I think that public services should be run in the interests of the public and not shareholders. The railway system is too complex, especially the fares, and too fragmented. We need a publicly owned joined up system.

Conservative doctrine tells us that privatisation leads to 'healthy' competition between service providers resulting in lower fares and better services. I'd really like to know how this applies to the privatised railways.

Private companies' priorities are profits and shareholders, not customers and passengers. The railways are essential to British communities and must be run for public good, not for private profit.

The cost of a railway journey is prohibitive. The country speaks of getting cars off the road, but whilst it is cheaper to drive a car than take a train that's not going to happen. I can't AFFORD to use the train to commute or, where a route exists, visit family. European railways serve their customers far better. Nationalise the railways and run them for the people not the shareholders.

Get all transport under public control. This includes road and rail,both goods and public. Only then can we get total efficient use of transport energy and climate abuse.

Public ownership is not only the solution to the ills of the current system, but the necessary first step to democratic ownership of our rail industry.

Public transport of all kinds is a natural monopoly and so inappropriate for private ownership, quite apart from the other reasons that apply.

Public transport is an essential public service, not a business, and should be viewed as such. Its purpose includes taking as much passenger and freight traffic off our roads as possible to reduce pollution, global warming and congestion, and to make travel as easy as possible for those who, for whatever reason, do not have access to cars.

Public transport services, which includes railways, should not be designed to make profit but to provide services which are easy to use for everyone. That includes a much simplified ticketing system, such as having rechargeable tickets that authorise travel for a given number of miles, regardless of which train is used or where the destination might be.

Taking rail and buses back into public ownership need not be expensive - simply don't renew the franchises when they expire or fall vacant for any reason.

As I sit on the floor of yet another over-crowded train which has cost me £70 for the privilege, I am sick to death of the fat cats making yet more money off poor commuters. My main railway line used to be South West Trains,has been sold to the Chinese, now called South Western Railway and promptly messed up a perfectly good timetable. Why? And the thought of travelling on that odious Richard Branson’s Virgin train and paying £170 to get from London to Manchester makes me furious as he sits sunning himself on his tax haven island and I’m squashed into his ridiculously small seats in a dirty carriage.

There is massive public support for taking the railways back into public ownership. DO IT -and without the payment of compensation to corporate crooks. Rail is a natural monopoly and best run in the public sector.

Almost everything about the current rail system is broken; multiple failed franchises, no long-term thinking (because private companies on fixed-term franchises are only ever going to think short-term); track maintenance, stations and running of services need to be under unified management, not the dog’s dinner we currently have; too much money going to shareholders even where performance is poor...I could go on! Bring Back British Rail!

A publicly owned integrated railway is the way forward. Further fragmentation and privatisation is not the answer as this is both expensive and inefficient.

Profits, not people are the main concern of private companies, as they have and continue to demonstrate. Public ownership is the obvious solution to the appalling conditions which so many people currently have to endure on a daily basis. I too recall vastly superior conditions when the railways were publicly owned.

It is clear that privatisation of the railways hasn't been good for the general public. The train companies have put the interests of their shareholders at the forefront. We really need to now consider gradually bringing the railways back into public ownership as many other countries do so successfully.

The aims of private companies are the complete antithesis of what is needed for efficient public transport.

Look at the situation in Northern Ireland where railways are still publicly owned. Passenger numbers have risen at least as much (possibly more) compared with the rest of Britain. Fares have risen considerably less than inflation there, and investment has still continued to rise, benefitting passengers immensely.

I have always believed in public ownership of the railways(and other important services for that matter). I remember the days of British Rail, and I cannot remember a time when the service was so badly run as it is now. Privatisation has put profit before service and led to fragmentation and increasing unnecessary higher costs(e.g the money spent on constantly putting railway services out to tender). The profits should be invested back into the railways not go to shareholders and overinflated Chief Executive salaries.

There are so many examples of how a fragmented, privatised rail system just doesn't work. Increased fares, resource inefficiency and poor service from companies who indefensibly continue to both receive public subsidy and simultaneously pay dividends to their shareholders.

Goods and public transport should be integrated using more rail to aid climate stability and efficiency under public ownership.

For the many and not the few. Branson and the rest of them are laughing at the public whilst tickets go up and services remain abysmal. Its not right and it should be allowed to continue. !

