‘RENATIONALISE West Coast and all the other franchises under one single umbrella, and end the profiteering and chaos of rail privatisation once and for all.’
This was the demand by RMT General Secretary Bob Crow yesterday after the decision to award the multi-billion-pound West Coast Main Line rail franchise to FirstGroup was scrapped by the government in a humiliating climbdown in the small hours of yesterday morning.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin admitted in the dead of night that there were ‘significant technical flaws’ in the bidding process, blamed ‘mistakes by Department for Transport staff’ and announced the suspension of three civil servants.
RMT leader Crow commented: ‘The whole sorry and expensive shambles of rail privatisation has been dragged into the spotlight this morning and instead of re-running this expensive circus, the West Coast route should be renationalised on a permanent basis.
‘Those ministers who have presided over this fiasco should also be called to account.
‘£60 million that could have been invested in services will be blown on reimbursing the bidders as the government admit they cannot add up.
‘With a mass of other franchises coming up over the next few years the whole process has to be called to a halt with Directly Operated Railways given a long term opportunity to sweep up this mess, just as they have successfully done on the East Coast.
‘You can bet your life that the same basic mistakes made by the government and its officials on the West Coast tender have been made on other franchises as the private sector lie through their teeth with the sole intention of robbing us blind.
‘It is no surprise that 70% now support rail renationalisation and that public opinion will harden after today’s humiliation of the government.’
ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan accused the government of being ‘too pig-headed to recognise that rail franchising is unwieldy, expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, imprecise, unscientific and ultimately indefensible’.
He added: ‘It is time to end this expensive stupidity.
‘Franchising is not just going through a bad patch. It is a flawed system that needs to be replaced.’
