A DECLARATION OF WAR

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2011 :: RMTnews 4 McNulty: A DECLARATION OF WAR The long-awaited report on the future of our railways identifies fragmentation as the problem – and sets out to make it worse, says RMT general secretary Bob Crow I f ever there was a case of ‘right diagnosis, wrong treatment’, the McNulty report on the railways is it. The knighted former head of the Civil Aviation Authority was never going to recommend re- nationalisation, but his report is breathtaking not only in the way it scapegoats the workforce, but also in the way it simply ignores the evidence that privatisation is the problem. Essentially it recommends that rail workers and passengers be made to pay the price of privatisation. If the government implements the report in full the rail network will be set back for decades, and industrial relations will become a battleground on every front. Shrugging aside the billions that have been removed from the industry by the privateer train operators and leasing companies, he recommends a massive cull of railway staff and a war on pay, conditions and pensions, despite the fact that productivity has increased ahead of pay. And despite recognising the damage done by the fragmentation imposed when the Tories privatised British Rail in the mid-1990s, there will be a sharp increase in safety risks as the network becomes even more fragmented, with a significant shift of power towards the privatised train operators. The changes McNulty recommends would increase the private-sector drain on the network, and with the government determined to lower subsidy, would leave the taxpayer, passengers and staff to pick up the bill. He says that Britain’s railways are 30 per cent less efficient than publicly owned comparators, but he proposes to close the gap by breaking up Network Rail, giving longer franchises, attacking staff conditions and paving the way for an attack on regional railways. But more than a third of the total savings would come from staff, with further cuts in maintenance, driver-only operation becoming the default mode, a cull of station staff and the scrapping of regulations that protect ticket offices. There is a close correlation between the privateers’ profits and the level of public subsidy, but none between subsidy and increasing labour costs – yet it is staff, not the privateers, who are singled out for attack. Research by Passenger Focus and others shows that passengers want to see more staff on stations and trains, not fewer, and ghost stations and trains will become yet another disincentive to travel, particularly at night. The report says NR should just be a holding company with route-level concessions operated franchises or other organisations, and there should be early pilots for joint ventures and concessions of rail infrastructure. And it lines up an attack on regional railways, which he pointedly notes are around six times more expensive to run per mile than long-distance and commuter franchises. McNulty has simply not considered the benefits of re- integrating the railways under public ownership. And he ignores the billions drained from the industry in profits and the evidence that railways in Europe are cheaper precisely because they remain in public ownership and are less fragmented. Despite recognising that British commuters already face the highest fares in Europe, McNulty also recommends the levelling up of fares for off-peak travel, saying that “the market” could bear higher charges. His inexplicable plan to shatter track and signalling infrastructure will create a series of mini-Railtracks, raising the chilling spectre of Hatfield and Potters Bar, and reversing the re-integration of maintenance in the not-for-profit Network Rail. McNulty wants an end to the cap on fare increases, and when rail fares have already increased in real terms by 15 per cent over the last decade, while air fares have fallen by 34 per cent and car travel costs by eight per cent, it is a move that will also force people back into cars. McNulty is not a recipe for a modern, democratic, mass rail system, but a declaration of war perhaps even more profound than Beeching half a century ago.