opinion, the general trend will still be upwards. Open revolt sounds like a euphamism for industrial action...RMT will sooner or later face a revolt from there own members. Nothing wrong with payscales of everyone involved in the rail industry. Shareholders of ROSCOs will include pension funds etc.

 

[yorksrob]

A fully nationalised system would be entirely at the whim of the ruling party.

An undersold benefit of privatisation has been the lumping of unprofitable routes into wider franchises alongside more lucrative lines, keeping them going while they would be lost under a nationalised system review (as has happened en masse in recent decades in many other countries, especially France which has scandalously slashed local and regional services to subsidise loss-making TGV routes).

The likes of Norfolk, Cumbria and Lincolnshire in particular would be under real threat of decimation under a fully nationalised system with the current government in charge, and likewise routes in Wales and Scotland unless their respective regional parliaments were to retain their current say. I would really worry for the peripheries of our national network if it was fully nationalised and a party which didn't have its best interests took charge of the DfT.

Realistically I think if there was a Government which was in charge which wanted to reduce the network, and it thought it could get away with it with the general public, it would do so regardless of the system.

There was a growing consensus towards a stable railway network throughout the 1980's. Had government tried to implement a large closure programme at this time (or since) it would have run up against major public opposition.

 

[underbank]

It has prospered....over the last 20 years. In its simplest terms, the railway is a means to an end in getting people from A to B....and its doing that right now with record numbers of passengers using the network.

With an increasing population, and the war on cars/road traffic, it would be a surprise if passenger numbers weren't increasing. None of that means that numbers couldn't/shouldn't be a lot more. We should be aiming to increase them as high as possible, not just be content that they're higher than they used to be. There should be targets taking into account population growth and a realistically achievable proportion to account for transfer from road to rail, so something like last years numbers, plus % increase in population over the year, plus (say) 1% p.a. for road>rail. Anything less is failure even if it is more than last year!

 

[B&I]

Trouble with the likes of Northern being forced to do the unprofitable routes in Cumbria/North Lancashire is that they have no real interest in improving them as they get the subsidy so little incentive to innovate to improve passenger numbers. Same with the proliferation of Pacers and single coach Sprinters and infrequent services - they've just drive away passengers making numbers even worse. I work all over the North of England, based in Carnforth travelling over as far as York one way and Ravenglass the other, Carlisle the most Northerly point, and could feasibly use the train nearly every day. In reality, I use the car most days due to the painfully slow journey times on stoppers made worse by the timetable. Is there really no demand or is the reality that the train service isn't good enough so people don't use it?

In fairness to Northern, I'm sure they'd be happy to provide better trains, faster and more frequent services etc if DfT funded them. A large part of the problem lies with DfT's limited interest in promoting growth in rail travel

 

[B&I]

Rather than full nationalisation, maybe we should have a regional controlled version of the big 4. Run them on a co-op model, and keep them arms length from the government so that they're not hampered by the short termism that plagues our governments. I'd like a BR return but I know that the minute a big Tory govt gets in, it would look to hive it off. So keep it away from their clutches, labour included. The key for me is to involve the people who normally never use a train, we've all heard the misleading stats about how only x% use the railway, so give them a stake in it. Either have a free return ticket once a year, or something that gets people thinking it's theirs too, not just those of us who work/take an interest on the railway. Everyone on here, will naturally have an opinion, and no doubt there'll be people who totally disagree with me, but I think I can say that we all want this fantastic industry to prosper .

There should be Rail Miles, earneed on a basis which encourages travel at less popular times / onleas popular routes, and perhaps also in a way encouraging electronic ticketing

 

[DanDaDriver]

Freight is all over the place...

That’s a good point, I’ve not seen much on here about what would happen to Freight after renationalisation. I doubt it would solve many Freight issues.

 

[bramling]

Rather than full nationalisation, maybe we should have a regional controlled version of the big 4. Run them on a co-op model, and keep them arms length from the government so that they're not hampered by the short termism that plagues our governments. I'd like a BR return but I know that the minute a big Tory govt gets in, it would look to hive it off. So keep it away from their clutches, labour included. The key for me is to involve the people who normally never use a train, we've all heard the misleading stats about how only x% use the railway, so give them a stake in it. Either have a free return ticket once a year, or something that gets people thinking it's theirs too, not just those of us who work/take an interest on the railway. Everyone on here, will naturally have an opinion, and no doubt there'll be people who totally disagree with me, but I think I can say that we all want this fantastic industry to prosper .

Personally I think the biggest issues privatisation has caused are fragmentation and loss of expertise, and in that sense I'm not sure whether it matters that much whether the system in private or public hands so long as someone can devise a structure which addresses those issues. Unfortunately the loss of expertise is something that may prove virtually impossible to correct, but it something which at least needs to be arrested from slipping further. The other issue is multiple layers all wanting to take their slice of profit, although one could argue that this might be countered by a nationalised system having less efficiency incentive.

