Dugher promises “more public control” over railways and says “privatisation was a disaster”

Michael Dugher has given a strident and fascinating interview to George Eaton over at the New Statesman, in which the Shadow Transport Secretary promises that there will be “more public control” over railways and slams privatisation of the NHS as a “disaster”. Dugher goes on to say, “I’m adamant about putting the whole franchising system, as it stands today, in the bin…The public sector will be running sections of our rail network as soon as we can do that”.

That chimes with what many who attended the party’s National Policy Forum (NPF) meeting in Milton Keynes last year – where the rail policy was confirmed – were saying at the time, but it’s significantly stronger than what Dugher’s predecessor Mary Creagh was saying when she was Shadow Transport Secretary. In fact, it’s far closer to what Maria Eagle – who held the Transport brief before Creagh, and was a known supporter of publicly owned railways – was saying.

Labour’s position – post NPF – is for there to be a “public sector comparator” in the system, and from what Dugher has said, that public sector operator will be running trains ASAP if a Labour government is elected. Here’s what Dugher had to say to the Statesman:

On what Labour’s public sector operator would look like:

“It’s not going back to a 70s, 80s model of British Rail but I think you can do far more to make some really big changes and that’s why I’m talking about a public sector operator, really, really important.” 

“I’m going to be honest and proud about this: I want there to be more public control of the railways and we should just say it because, actually, that’s what the public think as well. We’ve talked about how the only people who have no voice at the moment in the running of the railways are the travelling public, the passengers themselves. 

On the failures of the current system:

“What you have at the moment is something that’s rather ironically named the Rail Delivery Group, which is basically Network Rail and the private companies, the TOCs (Train Operation Companies) and the freight and they get together and they stitch-up the running of the railways and they do it with our money. Network Rail’s on our books, there’s huge taxpayer subsidies and investment going into the railways, but the industry want to stitch it up themselves and we’re not having that anymore.” 

On why Labour isn’t frightened of intervening in the market:

“This is not like 1997, that whole deference to markets and the private sector, that’s gone too.” 

“Every time you get one of the boneheads at Stagecoach attacking Labour’s policy for wanting to regulate the buses, that’s every day they put Labour’s policy out there and that’s every day which gives us an opportunity to win the election because we can win this argument. I’ve likened Stagecoach to the energy firms, this is a broken market. You’ve had 2,000 bus routes cut since 2010 and we’re talking about a really important, vital local public service as well, so our policy on buses, or whether it’s on rail, these are about big changes.” 

You can read the full interview here.