"Not too late to change course on public ownership"

It’s “not too late” for Louise Haigh to change course on public ownership and get “the

best of both worlds,” says Rail Partners chief executive, Andy Bagnall.

The Transport Secretary told delegates at Labour’s annual conference that she was

“ripping up the very roots of Thatcherism” in bringing rail services back into public

operation. She said privatisation had “left us with a system that served no one other

than its shareholders”.

In her speech in Liverpool on September 23, she said: "Privatisation of our transport is

not pragmatism. It hasn’t spurred innovation. It hasn’t made things better. It belongs

to a past that failed.”

But at a fringe meeting organised by Rail Partners, which represents the parent

companies of TOCs as well as freight operators, Bagnall said: “We believe it’s not too

late. There is an alternative approach that would give you the best of both worlds: the

greater public control that I think everyone wants to see — Great British Railways as

the guiding mind — but then as a public body, exploiting the investment, the

innovation, the commercial entrepreneurism of train companies underneath.

“That’s actually the system that’s in use by Labour mayors up and down the country:

it’s the model for Transport for London, it’s the model for the Bee Network where you have public control but private delivery of the buses and

trams. It’s also the approach that government is taking in the Better Buses Bill.

Former Rail Minister Tom Harris, who served under the previous Labour government

but has since quit the party, also appealed to Haigh: “Don’t throw the baby out with

the bathwater.”

He advised her to “reject ideology in favour of learning from the best of what the last

Labour government did”, saying Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s administrations had

“made (the Conservatives’) botched privatisation work”.