Forget nationalising the railways, we should mutualise them

By Nadeem Backus

It’s a common story. Every morning I and millions of other people get to their local train station and board a train on their way to work, sometimes we get a seat, sometimes the train doesn’t even turn up. That’s Arriva Trains Wales for you. I’m sure we could utilise our free market rights and go to a different travel operator but unfortunately there is something lacking in the current setup, something that is essential to stop private companies taking the piss out of its unwilling consumer base: choice.

Choice is something that doesn’t exist in our post-privatisation railway network, and the notion of different companies running on the same lines sounds ever so slightly chaotic. This leaves us with only one option to save ourselves from this frustrating Tory-induced mess: to make running a railway company about quality of service, rather than profit.

Since the Government still pours money into the railways, and since Network Rail owns the track and HSBC owns the trains and the same guys from the last franchise seem to be driving the trains and running the stations (they do get a new uniform though), could it be that the companies that win franchises to run services have a licence to print money? They appear to provide a nominal level of service with no competition to stimulate improvements in customer experiences.

So with these truths in mind, we can clearly see that this is just a gravy train (pun intended) for the host of companies that make a living off the Government and that are sucking money out of the public’s wallet. In fact they suck the money out twice – first when we pay our taxes and again when we pay for the poor services we have no choice but to utilise.

I’m proposing a better way, something that is more palatable than nationalisation, yet will give the people who use the trains the right to be part of the organisation that is running them, providing the only impetus possible to improve the system as well as customer/stakeholder satisfaction.

Mutualisation would provide many of the benefits of nationalisation, whilst also being able to exist within the framework of the current settlement of the railways. Firms would be able to bid for franchises, and compete with other companies, and whatever metric by which the selection is made I am betting that a mutual would be able to out-bid any company on the basis of quality and customer satisfaction.

The other great thing about mutualisation is that since it will generally be owned by the people who use it, quality of service will be paramount – it will matter more to them than a dividend of the profits of the company, and the need for investment in the railways will become clear and understood by the stakeholders. No more will these franchises humour their customers with advertising and false assertions of quality. The service will become customer focused, and will change from being a money extraction exercise for large companies to an organisation run to perform a specific task well.

So there you have it – if Labour were to role with this idea the Welsh valleys would be a much happier place at 8:10 in the morning.