London Underground started to go down exactly the same road with the PPP, however thankfully that failed fairly quickly (ironically it being money issues which brought it down), but even so has left a similar legacy which will take many years to address. The legacy of "people management only" and "people managers trying to solve railway problems" is what has brought us messes like the Thameslink shambles, two decades and three contracts to resignal not an inch of the SSR lines, et cetera.

I think on balance I'd prefer to give nationalisation a go, if an affordable way of doing it could be found - and that's a massive if.

 

[coppercapped]

While I was watching Question Time last night the Labour MP John Mann was going on about bringing the railways back into public ownership and last week Alan Johnson on BBC This Week was going on about the same thing which is odd because I don't recall them pushing for it when their party was in power for 13 years.

It made me wonder though why is there an obsession with it at the moment? I know part of it is down to Jeremy Corbyn but even now Labour MPs to the right of the party are calling for the railways to be brought back into public ownership. This is a stark contrast from 10/15 years ago when it was mostly only people like Bob Crowe calling for re-nationalisation.

I think part of it is also down to the fact that many millennials who are calling for re-nationalisation don't remember the days of British Rail and how British Rail wasn't as amazing as they think it was.

The mood music has been set by the perceived complexities of the ticketing system (and therefore of the fares charged); the huge problems with, especially, the TSGN and Northern timetable changes and the difficulties encountered with the introduction of new train fleets.

The 'obsession' also carries more weight with the voters simply because three times as many people are affected now as would have been in the final days of BR. 'Nationalisation' is a nice simple answer to a set of complex issues which most people don't have the time, knowledge or interest to analyse. It is a typical example of H. L. Menken's classic line

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong".

 

[gsnedders]

DfT will have to agree a profit profile that LNER needs to deliver, which will probably be less than VTEC (who funded the gap themselves for 3 years).

EC didn't agree an explicit sum to go to the DfT (unlike NXEC and VTEC), AFAIK, instead paying 97% of their operating surplus (and the remaining 3% retained for future investment).

Trouble with the likes of Northern being forced to do the unprofitable routes in Cumbria/North Lancashire is that they have no real interest in improving them as they get the subsidy so little incentive to innovate to improve passenger numbers.

They have an incentive to improve them *if* it reduces the subsidy needed (which increasing passenger numbers does do, given it increases the farebox revenue), which means they can pay a larger premium and receive a smaller net subsidy.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

That’s a good point, I’ve not seen much on here about what would happen to Freight after renationalisation. I doubt it would solve many Freight issues.

Last I heard from Andy McDonald was that freight and open access (and rolling stock) would stay untouched in the private sector.
Letting passenger franchises expire and not refranchising them is one thing, compulsory purchase by government quite another.
Keeping freight and OA alongside public TOCs means keeping much of the current regulatory structure of the industry.
I think the idea on rolling stock was for new stock to be publicly owned, leaving the ROSCOs with their current portfolios for leasing.
The long-term manufacturer/maintenance deals (eg Hitachi/Agility for IEPs, or Siemens for 700s) will run for up to 27 years in the private sector.
HS1/2 don't fit the public model either as they are not NR assets and are funded differently.
For instance, the new Wales & Borders franchise (Keolis Amey) is contracted to run in the private sector until 2033.

Not that any of this is going to happen before Labour has won an election and found the cash to fund their rail plans.​

 

[gsnedders]

Not that any of this is going to happen before Labour has won an election and found the cash to fund their rail plans.

And it cannot happen until we're out of the EU (given open access freight is mandated by law, and open access or tendering of domestic passenger services is required from 2019).

 

[B&I]

Still waiting for someone on this thread to make a positive case for privatisation, rather than aniping at nationalisation as a concept, usually on the grounds that the incredibly expensuve way the railways have been operated since privatisation would make re-nationalisation really expensive

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

I've noticed a recurring theme... nationalisation won't solve anything cos the passengers are expected to bear the burden of cost... it's government policy...

here's a thought... who's to say any future government can't/ won't change that policy?

 

[underbank]

Still waiting for someone on this thread to make a positive case for privatisation, rather than aniping at nationalisation as a concept, usually on the grounds that the incredibly expensuve way the railways have been operated since privatisation would make re-nationalisation really expensive

If it were nationalised, the debt on the borrowings etc would be added to the national debt, deficit, etc., worsening the UK's financial position. As it is, like PFI, by using the private sector, the debt is moved "off balance sheet" so doesn't hit government credit ratings etc. There is no way the government would have been able to borrow the billions spent on new rolling stock etc over the past 20 years.

