Rail bosses ‘ripped off customers’

From: The Morning Star

MPs attacked Network Rail bosses yesterday for running the publicly funded company as their private gravy train with “unacceptable” big bonuses and failing to meet targets.

The House of Commons public accounts committee branded previously NR executives’ bonuses as “simply unacceptable” given the company’s poor performance for the five years to 2008-09.

It argued that the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) should put a more robust system in place for monitoring Network Rail’s performance and the Department for Transport should review the ORR’s powers.

“The relationship between the organisations involved in reviewing NR’s efficiency ‘may be too cosy’,” the committee said.

Chairwoman Margaret Hodge MP also warned Network Rail against compromising safety by deferring maintenance work.

“We are not convinced that NR’s plans to defer about £1 billion of renewal work, such as to track and signalling, over five years will result in genuine efficiency savings.

“Safety must not be traded off against other outcomes.”

Rail union TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty said: “The ORR is a toothless watchdog which has failed passengers and allowed the directors of NR to run a publicly funded company as their own private gravy train.”

Sister union RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the committee confirmed the union’s concerns over the dangers of deferring and delaying safety-critical rail renewals

“However, it fails to address the main drag-weight on rail efficiency in this country and that is the greed and fragmentation of privatisation.

“It is the gold-plated, taxpayer-funded rip-off of privatisation that has left the UK’s railways 40 per cent less efficient and the only solution to that is public ownership.”

Britain British rail travel four times more expensive than on state-owned French network

From: Morning Star

British rail passengers are having to fork out £4.6 billion a year more than travellers on France’s public owned railways, transport union RMT revealed today.

Fares on Britain’s privatised network are four times more expensive than their French equivalent, according to an RMT report by research firm Just Economics found that lower and middle-income families were being “completely priced out of the rail market” following years of fares rises.

Overcrowding on British railways was also far worse than in other countries, including France, Spain, Germany and Italy.

Report author Eilis Lawlor said: “The logic behind the privatisation of the UK’s railways was to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This has not happened, yet we are still being told that rail networks can only be run effectively by the private sector.”

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “Like the McNulty review, this study compares privatised UK rail with European services, but, unlike McNulty, it has not turned a blind eye to the huge social and economic cost of privatisation.

“We already knew that Britain’s railways are the most expensive in Europe, but this study exposes the shocking degree to which UK rail users are being fleeced by the greed and stunning inefficiency of the rail privateers and made to suffer unnecessary overcrowding.”