A Public Future for Scotland’s Railways
28th November 2017 | Evidence
As part of the campaign for the Public Ownership of Scotland’s Railway, this report by our friends at Common Weal & TSSA highlights the failures of ScotRail’s private train operator Abellio and the opportunities for passengers for taking it back into public ownership.
A Better Railway for Britain: A Report by Bring Back British Rail
1st October 2016 | Evidence
Bring Back British Rail’s first report A Better Railway for Britain: Re-unifying our railways under public ownership was launched in the Houses of Parliament in London on 13 October 2016.
Print copies are available to order in advance for just £5 (including free delivery in the UK), with all proceeds supporting campaign materials and activities.
The Four Big Myths of Rail Privatisation
1st June 2015 | Evidence / News
Read this report from our friends at Action for Rail! It’s all the evidence you need that rail privatisation has failed to deliver what they promised it would in the ’90s:
• reduction in government subsidies (we now subsidise rail by nearly three times more than we did as British Rail)
• cheaper tickets (rail fares have risen by 24% in real terms since privatisation)
• innovation and investment (90% of the investment in the railways has come from public money)
Rail Privatisation: A Timeline of Failures
1st April 2015 | Evidence / News
A special edited and updated version of Rail Privatisation: A Timeline of Failures (below) – based on the design of British Rail’s 1979 ‘Go Direct by Inter-City‘ poster – features in A Better Railway for Britain: Bring Back British Rail’s first report, launched in October 2016.
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Today marks 21 years since the enactment of the Railways Act (1993), on 1 April 1994, which unleashed rail privatisation on the poor unfortunate public. Since then, Britain’s privatised railways have been beset by a series of failures, scandals and fatal crashes, each at great expense to taxpayers.
19 September 1997 – A collision between two trains at Southall kills seven people and injures 139. A passenger train running at high speed with defective Automatic Warning System equipment, a fundamentally important safety system, passed a signal at ‘danger’ and collided with a freight train crossing its path. Great Western Trains was fined £1.5 million for violations of health and safety law relating to this accident.
1 December 1998 – A report by the National Audit Office into the flotation of the national railway infrastructure company, Railtrack, found that taxpayers lost £1.5 billion because of the government’s decision to ignore the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation to sell its shares in stages, opting instead to sell them all at once.
5 October 1999 – A near head-on collision between two passenger trains at Ladbroke Grove, outside London Paddington station, kills 31 people and injures more than 52. A signal with a bad safety record was passed at ‘danger’. A poor standard of driver training by Thames Trains was cited as a major contributory factor.
17 October 2000 – A train running at high speed derails at Hatfield when a rail affected by rolling contact fatigue fractures under its wheels. Four passengers were killed and 70 were injured. The crash exposed the major stewardship shortcomings of the privatised Railtrack plc and the failings of the regulatory oversight of the company (principally, failure to ensure that it had a good knowledge of the condition of its assets) which ultimately triggered its partial renationalisation. Following the crash, Railtrack imposed more than 1,200 emergency speed restrictions across its network, since it did not have the knowledge to predict where rolling contact fatigue might hit next.
24 October 2000 – Connex loses its South Central franchise after a decision by the Strategic Rail Authority to re-let the franchise following criticism of Connex’s poor customer service and poor financial management.
7 October 2001 – In the face of severe financial difficulties, Railtrack plc is placed into railway administration by the Labour government’s Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers. This leads to an explosion of costs and a severe drop in performance. Railtrack was subsequently replaced by Network Rail.
10 May 2002 – A train derails at Potters Bar, killing seven people and injuring 76. A poorly maintained set of points was to blame, the maintenance of which was the responsibility of the private sector railway maintenance contractor Jarvis (who had tried to blame the accident on ‘sabotage’). Eight years later, Jarvis and Network Rail (having taken on Railtrack’s liabilities) were both charged under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Network Rail subsequently took track maintenance back in-house.
27 June 2003 – The Connex South Eastern franchise is terminated by the Strategic Rail Authority, citing the company’s poor performance and financial management.