 

[158756]

I've noticed a recurring theme... nationalisation won't solve anything cos the passengers are expected to bear the burden of cost... it's government policy...

here's a thought... who's to say any future government can't/ won't change that policy?

They could now if they wanted to. They'd have to arrange to pay out more subsidies to everyone, but then they would in a nationalised system as well.

If fares were substantially reduced everyone would just complain that overcrowding was worse than ever anyway.

 

[yorksrob]

If it were nationalised, the debt on the borrowings etc would be added to the national debt, deficit, etc., worsening the UK's financial position. As it is, like PFI, by using the private sector, the debt is moved "off balance sheet" so doesn't hit government credit ratings etc. There is no way the government would have been able to borrow the billions spent on new rolling stock etc over the past 20 years.

When the nationalised railway managed the rolling stock manufacturing process, BR would replace rolling stock approximately every thirty - forty years. Could it be that the privatised rolling stock market has pushed the cost of trains up to the extent that they can only be afforded on credit !

 

[ChiefPlanner]

It has prospered....over the last 20 years. In its simplest terms, the railway is a means to an end in getting people from A to B....and its doing that right now with record numbers of passengers using the network.

Just a shame it costs about 3 times as much for the Network costs , and every single transaction is driven by a contract - or 6.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I've noticed a recurring theme... nationalisation won't solve anything cos the passengers are expected to bear the burden of cost... it's government policy...
here's a thought... who's to say any future government can't/ won't change that policy?

Well Labour invented the "RPI+x%" formula which is still being applied to annual fare increases by DfT.
x has generally been held at zero recently in the budget statements (was typically 1-3% previously depending on region/route).
There are two statements I've seen from Corbyn's Labour:
- we will make a good offer on fares (I think that was in the last manifesto)
- fares will go up by CPI rather than RPI (statement by Andy McDonald, shadow SoS)

 

[Krisj159]

The Labour government under Tony Bliar twice reneged on renationalisation of the railways. John (I would never take a peerage), Lord Prescott said he would, then didn't. The Labour misgovernment also turned down Stagecoach's offer to redouble the line to Exeter, up the line speed to mostly 100mph and introduce Meridian type trains. We would now have a fantastic service. Allegedly the SWT offer for the franchise last year included replacing the 159s with bi-mode units. Not being privvy to the details though I can't confirm this. I'm happy that we still have 159s though rather than Disastro style units with their claustrophobic cabs.

 

[The Ham]

I've noticed a recurring theme... nationalisation won't solve anything cos the passengers are expected to bear the burden of cost... it's government policy...

here's a thought... who's to say any future government can't/ won't change that policy?

In which case, how would it be different ether way around.

Basically whatever is good for one method works well for the other (with some exceptions, such as where the debt is, who receives the profit and efficiency savings. Although that last one the to fall in different ways depending on the method of ownership).

People tend to like one ownership model and argue that their's is best using the arguments that support their view, the problem is that neither side can give a clear argument which will work in the light of day.

Anyone got a bus we can write 10% off all train tickets on the side of?

 

[Krisj159]

While I was watching Question Time last night the Labour MP John Mann was going on about bringing the railways back into public ownership and last week Alan Johnson on BBC This Week was going on about the same thing which is odd because I don't recall them pushing for it when their party was in power for 13 years.

It made me wonder though why is there an obsession with it at the moment? I know part of it is down to Jeremy Corbyn but even now Labour MPs to the right of the party are calling for the railways to be brought back into public ownership. This is a stark contrast from 10/15 years ago when it was mostly only people like Bob Crowe calling for re-nationalisation.

I think part of it is also down to the fact that many millennials who are calling for re-nationalisation don't remember the days of British Rail and how British Rail wasn't as amazing as they think it was.

I worked for BR before we were transferred to SWT. (British Rail were always going on strike!); not true. I can only remember one minor strike when I was with them in about 1988. We always had spare staff and spare rolling stock, we ran relief trains when others were full, we held trains for connections and we had enough staff to help people. The pay was poor but we loved the job. On the upside - the railway is a lot safer now and probably the safest in the world.

 

[Krisj159]

It's been mentioned before, but if successive governments had pumped the same amount into BR as they have into privatisation and subsequent subsidies - we would have a fantastic railway with British built trains.

 

[nr758123]

Not an obsession with re-nationalisation.

Merely an opinion, based on the passenger experience, that privatisation hasn't delivered and isn't delivering.

Northern and TPEs timetable debacle merely reinforced this. If you had travelled on the same trains as me for the past 27 years (and they are the same trains, just 27 years older and more decrepit than when I first started), then you too might wonder if a different way of operating the railways might work better than today's mess. You might also question what privatisation has actually delivered other than an expensive way of getting a worse service.

I suppose my Pennine backwater might be an exception, the only part of the network not to have benefitted from privatisation, but somehow I doubt it.