“Julia, was the rest of privatisation successful?"
The head of the RMT, Mick Lynch, has this morning taken apart the arguments of those who advocate for the privatisation of railways, after the Labour Party announced that it would renationalise the railways within five years if it wins the election.
Under Labour’s proposals, in what would amount to the ‘biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation’, train companies would be brought back into public ownership and run by a new body, Great British Railways, as their privatised contracts expire. Crucially, the plan will nationalise the network “without the taxpayer paying a penny in compensation costs”, the party is expected to say.
The RMT has welcomed the move, with Mick Lynch, RMT general secretary saying: “Labour’s commitment to bring the train operating companies into a new unified and publicly owned rail network is in the best interests of railway workers, passengers and the taxpayer.”
Lynch has appeared this morning on the broadcast round, making the case for rail nationalisation.
Appearing on TalkTV, Julia Hartley-Brewer told Lynch: “We’ve never really had proper privatisation, where we could actually have competition, is that feasibly possible on a railway where you’ve only got one track?”
Lynch replied: “Julia, was the rest of privatisation successful? You haven’t got competition in water it’s collapsed, used to be owned by the counties and the towns, you’ve had record price increases in electricity and gas, the private companies will do nothing unless they’re subsidised. They’re not investing in capital, the electricity and water companies have extracted billions in shareholder profit and the systems are collapsing because they haven’t invested.
“The train operating companies haven’t invested a penny in the railway in 30 years, we’ve subsidised them the whole time, while they’ve taken approximately £10bn out of the system in profit, so the whole thing has been a disaster.”
Lynch went on to add: “There’s been no privatisation that’s been successful that I can see in terms of our key infrastructure services, we need a railway that’s coherent, that’s part of an integrated transport policy that includes bus, that includes local services, even our ferry services with the P&O disaster that we’ve had, we’ve got services in the west of Scotland that need restructuring.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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