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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, a spectator's daily politics podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe.

And today, what's leading the news is not a variant, but plans for the railways. Isabel, can you talk us through it that government's proposing and why there's been some mockery?

Yes, so this is the formation of a new body called Great British Railways, which Transport Secretary Grant Shaps has announced is going to take over timetables, ticketing, prices and

infrastructure. And we are going to lose all the different company brands. So everything's

going to be under the same

GBR logo, although confusingly it only applies to England. So not that great, just English

railways. And it is also being mocked because it is initially, superficially sounds a little bit like the Conservatives are stealing another,

not just a Labour policy, but a Jeremy Corbyn policy by taking state control of the railways.

But it's much more complicated than that.

It's not a re-nationalisation of the railways because these private

companies will continue to operate the different lines themselves, much in the same way,

actually, as TFL is the umbrella body for different services which are run by private companies

on different lines. But things will change. So the companies will only be

paid if the trains are on time and clean. But on the flip side, the government, the companies,

sorry, will bear far less risk if passenger numbers fall, which has obviously been something

that they have struggled with over the past year because no one's been getting the train

because everyone's been at home in lockdown. So there are various sort of political aspects to this

and branding glitches as well which make it interesting. But it's not a re-nationalisation. And

neither is it something that is guaranteed to bring fares down. So you might ask, why bother?

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