Government to nationalise east coast railway

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

On Saturday, Labour MP Tom Harris wrote “let’s leave the railways where they are a success – in the private sector”. But now it seems the government will be forced to nationalise the National Express east coast franchise after it became clear that the company would lose £90m over the next two years and Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said he had set up a publicly-owned company to run it.

Adonis added that the Government may have grounds to terminate National Express’ other rail franchises, East Anglia, which runs all trains from Liverpool Street including the Stansted Express, and C2C, which operates all services out of Fenchurch Street to Essex.

“It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging,” Adonis said. But he reassured people that there is no wider crisis is financing Britain’s railways.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT said: “We welcome this renationalisation of the East Coast route but this shouldn’t be a short-term, crisis measure. It should be a longterm solution to the chaos that privatisation has brought.”