15 December 2006 – GNER is stripped of its East Coast franchise by the Department for Transport, having fallen into financial difficulties and unable to meet the terms of its franchise.
13 November 2009 – National Express gives up the East Coast franchise (which it had taken over from GNER) owing to financial difficulties, having accumulated more than £1 billion of debt. The failure of this franchise deprived the Department for Transport of between £330 million and £380 million of revenue.
15 August 2012 – The Department for Transport announces FirstGroup plc as the winner of the InterCity West Coast franchise, prompting the incumbent franchise holder, Virgin, to seek a judicial review of the franchise decision.
3 October 2012 – The government announces the cancellation of the InterCity West Coast franchise competition after finding significant technical flaws in the bidding process, rescinding its decision to award the franchise to FirstGroup. The Public Accounts Committee found that civil servants had made “fundamental errors” in the way that the risks for each bid had been calculated, leading to the default surety required of bidders being too low. The government reimbursed the four bidders for all costs incurred; this amounted to £39.7 million, with a further £4.9 million paid to FirstGroup as reimbursement of their mobilisation costs. In the ensuing shambles, numerous incumbent franchise holders were directly awarded extensions to their franchises instead of opening them up to tender. So much for competition!
17 December 2014 – A report from the Public Accounts Committee is severely critical of the Department for Transport’s inept handling of the procurement of new trains for the Intercity Express Programme and Thameslink. The DfT had chosen to break away from previous procurement arrangements and carry out the procurement by itself, despite having no previous experience in this area.
3 April 2015 – The private train operator West Coast Railways has its operator’s licence suspended by Network Rail amid concerns over the company’s ability to perform its safety obligations. This action followed an incident on 7 March 2015, when a steam-hauled train operated by West Coast Railways passed a signal at ‘danger’ after the driver had switched off vital train protection systems, narrowly avoiding a collision with a passenger train running at 100 mph.
Is it anyone wonder we’re all shouting Bring Back British Rail?
Spread the word! Link to this post using www.bringbackbritishrail.org/timeline and read more compelling evidence for Public Ownership here: www.bringbackbritishrail.org/evidence
Towards Public Ownership
31st March 2015 | Evidence / News
This TUC Report summarises research by Transport for Quality of Life, to show the high costs of running rail franchise “competitions” – estimated at £45million for every single one!
Given that there are 11 of these unnecessary “competitions” scheduled to take place before the next parliament ends in 2020, the Report shows how much we could save by then if we chose to run these franchises under a single publicly-owned railway company instead. It’s more than £600million!
The Arguments for Public Ownership are Overwhelming
1st January 2015 | Evidence / News
There are so many reasons why privatised rail is failing us and the environment. Check out this brilliant leaflet, supported by Bring Back British Rail, which will be handed out at the nationwide Protests for Public Ownership on Monday 5 January 2015.
All on Board
30th May 2014 | Evidence / News
Our friends at Compass have today launched their All on Board report detailing a vision for a publicly owned railway that is efficient, affordable and good for the planet.
Echoing what Bring Back British Rail has being saying for the last five years, the All on Board report demands a publicly owned railway “that constantly improves, innovates and responds to passenger needs, because it is accountable to all of us.”
The Great Train Robbery
7th June 2013 | Evidence / News
Today sees the launch of The Great Train Robbery – a new report by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) about the failings of rail privatisation in the UK.
It rightly describes the privatised rail system as “a serial shambles creating artificial profits for the franchise holders and hidden costs for the public.”
Together with the 2012 Rebuilding Rail report by Transport for Quality of Life, this provides yet more strong evidence for the Bring Back British Rail campaign that we need a re-unified national rail network run for people not profit.
The New Home Front II
3rd September 2012 | Evidence / News
Bring Back British Rail founder Ellie Harrison was invited to write a text on the public ownership of our railways for the Green Party’s The New Home Front II, which aims to look to the post-war period for lessons on how to tackle climate change now. Read the full text below.
