Opinion: It’s time to bring all our railways back into public ownership

This sort of toothless nationalisation will do absolutely nothing to improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Yorkshire people who use these trains every single day.

Decades of underfunding and inefficiencies caused by privatisation have meant that rail travellers in Yorkshire have faced severe disruption on a daily basis as they try to get on with their lives.

We have absolutely no evidence that handing the Northern contract to yet another private firm will solve anything, either. Only through permanent nationalisation, combined with a realistic and intelligent investment strategy, can the government ensure that this catastrophic failure can never happen again.

Last year, Northern received over £400 million of taxpayers’ money while overseeing a disastrous service of which passengers are rightly (and hopefully) celebrating the end. In fact, earlier this month passengers rated Northern’s service as the worst of all the UK’s train operators.

This comes as no surprise when you hear of the severe and widespread disruption that has affected commuters over the last few years.

According to the Office of Rail and Road, only 56 percent of Northern trains arrived at stations within a minute of the stated time on the timetable, with 7.3 per cent of services cancelled.

Leaving passengers stranded in this way is absolutely unacceptable and alongside soaring rail fares, it’s no wonder passengers are furious.

But bringing our railways back into public ownership isn’t as radical as the Tories would want the people of Yorkshire to believe.

It has overwhelming support from the majority of the public who want to see passengers finally put before profit.

During the General Election campaign, Boris Johnson dubbed Labour’s proposals to nationalise our railways ‘retro communism’. That couldn’t be further from the truth. People across the North of England are sick and tired of an expensive, unreliable service.

On his visit to Leeds earlier this month, the Transport Secretary should have seen for himself the chaos that is Leeds City Station at rush hour, with almost every service delayed and many dangerously overcrowded old Pacer trains.

The success of stripping Virgin of the East Coast Main Line franchise and replacing it with the publicly-owned LNER service should have made clear to the government that public ownership can be done – and it can be done well.

Instead, the government has chosen to allow Northern to go on attempting to provide a terrible service for the people of Yorkshire for far too long – with the company blaming everybody else for their own failures.

And Northern shamefully decided to blame its own staff after they voted to go on strike when the company attempted to force through plans for driver-only-operated trains, leaving staff and passengers’ safety in doubt.

The fact is that this is yet another private company having to be bailed out by the Tory Government on behalf of the taxpayer because of their failure to provide passengers with decent, affordable and efficient transport services. This cannot go on and we shouldn’t stop at Northern.

It’s time to bring all our railways back into public ownership to ensure that rail travellers in Yorkshire finally have trains they can rely on.