The troubled East Coast rail mainline should be brought back into
public ownership permanently, Unite, the country’s largest union,
said today (Wednesday 16 May)
Unite, which represents rail engineering and technical staff,
said it was the third time in a decade that the government had
been forced to step in on the flagship London to Edinburgh line.
Unite national lead officer for the rail industry Hugh Roberts
said: “After a hat-trick of failures on the East Coast
mainline in the last 10 years with ministers having to intervene,
now is the time for this service to be brought back under state
ownership permanently.
“It is clear that the privatisation of the railways – the
misguided brainchild of John Major’s Tory government in the 1990s
– has hit the buffers. It has reached the end of the line.
“Bringing back the East Coast mainline under public control
permanently should be the first stage in returning the whole
network to public ownership.
“Rail privatisation has been an expensive and
ideologically-driven failure that has been a constant drain on
the taxpayer’s pocket.
“It would be best for the economy, the Treasury and the
hard-pressed rail traveller paying through the nose for their
tickets, if ministers blew the whistle on rail privatisation.”
Unite was commenting as the government pulled the plug on
Virgin Trains East Coast - a joint venture between Stagecoach and
Virgin which had been awarded the franchise for eight
years in 2014.