Bring Back British Rail
It is essential to remind ourselves that transportation is not just a question of how an individual gets from A to B. It is a social question; an ethical question. For an outstanding public transport system (based on a fully integrated train, tram and bus network) offers the potential to help solve many of the problems we face – from climate change, to inequality and social unrest. Not only could it prove vital in reducing C02 emissions by supplanting many of the individual journeys made by car and plane, but it could also improve the living environment in our cities, offer us better air quality and assist with social cohesion, as people from all walks of life become accustomed to travelling together.
There is no better place to look for this reminder than post war Britain. It’s no coincidence that British Railways was inaugurated in 1948, the same year as our National Heath Service. Both were part of the Labour government’s revolution inspired and supported by the real sense of community engendered by the war effort, to ensure that government had control over the infrastructure it needed to provide the essential services that we all need to live happily and well (health care, transport, communications and fuel).
These huge initiatives were driven by a desire for moral success and progress, rather than financial. On opening the NHS, Nye Bevan declared that it made us ‘the moral leaders of the world’. Even in this stricken, bankrupt war torn country there was a clear future vision. The founding statement of our new publicly owned rail service proclaiming “Plans for modernisation and improvements are ready and are being carried into effect as materials become available. Difficulties will be overcome; the plan is to make British Railways the best in the world.”
Prior to British Railways, our trains were run by lots of privately owned companies. Although these had been responsible for building the foundations of the system as a means of facilitating the Industrial Revolution, they had left our country with a railway network that suffered from uneven regional investment and lacked an overall cohesive structure or long-term plan for development. This core public service had been left to the whim of private interest. And yet, since the misguided and opportunistic privatisation of our railways in 1993, we have allowed ourselves to retreat on the moral ambition of our ancestors and have been left with an expensive and dysfunctional public transport system as a result.
Think of the frustrations you have experienced buying tickets and travelling on our trains today and dare to imagine a radical policy – the creation of a fully integrated public transport system spanning the nation, run by proud employees as a service for the people. Imagine knowing that you could walk up and buy a ticket to go anywhere in the country at a fair price. Imagine a universal and comprehensive ‘National Rail Service’, providing the basic human need to travel to work and for leisure. How much less stressful would this be? How many more journeys would you choose to make by train?
The two commonly cited hurdles – public support for the idea and cost – are not in fact hurdles at all. The popularity of the Bring Back British Rail campaign (and others like it) shows that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the present system and a massive desire for a radical rethink of the way our railways are run. And there is clear evidence (in the recent Rebuilding Rail report and other influential / critical studies) that renationalising the system – removing the inefficiency and added bureaucracy caused by dividing it up into so many competing ‘franchises’, not to mention the private profits continually being leaked out – would actually save us billions each year. The only real challenge is convincing those in power that there are some things in life – some basic public services – which should remain ring fenced from the profiteers. We need to popularise the notion of nationalisation, so that it no longer a dirty word but rather plain common sense. Because this is the only way we can be sure that we – the people – have the control necessary to build that outstanding public transport system, which will make all our lives better in the future.
Ellie Harrison
Founder, Bring Back British Rail
www.bringbackbritishrail.org
www.facebook.com/bringbackbritishrail
Rebuilding Rail
2nd July 2012 | Evidence / News
Today sees the launch for the Rebuilding Rail report by Transport for Quality of Life.
The report highlights the “fragmentation and leakage of public money that characterise the UK’s privatised railways”, and lays out the all important realistic blueprint of how we could go about bringing them back into public ownership.
This is a brilliant key piece of evidence for the Bring Back British Rail campaign, clearly demonstrating the need for a re-unified national rail network run for people not profit.
Bring Back British Rail shared a post.
6 hours ago
Thanks to Philip Alston for showing how much the privatisation and deregulation of our public transport has contributed to poverty and social isolation across the UK. Time to Bring Back British Rail and re-municipalise our buses now!
