Britain’s railways have become a “symbol of national decline” under the Conservatives, the shadow transport secretary has said, announcing Labour’s plans to nationalise the rail network within five years in government.
In a speech at Trainline headquarters on Thursday, Louise Haigh said “today’s broken model simply doesn’t work”, with train cancellations at a record high and fares having risen almost twice as fast as wages since 2010.
Jody Ford, the chief executive of the travel company, echoed Haigh’s words, saying rail had “significant power and potential” to drive economic growth into all parts of the country’s communities.
Haigh said: “Our railways are critical to making our country a better, wealthier and happier place. We can only achieve our five national missions if we unlock the trapped potential of our railways to boost growth, and opportunity and to connect all of us with each other, with work and with pleasure.”
Haigh said a Labour government would establish Great British Railways, which she described as a “single directing mind to control our railways in the passenger interest”. She joked she was not allowed to call the nationalised railway “Rail Britannia” and would not rule out an endorsement of her plan from the Conservative former transport secretary Grant Shapps.
Asked why Labour could not guarantee cheaper and more affordable train tickets under their plans, Haigh said it was Labour’s “ambition” to make fares cheaper but “simplification is our first priority” via the party’s best fare guarantee scheme.
Keir Starmer vowed to bring an end to the “Tory boom and bust” cycle for the rail industry, after visiting Hitachi’s rail manufacturing plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, where 700 jobs are at risk, and a further 1,400 jobs at risk across its supply chain.
The rail minister, Huw Merriman, has been accused of dismissing the job losses as “natural peaks and troughs”. Starmer said: “The workforce here at Hitachi is staring down the barrel of job losses. This was not inevitable.”
“After 14 years of chaos and uncertainty, [this Tory government] has left our rail manufacturing sector teetering on the brink,” he added.
Haigh accepted that the plan would take time, as the final private operator contract with a core term was not due to expire until 2029. “We’d expect all contracts to be brought under Great British Railways by that time,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It will take time; there’s no overnight fixes to a very complex system. We’re not starry eyed about this.”
But a Labour government would immediately be able to create a “shadow Great British Railways [organisation] to fire the starting gun on reform” and ensure the party did not lose time or momentum. It would bring together key players including Network Rail and the Rail Delivery Group, before primary legislation was passed to formally establish GBR as an arm’s length body.
“The Conservative party has achieved the worst of all worlds for our railways, partially privatised, overly centralised, expensive, but unreliable, confusing and shamefully unaccountable,” Haigh said.
She quoted Shapps, who once said: “Unlike most privatisations, that of the railways has never become publicly accepted, because its failings have remained all too obvious … The fragmentation of the network has made it more confusing for passengers, and more difficult and expensive to perform the essentially collaborative task of running trains on time.”
Haigh also vowed to see the “workforce as an asset rather than a liability” but she refused to commit to a pay increase because she had “not seen the books” and “wouldn’t do that in an unfunded way”. But she vowed to meet the unions on day one in order to solve the strikes that she said were costing £25m a day.
