Most Britons want railways to be renationalised, poll shows

15 June 2018

A new poll for The Independent has found that most people living in the UK want the railways to be renationalised.

The survey, by BMG Research, revealed that 64% of the public want the sector to return to public ownership, 56% believe privatisation has failed, and 64% felt the government had not sufficiently held private firms to account over the quality of their service.

Only 18% said they wanted the railways to stay in the hands of private companies, 15% thought privatisation had been a success, and just 20% felt ministers had properly scrutinised the firms that are contracted to deliver rail services.

As many as 80% wanted private rail companies to face tougher sanctions, while only 9% opposed this measure.

This comes after more than 15,000 trains were cancelled or delayed following a disastrous change of timetable at the end of May. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has come under fire from customers, unions and politicians alike. Lord Adonis, who used to hold Grayling’s position under Labour, said blame should fall directly at the Minister’s feet.

“He [Grayling] obviously shouldn’t have permitted a wholesale timetable change across the country. The industry always wants to make big changes to the timetable – they did when I was transport secretary and I stopped them,” Lord Adonis told the Guardian.

“He started blaming the train companies and then his own department for things for which he was ultimately responsible, and he’s now hiding behind the readiness committee. The whole point is that your job is to make a judgment. You don’t bring in system-wide changes until you’ve examined them locally – especially given there were such evident problems before.”

Following the resignation of Govia Thameslink CEO, Charles Horton, today, RMT warned that the matter must not now be swept under the rug.

“Mr Horton may now have gone but the rotten franchise he was steering remains in place and no change at the top will alter that. This whole basket case operation is a failure on every level,” General Secretary of the union, Mick Cash, said.

“The Horton resignation opens the door for this sorry chapter to be bro‎ught to a close and that means sweeping GTR away and returning the services to public ownership with safety , access and quality the guiding priorities.”