His report says: "The Special Rapporteur heard a great many complaints from people in rural areas that the privatisation and deregulation of public transport outside London had made trains unaffordable and led to many bus routes being cut. The resulting isolation and inability to afford basic transport had serious negative consequences in terms of access to jobs, schools, health care and community engagement. Local authorities have often simply abandoned their responsibilities by relegating key services to the private sector and failing to take any regulatory measures to ensure basic service provision. Abandoning people to the private market in relation to services that affect every dimension of their basic well-being, without guaranteeing their access to minimum standards, is incompatible with human rights requirements."NEW TODAY: We've just released our final report on our visit to the UK, which finds that the UK Government is doubling down on anti-poor policies, and that sustained cuts to social support violate the UK’s human rights obligations. Click here to read the report: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 Today at 2pm in the UK, we will be taking questions and discussing the report live on Facebook. RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2473546979343728/ … ...
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BRS we want
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Bring Back British Rail
2 days ago
Dawn Foster writing for Jacobin Magazine on why Britain needs to re-nationalise its railways 🚆 Bring Back British Rail! Join our passenger-led campaign founded in 2009 bringbackbritishrail.org ...
Britain Must Take Back Richard Branson’s Awful Trains
jacobinmag.com
In 2017, pundits were shocked by Jeremy Corbyn's call to renationalize rail — and the broad public support that greeted it. You only need to board one of Richard Branson’s rolling torture chambers to see why.Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google PlusShare on Linked InShare by Email
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I caught a train in China, three weeks ago. I travelled from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance of 819 miles. I sat in the 16th carraige of 16, first class and it took five and three quarter hours. On the ticket it gave the price, 933 Yuan (about £105), the car 16, and my seat. There was nobody standing. Every time we stopped, the very long train fitted perfectly in the station platforms. The speed was shown on the wall, mostly well over 300 kilometres per hour. China Rail IS NOT a privatised railway
Branson and all the other train operators put profit before service , if you look in the rest of the world train travel is the cheapest form of travel we have it so wrong , I love a train journey but just can’t take out a mortgage every time I want to go some where
Unfortunately It's gone to far too ever be possible to recreate the BR of professional Railwaymen and women. Like every industry that's been privitised. Lost the skills and experience of the professional team. And replaced by Anyone who has worked with professional proud BR staff will fully understand. The rest like everything else you haven't a clue. The future of the railway is Not very well. Unfortunately. Driverless train because it is safer I can see.
Nottingham to portsmouth, change at London. What with delays, changing stations, some of them minor stations before London & 1 local rail strike. Took me 18hrs & 5days pay lost for being 2hrs adrift. I was in the royal navy. The year was 1977. British rail no thanks. This wasn,t the 1st time either.
Better tell Branson GET IT SORTED OR LOOSE CONTRACT!
And WHO will be paying for Nationalization of NATIONAL GRID and now RAIL SERVICES and perhaps BRITISH STEEL cause "comrade" Corbyn wants to lend another £100bn if TAX PAYERS WITH VOTES ALLOW IT....we shall see!
I think the writer isn't a train traveller
Whilst I am all for renationalisation, I really cannot fault Virgjn West Coast. I’ve used them quite a bit and mostly been happy with punctuality and friendliness of staff.
How many commenting here actually use trains on a regular basis, I.e. as commuters or regular travellers ? I used Virgin between Birmingham and London as a daily commuter for around five years with little problem and at an average cost of £38.00 return without restriction.
I travel by train 4 or 5 times a week and I think Virgin is the best by far. It's the only service where you can get a breakfast. All train have delays especially around Milton Keynes, so you have to get used to it. One question I want to ask, if the rail network return to public ownership will trainline still get discount tickets?
in general i agree but have to say as a partick thistle season ticket holder living in cumbria i get a great service . from carlisle to glasgow central. cheap trains (£13/14 return clean , punctual and loads of room.
And British Steel !
One fact most people don't know is Branson contracted out the maintenance of his Pendolino trains to a French company called Alstom who are now making hundreds of UK staff redundant.
What's wrong with Virgin Trains? You can get a deal from London Euston to Dublin for £47 using them. An excellent travel day for those who don't want to fly where it costs £25 just for your bag.
