“Important questions remain as to whether public ownership as presently structured is reaching as far as it could.”
By Grahame Morris MP
Labour Conference opens this weekend with a new Leader and, for the first time in years, a solid footing for the ongoing debate on rail nationalisation, with the Railways Bill now in the House of Lords.
As Vice-Chair of the RMT Parliamentary Group, previously a longstanding member of the Transport Select Committee in the last Parliament, a former railway worker and a lifelong supporter of rail nationalisation, I have campaigned for publicly owned railways consistently throughout my time in Parliament, and as such I welcome the Government’s progress on this issue. However, important questions remain as to whether public ownership as presently structured is reaching as far as it could.
When Labour came out of the election in 2024 and formed a Government, we had promised nationalised railways and an integrated industrial relations framework to give a renewed sense of dignity and security for railway workers under a new, single employer. The transition, however, has not kept pace with those promises. For example, when Network Rail staff moved to its subsidiary Platform 4, unions were formally derecognised because the new publicly owned company had no collective bargaining arrangements in place, meaning existing staff are now in the process of having to negotiate the restoration of collective agreements when the work itself, and the relationship to the employer, has itself hardly changed.
The Bill, as it stands, also lacks pension protections for the transfer comparable to earlier Railways Acts, causing additional worry for workers planning their futures. National bargaining across GBR is now within reach under Andy Burnham. It will simplify collective bargaining of terms and conditions, will be consistent with the Employment Rights Act, and will be in keeping with his record.
Another key aspect of the ongoing debate is the fact that outsourcing firms take an estimated £400 million a year in profit from our railways. This month, TUC Congress carried a composite motion noting that rail still has no plan to insource tens of thousands of cleaners, caterers, station, security and infrastructure workers as promised when Labour got into government in 2024.
The crucial point is that public ownership isn’t in itself a panacea. If the workforce is hived off on worse terms and without any statutory presumption for insourcing in place, then progress for railway workers will remain stagnant, despite all the good work already undertaken by the government on GBR. The biggest unfinished business is, as ever, rolling stock: ASLEF’s figures, endorsed by Congress, reveal an eye-watering £4.1 billion in leasing costs in 2024/25, with a further £2.9 billion taken in profits and dividends over five years.
The fight for rolling stock nationalisation, and the specific demands made by the TUC, are nothing new: The RMT has argued for years that the public should buy and own trains directly rather than pay rent to a handful of leasing companies. At this year’s Congress, ASLEF and the RMT jointly brought in an emergency motion on the sale of DB Cargo UK, a stark reminder that rail freight also remains outside public ownership. The bottom line is that leasing companies don’t contribute to productivity or efficiency in real terms, running no services and employing no drivers, yet find themselves in a position of taking a guaranteed return from every journey.
This form of economically unnecessary rent-seeking is a clear example of why our present nationalisation initiative sadly remains a half measure; thankfully, government thinking in this regard has started to shift. DfT’s operator chief envisages GBR ordering five or six standard train types in bulk, and a rolling stock strategy is expected this autumn. Merseyrail has already shown that public purchase works, with its new trains purchased using public funds.
The most straightforward outcome as it stands is for GBR to act as a public commissioner, with finance and ownership left private, which evidently falls short of what we as a Party have committed to. Buying out existing fleets might be unrealistic this Parliament, but committing to public ownership of all new trains, as ASLEF proposes, is both affordable and desirable in the long run. A steady public order book would also support British train manufacturing, including the Alstom plant in Derby, with the positive knock-on effects across the manufacturing and logistics sector of our economy self-evident.
In any event, I remain committed to my colleagues and comrades in the railway unions and in the Labour Party, agitating for a public ownership system which properly serves taxpayers and passengers but also does right by railway workers.
- Grahame Morris is the Labour MP for Easington, you can follow him on Twitter/X and Facebook.
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