Is It Time to Renationalise the Railways?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bringing Britain's railways back into public ownership is a popular idea with passengers - but would it really make any improvements to service?
Renationalisation of the railways is official Labour party policy. Polls suggest a majority of voters favour it too - and that was the case before the recent problems with Southern Rail.
With the help of the Conservative former transport minister Michael Portillo, David Aaronovitch explores the history of British railway ownership, asks whether it's possible to make the privatised system work and finds out how a future government might go about bringing the railways back into public ownership.
Contributors:
Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and Chair, Transport Select Committee
Laurie Macfarlane, Economist, New Economics Foundation
Michael Portillo, former Conservative Minister of State for Transport
Michael Schabas, railways consultant
Christian Wolmar, railways historian and journalist
Producer: Phil Kemp Research: Sam Bright.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:03.2 | In this episode, we're asking whether it's time our train services were re-nationalised. |
| 0:08.7 | And what would happen if they were? |
| 0:14.4 | What we are? |
| 0:17.6 | Trails! |
| 0:18.8 | Last month, the Trade Journal, Rail Business Intelligence magazine reported that the government |
| 0:26.2 | was considering taking over the private train service that includes Southern Rail. |
| 0:31.5 | That's the service blighted by strikes and disruption. |
| 0:34.9 | For that period over the summer, they destroyed my life. |
| 0:41.3 | My mum could have put me to bed on time because of the trains. The once private tracks were re-nationalised 15 years ago |
| 0:45.3 | when the national company that owned them, rail track, fell into financial difficulty. |
| 0:50.3 | Would the train services that run on them be better if they were nationalised too? |
| 0:55.9 | It's not just some Southern rail commuters who think so. |
| 0:59.9 | Opinion polls regularly find popular support for train services to be re-nationalised. |
| 1:06.2 | Gradual renationalisation of the railways is now even official Labour Party policy. |
| 1:11.6 | It was wonderful to see conference this morning agree on our new plan |
| 1:14.6 | to bring the private franchises into public ownership as they expire. |
| 1:19.6 | Labour's policy now is to deliver the fully integrated, publicly owned railway |
| 1:26.6 | the British people want and need. |
| 1:32.9 | So, could it happen? |
| 1:35.5 | What would it mean for rail passengers and all of us as taxpayers? |
| 1:39.4 | And would it be a better solution than private ownership? |
... |
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