TUC backs ASLEF campaign for publicly owned trains to end railway profiteering
Delegates backed a motion calling for a "better system for financing rolling stock which will result in public ownership and control"
Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have voted to back the rail union ASLEF’s campaign to have publicly owned trains on Britain’s railways.
While the government is in the process of taking rail operators into public ownership, the trains themselves remain privately owned and are leased by the operators from Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs).
Delegates backed a motion proposed by ASLEF which endorsed the union’s Own Our Trains campaign. ASLEF argues that the current model of train ownership is costing the railways huge sums of money. The union says that leasing cost £4.1 billion in 2024/5 and that ROSCOs have taken £2.9 billion out of the railway in profits and dividends in the last five years alone.
The motion passed by Congress said that “in 2024–25, 30.6 per cent of train operator expenditure was spent on leasing costs and that the use of private finance is up to 70 per cent more expensive than publicly financed investment”.
It went on to say: “ROSCOs present a barrier to the effective planning of the railway with third party agreement needing to be sought when rolling stock needs to be renewed and upgraded and with contracts needing to be changed to enable rolling stock to be cascaded”, and argued for a “better system for financing rolling stock which will result in public ownership and control”.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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