I understand our railway journeys are some of the most expensive in the world. The Government is opposed to nationalisation but allows nationalised railways from other countries to have stake a in our system. Most of our railways are owned by foreign companies. Their only interest is in profit, not running a service for the public. The Portsmouth to Cardiff service runs most of the time with only two carriages, yet it goes through major cities like Bath and Bristol, routes that are important to locals and tourists. Not surprisingly, trains sometimes even pass through stations without allowing any passengers to get on because they are already too overcrowded. Passengers collapse because of the overcrowding and the ill-health and panic this can bring about.

Railways in the north of England have not had the money spent on them that is required for access and jobs across the Pennines - this is partly from the London bias and the mistaken policy of thinking that north-south links are the most important. So a nationalised rail system could spend more on east-west links than private companies would, including opening up disused lines and tunnels.

Joined-up systems work best; a rail system is part of the national infrastructure so should be run for the good of the people not shareholders; our current franchise holders seem to think they're running airlines, which is totally counter to passenger (NOT 'customer') requirements; and freight is neglected - 'nuff said?

Railways need to be efficient and cheap (i.e. state-run and subsidised where necessary) because we need to use public transport as much as possible for the sake of our environment. The UK loves its railways and the government is missing a major investment by not putting the railways back into public ownership. It's not rocket science to figure out that private companies will only ever be interested in profit. Our country is - or used to be - about more than profit. If we can trust our railways to work properly we will use them. It's disgraceful to see them so undervalued -rubbished - by privatisation when they could work for the convenience of individuals and make a vital contribution towards reducing the use of private cars.

We need a reliable rail network and value for money. The privatized system isn't working and the railways should be nationalized.

The railways are part of the infrastructure for the country and as such plays a big part in people's lives. Many people travel to work by rail and are paying ridiculous amounts to get there. There comes a point when it isn't worth their while to continue paying a substantial amount of their wages and suffering immense stress just to get to work, they are better off getting lower paid employment nearer home. This will impact on skills being wasted in this country. All this to fill shareholders pockets and profit greed. The motive cannot ever be profits, it must be to serve the public who need this service and have no choice in the matter.

The problems we face-overcrowded roads contributing to climate change and air pollution-are national ones.The solution has to be on a national scale, too-a single rail network in public ownership, reliable and inexpensive because it has received a decent level of investment.The railways are too important to be left in the hands of private companies, who have demonstrably failed to provide a good service.

Privatisation of the railways has been a disaster and only privatisation ideology is keeping this option on the table. Public money is being pumped into the system to prop up the private companies operating the various franchises. Meanwhile the service gets worse and more overcrowded; the ticketing system becomes more complicated, ludicrous and overpriced and the reliability also deteriorates. Please view this from the perspective of producing a coordinated public transport system that will improve people's lives, employment punctuality and be better for the environment. This can most easily, economically and morally be achieved through a nationalised railway system.

We need our railways to operate effectively and efficiently and have profits re-invested back to improve services and not have profit as the main aim. Privatisatio has proved that services suffer because of a need to make money and keep costs down. Commuters must be sick of the poor service they have to endure daily. The ongoing strikes of the guards are an example of the operators wanting to cut costs, but surely what they propose cannot be conducive to passenger safety.

We need our railways more than ever now, especially to get people out of their cars and off the roads. We need a better transport network of which trains ar a vital part of our infrastructure. We need to address this because of climate change concerns and being fobbed off by inferior services is not going to get people to use the trains more.

The railways are fragmented to the extent that no one takes overall responsibilty, and there are enormous inefficiencies with contrcatual agreements between the various parties. Contrast this with state owned railways (like the old BR) which have a far leaner management structure and hence lower costs.

The UK's part privatised franchised system is now the most expensive in Europe with some of the worst performance figures on train times, quality, punctuality etc. Quite an achievement given that UK Govt now pays around 3 times the money that the old nationalised BR system was allocated! In the late 1980s BR was voted the second most efficient rail system in Europe (after Sweden)and one of the cheapest for commuters. It also designed and manufactured world-leading rolling stock - all now lost.

Public utilities (things we have no choice but to use), should be in public ownership.

Privatisation of the railways has not worked for the benefit of the people the railways are supposed to serve. Need I say more!

