RAIL unions demanded the immediate renationalisation of the railways yesterday after the Stock Exchange announced that the Virgin Trains privateer is to be asked to continue to run the West Coast Mainline for at least another nine months.
Mick Whelan, Aslef General Secretary said: ‘It’s just act five in the ongoing franchise farce.
‘It’s obvious that franchising is a discredited, expensive and wasteful process which costs the taxpayer millions and the fare-payer millions on top of that.
‘It’s time to renationalise rail.’
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: ‘This announcement is no surprise.
‘The government are ideologically opposed to public ownership of the railways and, in collusion with the private train operators, have stitched up a shabby deal that will enable them to rerun the whole franchise fiasco in a year’s time.
‘Richard Branson and his shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank.
‘Not only have they made hundreds of millions from the rail privatisation lottery but they have now scooped the rollover as well.
‘RMT will continue to fight for public ownership of the railways, a position supported by the vast majority of the British people.
‘This short term political fix will not detract from the call for rail to be run as a public service free from the chaos and greed of privatisation.’
Crow added: ‘The government’s ideological opposition to public ownership will turn the West Coast shambles into franchise anarchy.
‘We are now told Virgin will cling on for a few months while an expensive, short-term franchise competition is run before a further costly, long-term contract exercise.
‘We could end up with the nightmare of three different franchise holders in a few years on our most high profile rail route, while tens of millions of pounds is wasted on the franchise merry-go round and thousands of staff are caught in the cross-fire.
‘This is pure lunacy and all designed to block the logical and stable option of public ownership.’
Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA rail union, said: ‘This decision means that the long-running Whitehall farce, known as private rail franchising, continues at the taxpayer’s expense.
‘We the public continue to subsidise a billionaire to run a railway line which would cost less if it was in the public sector.
‘Our Alice in Wonderland railway system is beyond the dreams of fiction.’
