How to Make Great British Rail Great Again

Author: Alicia Hull

Publicly owned British Rail was an integrated national system for freight and passengers. A social and commercial enterprise that benefits society and the environment. It was run on a tight budget, which ensured careful management. All profits were reinvested, and busy lines subsidised those less used. It aimed to balance local and national needs. It provided good training, promotion and design and made intelligent decisions for investment.  

This laudable system has been destroyed by successive governments at a massive cost to taxpayers, users and the environment.

The first blow from the Beeching cuts in the 1960s destroyed the rural network and so its social role and any sense of its being a service. The new aim was to make the railways pay. Political hostility to trade unions and support for road transport probably influenced the decision. The cuts wasted £millions invested in infrastructure, damaged local economies and failed in its objective to make the railways pay. 

Privatisation completed the destruction. It started when Thatcher sold off several related services and national assets to private businesses. Privatisation is always theft. Selling national assets for immediate financial gain, often at knockdown prices. Putting big businesses, often foreign ones, in charge, whose only legal obligation is to make quick profits for their shareholders, undermines the services, the national economy and sovereignty. When services are partly privatised, businesses cherry-pick, leaving the taxpayer to fund loss-making parts. 

The model used for privatisation in 1993 aimed to produce the maximum revenue. The Secretary of State had been given the power to force the sale of assets. This resulted in an extremely complex system of over 100 companies; their interactions controlled by contracts and new regulatory bodies. This included:

The infrastructure, rails and stations went to  RailTrack, which leased out over 2,000 smaller stations to rail operators, and subcontracted maintenance and renewal to 13 different companies.  

The trains went to 3 different companies (ROSCOS). 

Freight services were separated from passenger services and split into 7 different companies. Complex ticketing involved more companies, 

ROSCOs show how the system ensured that money haemorrhaged to the private sector. ROSCOs don’t own or build trains. They lease them to 25 different rail operators (TOCS)  through franchising contracts, taking 25% of the fee. They are not interested in environmental benefits, only immediate profits. Keeping old trains going is more profitable for them, as is destroying new trains to avoid storage costs. This happened to the Heathrow connection. ROSCO’s profits soared between 2022-23 to over £400 million, while our trains were not upgraded. New trains are bought by the government, paid for by the taxpayer through very costly PFI contracts, with yet more money going to the private sector. 

Mersey Rail, which was taken back into public ownership after privatisation failed, shows the many advantages of public ownership. They invested directly in 52 new advanced trains, good for the public and the environment, which support over 1000 local jobs, including a highly skilled workforce.

The next disaster was HS2, a status project. Uninterested in the needs of local services, the government opted to invest taxpayers' money in a high-speed link from London to the north. In our relatively small country, it is debatable whether speed is more important than reliability. However, the government’s wish for a train even faster than those in Europe proved fatal. Such speeds need an extremely straight line, which meant huge destruction of the countryside, farms, towns and villages, and enormous changes to the road network. HS2 is a road scheme with a railway in the middle.

 It failed in every way.  Delivery was hugely delayed. First promised in 2026, then 2033, with informed estimates for the 2040s. The route was downgraded to Birmingham, so the aim of saving time is lost. While the cost has rocketed. 20 years ago, HS1, the link across the channel, cost £51million per mile, twice the cost of comparable French high-speed rail. HS2 is now estimated to cost an unthinkable £1billion per mile. Spending along the project has been erratic, with some very ambitious environmental and pr projects, alongside low prices for compulsory purchase and delayed compensation. The so-called ‘Temporary’ use, for which there is no compensation and which can last for decades, has caused great distress as people are subjected to continuing noise and pollution. Short-term thinking has wasted money. A high-quality road to help with the construction of the railways could have become a cycle path after completion, but it is to be destroyed.

Despite the investment by taxpayers, we have the most expensive rail in Europe, with a complex ticketing system which is hard to negotiate for many people, especially those without computers or smartphones, a dissatisfied workforce, and long waits for passengers.

The call for re-nationalising the railways is widespread, with Labour promising it in their manifesto. As seven failing franchises had already been renationalised, and the remaining ones would be as their leases ran out. But the Railways Bill shows that Labour’s promises were weasel words. They still support privatised lines in competition with GBR. Competition law preventing monopolies will control policy, putting public rail, GBR, at a disadvantage when competing with the private sector. Competition law bans cross-subsidies, a disaster for less popular routes. It also bans the sharing of information, which will make timetabling for a truly national service impossible.

A functioning system of timetabling marries up the times of local and national services with buses to produce reliable, smooth journeys. Competition law will also ensure ticketing remains a nightmare, with many companies making profits instead of allowing people to go to their local station and buy a ticket for use that day at a reasonable price. Competition law and private services have no place in a national railway system. Governments have not learned anything from the disasters of privatisation, while the public have proved to be responsible and realistic. The only way to get a functioning national service is for the public, a union of rail users, to control policy. 

I am indebted to several speakers on the We One It Zoom recording ‘Make British Railways Great’ and to Patrick Barkham’s article in The Guardian on HS2, thank you.

The publisher is Citizen Network. How to Make Great British Rail Great Again © Alicia Hull 2025.