Take the shareholders out of the equation. Reverse this network fragmentation and short term thinking and make a publicly owned rail network part of an integrated national transport system

It seems that profits and dividends are more important than passengers. Passengers have had a dreadful year of cancellations and delays and now higher fares. Please let's run the railways in the public interest.

Evidence based decisions will mean that railways are brought back into public ownership.

The evidence is clear...privatised rail costs us the taxpayers and citizens of UK money which has not gone into improving rail services but in keeping some failing companies afloat.

Where there have been examples of the state taking over to bail out privatised sections of the rail network it has been more successful on criteria used to evaluate rail performance.

Hence my belief that if this review is to be based upon evidence the railways will be brought back into public ownership and control.

A not-for-profit arrangement for the railways would allow for a compromise between public ownership (as opposed to private ownership) and a business-like approach to running the railways. They should be subsumed into this new organisation as the franchises come up for renewal. It is quite clear that the railway mantra of 'the fares are going up so that we can invest in a much-improved service',trotted out every year in December or January, is so much hot air. Complaints about the service only increase, year on year, as a percentage of passengers.

As was shown by the reclaimation of the East Coast line into public control, surplus income was achieved and the line ran at no cost to the country.

Ideology is no way to run a country - take the party out of politics and get real debate and real action for the population as a whole.

Railways are a public service and need to be publicly owned. Railways need substantial investment and only public ownership provides the longterm perspective necessary for this.

It does not make sense to spend, as we currently do, more on subsidising private companies to run them that it would to support a publicly-owned railway.I am happy to support a reliable, affordable public transport system from my taxes, but I object very much to my taxes going into shareholders' pockets as dividend!

Our railways are insane. Ticket prices are absurdly high and also apparently randomly determined. It's always cheaper for me to rent a car than to take a train between UK cities. I wouldn't mind rail being privatised if it worked, but since it doesn't, the fact that it's also unnecessarily enriching all these separate sets of managers and shareholders is insulting. And the system for buying a ticket is fragmented and frustrating. The whole situation is a national embarrassment. When I go elsewhere in Europe, the state-owned services work well and have manageable, rational prices. And when European friends come here, I can never explain why our railways are so expensive and bad, except by saying that we're a nation of idiots.

I have worked in the railway industry for 30+ years, experiencing both the private sector and public sector variously on a number of occasions. I am committed to my job and the railway and I firmly believe in a successful railway as an essential, fundamental necessity of a first world state. I am not weighed down by ideological baggage on either side of the argument, I simply speak from experience. The cost control mechanisms in the privatised railway are gossamer thin to non existent and wholly lacking in rigorous auditing, and in my experience there is a who cares, fly by night, bodge it and scarper attitude amongst contractors which leads to over spending and over running. Hard working tax payers money is going down the drain, and along with it the notion of an integrated railway service for the nation. And integration is the key word: A successful first world railway service can surely only be run by one over arching body, which in reality can only the state, for the state, with seasoned railway professionals enacting the day to day strategy and implementation of such.

Privatisation being more efficient is a myth. If market forces were applied, these so-called private operators would go under. Instead they are bailed out using public funds that are much needed elsewhere to prevent public services from being under-resourced. We need to reclaim our railways and have the efficient service that the travelling public deserve.

I am in my 60s and I have been a regular train traveller all my life but I have never seen our railways in such chaos. Since privatisation the railways are being run entirely for the benefit of the Train Operating Companies and the passenger is just expected to pay up and be grateful. Every year we are told that the fares must increase while the service gets worse. We are constantly being told that improvements are coming but they never seem to arrive.It seems to me that privatisation has failed completely and the only way in which we can improve the railways for the passengers they are meant to serve is to renationalise. Our railways are a national asset and something that we should be proud of. They should, first and foremost, provide a service to the public and not just provide profits for shareholders.

We had a family trip to Chester (out of season) we left the cars at home (3) and went by train (thinking green), we hadn’t done this since British Rail. We spent the last day in Liverpool and left from Lime Street (best chance of a seat) I have spinal problems but was well medicated. I didn’t think for a moment I would spend over 3 hours standing up, the last hour I was held up by my wife and son in law as the standing room thinned slightly being fewer people to hold me upright and I was in so much pain I wasn’t aware come journey’s end and my wife and son-in-law had to help me off the train. I would strongly recommend anyone who has the slightest spinal or leg disability to stay well clear of today's rail system, British Rail would have won hands down.

