RENATIONALISE SCOTRAIL

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: september 2018 :: RMTnews 9 Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard made the case for the renationalisation of the transport sector in Scotland last month. The SNP government has said that it will only permit a publicly owned company to bid against privateers for ScotRail, but critics say that this compromise option does not go far enough. Speaking outside Glasgow Central station Mr Leonard said that passengers would benefit from rail services being reintegrated into the public sector as this removes private-sector companies with their excessive running costs. The latest figures show ScotRail’s punctuality is now the worst on record, having sunk to 88.2 per cent, well below its target of 92.13 per cent. Mr Leonard said that this was due to transport becoming “too detached from being a public service”. “It is now clear that the dividing line in Scotland is between investment and growth with Labour or cuts and division with the SNP and the Tories,” he said. ScotRail is currently operated by Abellio, an arm of the Dutch state, which funnels profits from operations to subsidise services and fares at home in The Netherlands. The Caledonian Sleeper to London is also run by crisis-hit outsourcing giant Serco. The Scottish government has announced that public-sector companies could bid for the next ScotRail franchise. David MacBrayne Limited, the Scottish government-owned holding company which owns the ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne, has confirmed it is interested in putting forward a bid. SNP Transport Secretary Michael Matheson said that the public bid would allow “a level playing field between the private and public sector in bidding for rail franchises”. The news came as it was also revealed that Mr Matheson said he “fully expected” the Abellio contract to run its full term to 2025. This somewhat contradicts the Scottish Government line in 2014 when the then transport minister Keith Brown indicated the existence of a break clause after five years could allow the franchise to be returned to the public sector by 2022. RMT has argued that public sector operation is not only popular but can be more economic and efficient. Across Britain the costs of fragmentation and privatisation, including interfaces costs, outsourcing and dividends is £1.2billon year, equivalent to a year on fares cut of 18 per cent. Moreover passenger growth has been driven by record public investment and macro-economic factors not by any benefits of private operation. Private, risk free investment is only one per cent of all investment – the remaining 99 per cent of investment comes from the tax payer and fare payer Performance on the East Coast substantially improved when it was returned to the public sector, and it’s not for dividend status means that it was able to return more to the treasury than if it was privately operated. In Scotland it has been calculated that public sector operations and the removal of dividends would save the passenger the equivalent of a seven per cent fare cut each year. Richard Leonard is leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a member of the RMT Parliamentary Group BUILD IT IN BRITAIN: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard during a visit to the Alexander Dennis bus manufacturer in Falkirk to campaign on the party's 'Build It in Britain' policy. In a blunt letter to unions, Grayling said: “As you will be aware, one of the industry’s largest costs is pay … it is important that pay agreements also use CPI and not RPI in future when it comes to basing pay deals on inflation”. RMT general secretary Mick Cash said that if Chris Grayling seriously thought that rail staff were going to pay the price for his rank incompetence and the greed of the private train operating companies then he needed to think again. Incredibly Grayling defended his proposal for pay cuts as “entirely fair”. “My challenge to the unions is let’s get the routine increases down to the lower level of inflation,” he said. Labour’s shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said that Grayling’s “attack on staff pay is, at best, a distraction technique and at worst a recipe for years of industrial action”. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the fare increases were “an insult to everyone who has suffered from the chaos on Britain’s railways” and he reaffirmed his pledge to bring the railway back into public ownership. This called was backed by Mick Cash: “Today we are putting the case for public ownership and a unified network run in the interest of everyone as opposed to the current failing franchised system under which privateer’s profit from big fares rises and by cutting members’ jobs essential for safety, security, accessibility and information”. The TUC also renewed calls for public ownership of rail, with research showing fares have increased at more than double the rate of wages over the last decade. It pointed out that fares in Britain had risen by 42 per cent since 2008 but average weekly pay has gone up by only 18 per cent while privateers running the trains paid out at least £165 million in dividends to their shareholders last year, when overall taxpayer subsidy to the rail industry reached £3.5 billion. Parliamentary Column RENATIONALISE SCOTRAIL