FOR PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2015 :: RMTnews 16 Britain needs more railways. Whether it is reviving abandoned railway lines or building new ones, it is clear that this is what the voters want. Richard Beeching’s famous 1963 report, The Reshaping of British Railways, led to the closure of 5,000 miles of track and over 2,300 stations. It was a political attempt to rid this country of rail based on the wrong-headed idea that in the future the car would rule supreme and with an eye on the super profits from oil consumption and road-building. Today we know that the opposite is true and people need to get out of their cars and on to public transport. More than 50 years after thousands of miles of track were condemned by Beeching’s axe, it is good to know that hundreds of miles of track are set to re- open including the line from Tweedbank to Edinburgh in the north to the Tavistock-Bere Alston line across Dartmoor in Devon. Today the Robin Hood line between Nottingham and Worksop, axed by Beeching in the 1960s, now carries thousands of commuters every day. The Campaign for Better Transport estimates that as many as 200 lines could be reopened. There is clearly a greater demand for public transport both between the big cities and within rural areas. However, before we start talking about a great renaissance in rail, we need an honest appraisal of how our railways are run today. The current dysfunctional system for running our railways known as privatisation has delivered, among other things, massive profits for the private operators, the highest fares in Europe, a huge maintenance backlog, a rolling stock crisis and very low customer satisfaction. Moreover passengers and taxpayers are carrying virtually all the financial burden. A recent ORR financial report revealed that passengers contributed a record £9 billion and taxpayers £3.7 billion while franchise holders made a net contribution of just £43 million after all their public subsidies were taken into account. Network Rail's £25 billion spend over the next four years on upgrades and new lines, is also coming from the taxpayer. There is also a national rail rolling stock crisis. For instance a chronic shortage of rolling stock on the TransPennine Express route, operated by Keolis and First Group, will worsen in April as TPE will lose nine of its 70 Pacer trains to Chiltern Railways in Oxfordshire. Chiltern struck a deal with the train leasing company Porterbrook for the nine Class 170 three-car sets. This is purely because the rolling stock outfit can make more money out of Chiltern on a longer-term leasing deal than TPE. This is despite the fact that the TPE franchise, which connects Newcastle to Leeds as well as Manchester to Liverpool, is the most overcrowded in the country which is already using diesel trains to pull around what are, in effect, heritage Pacer carriages. Now we hear that refurbished vintage London Underground trains are to be brought in to replace the Pacers, raising ever more safety concerns and comfort concerns. As a result RMT believes that train procurement in Britain has been an expensive shambles caused by the fragmentation and profiteering that has been lumped onto the taxpayer through two decades of privatisation. RMT negotiators have also uncovered plans for new fleet of Inter-City rolling stock that would lead to the axing of buffet cars on First Great Western and East Coast Inter- City services. Under the proposals for the new trains there will be no buffet car available to standard class with the service replaced by a trolley operation. FGW have already removed the popular traveling chef services this year clearly in preparation for the plan to reduce services to passengers even further with the new IEP trains. This move is solely about profits, profits for First Group on Great Western and profits for whoever picks up the new, private East Coast franchise. Therefore the union has launched a major campaign to defend these services and the jobs that go with the current catering operations. This includes a political campaign by our group of MPs in Parliament which has already put down Early Day Motion 584 in defence of FGW and East Coast services. You would have thought that the British experience with rail privatisation would have put the rest of the world off such a move. But European Union transport commissioner Siim Kallas has proposed a fourth EU rail liberalisation package last year to enforce competitive tendering for rail contracts and to abolish nationalised, publicly-owned rail services. The unelected EU Commission wants full separation between firms that own rail infrastructure and train operators as imposed in Britain by Tories using EU directives in FOR PUBLIC OWNERSHIP As RMT campaigns around the country for rail renationalisation, RMT general secretary Mick Cash outlines why it’s a vote winner