The railways have seen a rise in passenger numbers because the population has grown -not because they are in private hands yet the rail franchises have written into them a desire by C Grayling to reduce the guards?? on longer trains carrying more people. Really! The East Coast Line shows that public rail does work and a monopoly shouldn't be a cash cow for owners.. its unethical apart from being illogical.

Before rail privatisation I enjoyed rail travel and was able to afford it. In the 1980s and early 1990s my Wife and I would a have days out by rail, sometimes several times a week. Now, due to universal overcrowding, rail travel is no longer enjoyable nor is it affordable, even with a Disabled Person's Railcard. Privatisation has not worked...it never will.

I joined the (local) Railway as a Guard after leaving my job as an Insurance Claims Assessor in 1998 with the intention of retiring after two years service at age 50. In the end I stayed for over 17 years as I enjoyed the job so much.

I never worked under British Rail and all my experience was in the highly fragmented private rail industry.

The one thing that became increasingly obvious was that the only way a Railway can work - especially for its passengers - properly is under one controlling management.

The Railway is rather like a very large clockwork machine in which each part interacts with the part adjacent to it and is affected by them.

It is important that the pieces work together and support each other as any failure of one part has a negative effect on its neighbours to such an extent that each company has a department whose total purpose is to claim (or decline) monies due because of running issues of any other (or their own) companies.

This, more than any other, is the reason a fragmented railway does not and cannot work.

As a Guard I experienced situations in which different companies were not prepared to work with each other just because they might have to pay a fine for running a delayed service even if it meant passengers on their service being unable to make the connection necessary at the station.

The result of this is another large department within the companies in place to pay compensation and handle passenger complaints caused purely by the inability of the different companies having absolutely no interest in working together.

This has another consequence that has a negative effect on the cost of train travel - as each separate company has no interest in working with another company due to the financial penalties imposed on it.

Each company has to have its own:

1. Customer Service/ Complaints Department

2. Delay Attribution Department

3. Service Control/Delivery Department

4. Staff Rostering Department

5. Staff Management Teams/ Department

6. Train Maintenance Depot and Staff

7. Senior Management Teams and Directors.

This list is not exhaustive but serves to show the (expensive) duplication of roles and departments...

As an example of the above, Northern Spirit operated the local and (local) express train services in the North of England but a decision was made to form a new company, First Transpennine Express (TPX) to operate the express trains which overnight introduced conflict to the trains.

Before TPX was formed, if a Driver or Guard was required for an express service (due to illness of a member of staff) Northern Spirit was able to provide an experienced replacement from a local service to enable the service to run. One of the newer, less experienced members of staff was then used to work on the local service from the small pool of “spare” traincrew they hold to cover contingencies. As all safety critical traincrew have to fully learn a route before they can work a service over it there should always be a small pool of relatively inexperienced staff available that can be taken off Route Learning to be used.

When TPX was formed there were many requests to Northern Spirit to provide traincrew but these requests were refused and the express services cancelled.

The reason?

NS had no interest in TPX services and TPX were not prepared to pay for a NS Driver or Guard but instead preferred to pay the fine levied for the cancellation.

This example of non cooperation between the different companies is now embedded in the privatised Railway - but mainly and especially at senior management level and above. In fact, there were and still are regular examples of new staff at the mainline train operators being advised to not interact with the staff at local operators.

As many of these main line operators recruit from local train operators I believe this is yet another example of the non cooperation between different operators across the Network and another reason why the whole Rail Industry needs to be run under one overarching company.

And the best placed “company” to operate the Railway is the government.

It is irrelevant what this is called but there is no reason why it should regain the mantle, British Rail as this best describes its operations.

Back in the 1990's a German friend said to me that the German government had been looking very closely at our rail privatisation "to see how not to do it"...and some think that Germans have no sense of humour....How true this still is. Allowing state owned companies to raise capital on the 'money markets' is one thing..the utter absurdity of pseudo competition and separation of control of trains and track quite another.

None of the privatised public services deliver good value for money. Railways do not deliver competition, merely bad services and poor value for our taxes. Nationalsie the railways (and all other public services).