I live on west coast main. Use the Virgin service fairly regularly to and from London and it is great. Using Northern Rail or TPE to get to Manchester or Barrow or Leeds is a NIGHTMARE!
Branson got too big for his boots ! The staff at the sharp end are amazing, it's the director level who just ain't got a clue about running a rail company ! Branson has no idea about the railway system and yes Re Nationalise the whole network and companies back into one big business
The trouble with nationalisation is that the tax payer will spend billions bringing the system up to scratch only for the Tories to flog it to their friends for nothing if they get back in power.
It's cheaper to hire a car than buy a ticket for most journeys. That CANNOT be right.
Virgin trains are the only ones id defend.. theyve always been cheaper, faster and more reliable then london midlands for me
You could buy a ticket from any station to any where not just Great Western on one track
Riddled with factual errors... poorly researched and badly written.
Brandon's Virgin is the best of train lines. West coast much improved If you want to knock privatisation of rail look at Northern or Arriva.
Literally no competition so how is it fertile ground for enterprise? Regulation is pointless it's essentially organised racketeering.
GWR trains are bad too. Very uncomfortable seats. The one I went on went from Penzance to Paddington, no buffet service, the toilet wasn't working (new train) and there were no seat reservations. The seat I had reserved was a forward facing seat, but the actual seat was backward facing at a table, so didn't mind that someone was sat there. These are apparently built by Hitachi.
Branson's trains are a joke. They're ludicrously expensive unless you book weeks in advance. He doesn't deserve a railway. He's a complete cut throat.
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3 weeks ago
Great to see our friends at We Own It ripping to shreds the Rail Delivery Group's new proposals on today's news. We need a re-unified railway run for people not profit! Join us at bringbackbritishrail.org
We Own It
The rail industry thinks more competition will solve the crisis in our railways. They're wrong. ...
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Read more about the Rail Delivery Group proposal here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48096549
Surely they should be called the railway dividend grabbers
If I had my zealous views that rail privatisation works, what would the answer be ? It would have been complete figments of my imaginations.
https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2019/05/13-new-gwr-iets-under-fire.html
The biggest problem with British Rail was successive governments weren't interested in it, particularly as a public service.
No public service runs well if it's privatised. Too many chiefs competing with one another and very little in the way of actual service provision. I do remember BR and it was better than this crippled system.
Well said we want it back in Public hands (OURS ) not the French, German or Dutch state
I'm sure there will be free market fanatics and "libertarians" screaming their empty little heads off about how the state should never be allowed to run anything and how incompetent governments are. Well, they have had their chance to "prove" how much better the unfettered free market supposedly is at running our railways. What they have consistently overlooked is the fact that true competition cannot and does not work as advertised on our rail network. Why? Because all privatisation actually did was to split up the network into a bunch of regional monopolies. There are hardly any instances where you can choose between train operators to take you from one station to another, and even when you do find a token example, there is no real difference in pricing anyway. The same is true for the bus network, where for any given area, there is usually only one company operating buses - so you can only choose between operators by moving from one county to another.
What you want is someone like Elon Musk running the railways but not in the private sector.
What she said was precise and accurate. Bring back British Rail, but properly funded (we could just give it the money we’re currently giving the franchises) and let it get on with running the railways.
In this interview they allowed the guy from the franchisees to suggest, unchallenged, that more freedom to them was the answer to our expensive not fit for purpose rail system, sure let's allow an obviously flawed group of operaters to have even greater autonomy, he also quoted how well some foreign railways are run, well once again he was unchallenged by the interviewee who failed to mention that many of our European partners actually do run UK railway franchises at great profit to them from UK taxpayers, I do not profess to know the answers to a modern honest good value railway but it's obvious that a public transport system should not be governed by profits and shareholders, as it is at present where profiteers can bid for franchises as with Virgin, take millions of tax payers money to help run them, then when it becomes less profitable, drop it leaving the UK tax payer once again with the bill, a Tory mantra!
We want proper rail transportation bring back BRS
"I wasn't alive when British Rail was operating". Wow, definitely feel old now!
