Should We Re-Nationalise the Railways?

With the looming general election in December, over the last few weeks the latest manifestos from Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats have been released. So far, there has been a varied amount of coverage from news outlets on all of these manifestos. With some party pledges being praised, or picked apart by the papers and television journalists.

Lots of the campaigns promise a lavish amount of new spending that will be introduced such as 20,000 more police on the street, 20,000 new teachers and almost always asking one question. How on earth can we afford all this?

I’m going to make it clear I’m not here to get heavily involved on a political level. But there is one pledge in the Labour party manifesto that’s got me intrigued;

Labour will deliver improvements for rail passengers by bringing our railways back into public ownership.

Labour Party (2019) The Labour Party Manifesto, p.20

What this means is a pledge to re-nationalise the British railway network. I use the word re-nationalisation because if you were too young to remember (like me), there was a time when the railways in the UK were fully owned by the tax-payer.

The days of British Rail

The introduction of ‘British Rail‘ in the late 1940s was put in place by a Labour government after the previously privatised railway companies were so heavily in debt after two World Wars. None of these companies was able to make a profit.

In the present day, countries such as Germany and Spain have nationalised rail-networks. This shows that such ventures can be possible in the current climate. But is it worth it? What would a nationalised rail industry mean for the British public?

From a UK perspective, it would be useful to look back and see what our history tells us about having our own nationalised railway. Why did it not work out the last time we tried it? Should we re-nationalise the railways?

The debt from these rail companies was taken on by the government, and much more money was spent trying to modernise the railways. All of these plans were to try and rail travel more appealing than the ever-increasing popularity of the car.

In the 1960s, in order to try and make British Rail run more like a business, and register a profit. Dr Beeching was drafted in to try and make the railways pay. His solution was to close two-thirds of the railway network and replace the closed railway lines with new bus routes that were much cheaper and could easily reach all parts of the UK.

I’ve written quite a lot about the Beeching Act, and even some case studies on whether this was a good idea. But the bottom line is that British Rail never registered a profit, so I’ll let you make your own conclusions from that.

The Privatisation era

The end of the nationalised rail industry in the UK ended in the 1990s under a Conservative government.

The network was broken up into sections and sold off to different companies so that there would never be the opportunity for a monopoly within the railway industry.

The British Government at the time wanted to avoid this as it could result in an increase in ticket prices with no competition to drive it down.

Cecil Parkinson, the man who envisaged the privatisation of British Rail was adamant that this was the right way forward for the rail industry, he stated that;

The question now is not about whether we should privatise it, but how and when

Cecil Parkinson, 1990

If it was so clear in the 1990s that the only option was to privatise the rail industry, how come we are facing so many problems with the rail industry at the moment?

This eagerness for a privatised system to keep ticket prices down doesn’t seem to translate into what we have today. Certainly because next year we are due to see a rise in ticket prices by 2.8%.

It also doesn’t seem like the privatisation plan has worked, as the most expensive ticket you can get comes in at just over £1,000? That doesn’t seem like the low-cost travel that was promised by the privatisation of the rail network?

Surely that we should re-nationalise the railways and get our ticket prices back down?

Current Rising Ticket Prices

To put it simply, train ticket prices are regulated on how much they can rise each year based on inflation. This means that on the whole, the ticket prices should not be above what people are able to afford. After all, it is a mode of public transport, that people depend on.

I’m sure we’ve all seen scare-mongering news reports stating that we have the most expensive train travel in Europe. But as an article by the BBC points out, that is only half the story. Most of the time if you book in advance, train travel in the UK is cheaper than other European countries. It’s when we choose to book on the day that we have to pay through the nose for our train travel.

I’m sure there’s been an instance where you’ve had to pay an outrageous sum of money for a train ticket. You might even buy a monthly ticket which averages at around £380 to get into London.

Having to pay such a dizzying amount of money would be made better if we were getting reliable, quality train travel. But are we?

Last year, as many as 7 out of 10 trains were either late or cancelled altogether at Britain’s busiest stations. Much of this unreliability is down to strikes imposed by the Rail workers unions due to unfair working conditions, or proposed structural changes.

Would it make it better if the railways were re-nationalised?

Over the years, there has been growing support for a nationalised railway network. The campaign ‘Bring Back British Rail‘ is one of the most popular groups. They argue that to re-nationalise the railways again would solve the problems of rising fares and unreliable services.

“The main parts of the privatised rail industry include the rolling stock. Which is why there might be a perception that much of our rail network is privatised.”

Interestingly enough, it might surprise you to know that three-quarters of the rail network is actually already under public control. After the privatisations in the 1990s, the company ‘Railtrack’ which took on the railway infrastructure, collapsed in the early 2000s.

What this makes me think is whether this is such a big deal in the first place. Whilst there are numbers of people who believe that bringing back British rail would be the right thing to do. I think it’s important to take a step back and think – what is the core problem here?

Should we Re-Nationalise the Railways?

I’m certainly not saying that pledge isn’t a good one. Surely on a practical level, this kind of integration with the public system would keep things simple. But there is also concern that this would not solve the ‘fundamental issues we face’ in the rail industry.

The ‘fundamental issues’ that are referenced here are the constant strikes by the Transport union workers, unreliable train services, and rising ticket costs. It doesn’t seem clear that the solution of ‘Bringing back British Rail’ solves any of these problems. I think this pledge needs to go deeper into why we should re-nationalise the railways.

Whilst I could go further into detail about what are the pros and cons of both sides to this argument, I think it’s best I leave it there. My thoughts on the UK railways have taken up so many blog posts. I always think people should draw their own conclusions as much as possible. So what do you think, should we re-nationalise the railways?

I’d also like to take this opportunity to tell you to register to vote if you haven’t already. You have less than 24 hours to do so, and every vote counts.