2 Jun 2025
The government is bringing rail franchises into public hands as their contracts expire. Rail franchises have already been taken into public ownership in Scotland, Wales, on the East Coast, Transpennine, Northern and Southeastern lines and, since last weekend, South Western.
Together with many of our amazing supporters, we’ve been fighting for this for years. It’s great to see it finally happening. Public ownership means more money being reinvested back into services.
But there’s a threat: privatisation by the back door. The profiteering train companies want to keep privatisation alive.
As soon as the Labour Party said they wanted to take rail franchises into public ownership, the private companies who’ve been enjoying your high rail fares for years started fighting back, applying to run a host of new routes they’ve never run before. They panicked, because they want to carry on making a profit.
Privatisation of the railway wastes around £1.5 billion a year. The system is inefficient, wasteful, chaotic. But the private companies LIKE it like that.
That’s how they make their money. So they are pushing and fighting for MORE competition.
We've seen for 30 years that trying to pretend there is a "market" in rail creates a mess.
Private companies like First Group want to compete with our new publicly owned railway and use the same tracks. But this is incredibly inefficient.
A new report by transport consultancy Jacobs found that publicly owned LNER would lose £1.1 billion over the next decade if free-riding private companies are allowed to use the same line. (1)
Rail engineer Gareth Dennis has explained how they want to free ride on YOUR new railway. (2)
“They don’t have to pay for depot space because they get to use depots that exist for other companies. They don’t have to pay to train their staff because they can just recruit staff trained by the other operators. It’s a false economy.”
Railway historian Christian Wolmar says “I think they [the private operators] could push up fares for everybody at the cost of providing a few new services.”
The private rail companies have even refused to join in with the government's plan to share perfomance data with passengers. (3)
The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is worried about the private companies.
She has warned that letting them run routes in the new system would undermine Great British Railways. (4)
She says operators like First Group would extract money from the publicly owned railway and increase pressure on a busy network. But she’s up against the private rail lobbyists who have a lot of cash, and a lot to lose.
That’s why MPs across parliament need to understand the arguments against keeping a bit of privatisation in the system.
You can help stop them in their tracks
We need 250 new regular donors so we can launch a new campaign to explain this issue to MPs. Make a donation now.
We have access to rail experts and campaigners who can talk to MPs.
We need your help to get those arguments across. Our plan is to deliver two events online and in parliament, alongside a petition, a photo stunt in Westminster and lobbying politicians to change upcoming rail legislation for the benefit of passengers not profits.
You can make this happen before new legislation is published; before Great British Railways officially starts.
With your regular donation we can put this plan into action so you can get the benefits of real public ownership:
- Cheaper, fairer fares.
- A streamlined timetable that provides as many trains as possible across the whole network.
- Cross subsidy to make efficient use of public money, so that profits from busy routes get reinvested into extra routes elsewhere.
We're so close to a victory that matters for this country! We're looking for 250 people like you, who care about the state of our railways, to help us push it over the edge.
You can help win this battle
If you use the railway this issue affects you.
If you don’t use the railway this issue still affects you.
If you want public ownership of water, the NHS and other public services, this is really important. It will make it easier to campaign on everything else if rail is a success.
Thank you so much for caring about this issue and for your generosity.
4) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/677bc388d119b345376654a4/dft-letter-sos-orr.pdf