She nailed it!!
Tired argument from the presenter using anecdote as history rather than knowing the facts and gets shut down by informed young woman.
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4 weeks ago
Want to understand how privatisation has ruined Britain's bus network and how re-regulation can help make things better? Watch this brilliant new documentary from our friends at the Association of British Commuters, and join Better Buses for Greater Manchester and Get Glasgow Moving campaigning in two of our biggest cities. Watch the full film at: abcommuters.com/buses
Association of British Commuters
**EXCLUSIVE** After thirty years of privatisation, is it time to bring our buses under public control? Our new documentary discusses Greater Manchester's bus crisis and suggests that bus regulation could set a precedent for the entire country... Watch now: abcommuters.com/buses ...
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Renationalise all our infrastructure and our NHS! #ToriesOut
This has been Conservative party policy for over five decades. Cheaper fares and better services were never the aim, dividends for shareholders or private owners were.
Privatisation of the buses took them away from the many corporations who ran them successfully and put them all into the hands of Stagecoach and First National How is that leading to more competition?
Nottingham still has Nottingham City Transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_City_Transport
This is why our village now has one bus a week.
Bring back nbc
Stagecoach have ruined every bus service in the UK that they've taken over.
If you want people to use public transport instead of all the cars out there, then make it cheaper. Its obvious its over priced.
i live on the outskirts of tunbridge wells & it is now cheaper for 2 people to get a taxi into town, rather than pay arriva's casual bus fares.
We need a properly funded intergrated public transport system in every town, city and village.
The recent legislation whilst allowing a degree of local regulatory control over bus services, specifically does not allow local authorities to own the operating companies. This is falsely/naively stated in the video. It "generously" allows local authorities to continue funding the same corporate carpetbaggers who've destroyed the public service ethos of the bus industry. Govt rate capping has seen local public transport budgets massively slashed, often to 0%. The Bus Services Act 2017 was never anything other than a paper tiger, intended to deceive.
It makes me so angry that public transport isnt better regulated/renationalised. Its obvious to anyone eho catches trains that all the profits are not going back into maintaining the stations or buying decent train stock. i rarely use trains because they're so expensive but i was shocked today at how shabby the bristol to bath trains and stations are now, despite the rising fares and increases in passengers. Bristol buses are mostly in good condition but seem massively more expensive than other cities. Parking in oxford and use of park n ride buses for family of 4 all day is £6. In Bristol it costs me £8 for me and my 8yrold to get a day rider ticket (inner zone) without parking.
No deregulation in London. I wonder why not ?
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4 weeks ago
Democratic public ownership now! Don't miss the free 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway event, hosted by our friends at NOR4NOR this Saturday 27 April in Norwich 🚆In the week that Virgin trains demands the impossible with absolute deregulation to rail franchising, we say enough is enough. Privatisation has gone too far. Free market capitalism is destroying this planet and we need to look beyond the insane infinate growth business model to deliver the much needed coordination our essential public transport services need to stave off catastrophic climate change. This Saturday join us at our FREE event, the 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway in Norwich. With facilitated workshops and headline speakers from across the progressive political spectrum including Rachael Maskell MP, Shadow Rail Minister and Clive Lewis MP, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics. Our new pamplet with foreword by John McDonnell is available at the event. For more info and to register visit: https://www.nor4nor.org/2019-summit (Registering helps us to gauge numbers and plan catering accordingly) Please share and spread the word! Norwich Labour Party Norwich Green Party RMT Norwich Branch We Own It Bring Back British Rail Co-operative Party Co-operatives UK The Labour Party Green Party of England and Wales Extinction Rebellion Extinction Rebellion Norwich Extinction Rebellion Colchester Extinction Rebellion UEA & NUA Sustainable UEA Railfuture The People's Assembly Against Austerity Transport Futures Action For Rail National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Steve Hedley TSSA - Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association Trades Union Congress (TUC) Norwich and District Trades Council ...
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It's time to bring back British Rail Inter City.
For those going, due to engineering works there is a replacement bus service.
We need BRS
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