Britain’s opposition Labour Party said it planned to renationalise the country’s rail network within five years without paying compensation to private operators as it set out its plans to fix the troubled railway system.
Britain’s train services were privatised in the 1990s but several operators have been renationalised in recent years, some of them losing their franchises after underperforming.
Labour wants to set up a publicly owned Great British Railways which will inherit passenger rail contracts currently held by private firms as they expire, a process it expects to be completed within its first term in office. The party leads the governing Conservative Party by around 20 percentage points in opinion polls with a national election expected later this year.
“Labour will deliver the biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation,” Labour transport policy chief Louise Haigh said ahead of a speech yesterday setting out the plans.
Battered by the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently disrupted by industrial unrest, the deteriorating quality of key services has drawn widespread criticism.
Nearly 70 per cent of voters support bringing train operators back into public ownership permanently, a poll conducted this month by polling firm YouGov showed. Fewer than 10pc opposed it.
In the 2010s, Britain had several listed transport groups operating rail contracts, but they have either been taken private, such as Go Ahead Group, or exited the sector, such as National Express now Mobico, leaving FirstGroup the only quoted stock.
The current government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also proposed establishing a new Great British Railways (GBR), company but with a different role. Its proposals would group responsibility for rail infrastructure and services under GBR while maintaining a franchise system, giving it the role of contracting out passenger services to private firms.