The government's rail franchising policy was thrown into disarray after it cancelled the award of a new contract to run the West Coast mainline following discoveries of “technical flaws” in the process.
There are three logical observations that follows.
The first is that the only logical thing to do now is to nationalise this service. That is where such services belong - under public ownership.
The second is to regret the costs that will not be paid to Branson and maybe First Group.
The third is to realise that having an enquiry into what what went wrong with the tendering is to ask the wrong question: the question now is why the government is continuing with a process of rail franchising which creates local monopolies, no real competition (only opportunity for regulatory abuse), and a disjointed public service which benefits almost no one.
To put it another way: isn't it time to say game over for rail privatisation?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
This Government is incredibly incompetent, formulating policies without any real analysis of the situation and then forced into making repeated U-turns when their absurdity becomes apparent to everyone.
Useless, empty-headed idiots who schemed their way into power and who have no popular mandate are now running the country.
I’ve just been reading up on who they’ve put in charge of the two inquiries, Richard. There’ll be no great criticism of the underlying logic of the way we run railways in this country from them. Absolute pillars of the 1% and free market.
Anyway, playing devil’s advocate, as far as your questions go the answers will be something like:
Nationalisation: ideologically impossible to even consider for the Tories and Lib Dems, and probably also for most the the current Labour party leadership (whatever they may say in public). Indeed, I read recently that as part of the EC’s/IMF’s austerity measures Spain will almost certainly privatise their railways. And if that happens I wouldn’t be surprised if France isn’t far behind. The Tories and other supporters of a privatised service are bound to use that to argue they are right.
Costs: yes, appalling waste of public money. Just read that all four bidders will be compensated.
Asking the wrong question: Too right. But if they asked the right ones it’d be very hard to avoid the logical solution from the answers they’d get . That would expose that this experiment has been nothing other that an ideologically driven policy with no logical rationale as far as passengers are concerned but has made some individuals (members of the 1% obviously) and companies very rich. So, better to ask the wrong questions – as New Labour consistently did – and make sure even they get’s nonsensical answers by selecting a few establishement patsies to answer them.
On a slightly different note, I did find myself wondering to what extent the so called ‘flaws’ in the competition process might be related to the ideological bias of many of the staff who now work in DfT.
Such a good last question
‘’ the ideological bias of many of the staff who now work in DfT’’? What evidence is there that DfT staff — by that, I mean civil servants — are ideologically biased?
Certainly the Special Advisors will be, but their job is overtly political. But they are very few and they are not civil servants. The vast majority of civil servants are politically neutral; their job is to advise the Government of the day how best to implement its policies.
Go to the Treasury any day of the week….
Richard,
Yes, on the whole it should be game over. Although there have been one or two exceptions where a company set out to show some real enterprise and offer something the Virgins etc would not, more often than not the customer has done worse out of it, and the financiers have made an unjustified killing.
But this is one case where the UK Government has its hands tied: the rules on how railways are run (including the separation of infrastucture provider from operator and the right to competitive access to the tracks) are set in Brussels. Even assuming EdM wins the next election comprehensively it will take a lot of negotiating to get Europe to back off that one – especially given how well French, German and Dutch companies have done out of UK franchises.
Renationalisation may well bring back more flexibility to rail operations and would cut out the bankers’ leasing charges but many of the current problems are imposed on the Rail Operators by the Rail Regulators and DfT.
Here in SW England, we are mainly dependent upon FGW and while the service is quite comprehensive, the trains are often seriously overcrowded and First Group has requested more coaches from DfT, and these are not available. They have responded by packing in more seats into the trains and now there is insufficient legroom for a tall person. I am 6′ 2″. It makes flying by Easyjet seem quite luxurious.
As for the government’s handling of these franchises, the words piss-up and brewery come to mind. If the whole network were renationalised, could they handle it any better?
Renationalisation is probably the most sensible and least costly option. Indeed I would go further than renationalisation of rail and renationalise water,electricity and gas. And that is just for starters.
Isn’t the logical conclusion quite different?
Why would anyone trust the DfT to run anything, least of all the railways?
Well, if the railways were to be nationalised — something I want to see — then it is probably the DfT who would run them. Who else would?
Not sure I understand the second point. Do you mean their bid costs? If so, the Guardian article says that the four bidders the first time around will be compensated. The consultants on the bids will therefore possibly get paid twice for almost the same work but with different assumptions. And are the two inquiries really going to change anything? Surely the money could be better spent elsewhere.
[…] reality, as I suggested this morning, is that what’s very clear is that the tendering system introduced by the Tories post 2010 is […]