The all-party Transport Committee of the British House of Commons has issued a report which condemns the privatization of the UK rail system and calls for the creation of a new government agency very similar to the former British Rail.
The Transport Committee’s report pulls no punches. It says services provided by private train operators are “poor”; that the “vast majority” of private train operators have been unable to improve efficiency; that the British government has no practical control over “enormous sums” of public money paid to the private railways; and that the performance of the entity responsible for maintaining the rail network has been “scandalous”.
In arguing for creation of a new public-sector rail agency, the report by the all-party group of senior MPs says the record of British Rail in the 1980s showed that public subsidies could be reduced, financial targets met, investment increased and service quality improved.
Since privatisation, the British rail system has been plagued by a series of deadly rail accidents, increasing costs and sharp declines in service quality.
To read more, go to the report of the Transport Committee in the following PDF file.
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