Train tickets: Will Labour’s plan make them cheaper?

From just after the Second World War until the 1990s the UK rail system was fully nationalised, with the government owning the rail networks and all of the trains.

The industry was privatised in the 1990s, with services run by a variety of rail operating companies.

However, there are degrees of nationalisation. During the pandemic, the government in effect took control of the railway, with most train companies in England moving onto contracts where they get a fixed fee to run services, and the taxpayer carries the financial risk.

In Scotland and Wales, the network is owned by the UK government and run by the devolved governments, but the trains are leased. There are some exceptions to this in Wales where the local government also owns some of the trains and the railways.

In Northern Ireland, the system is fully nationalised.

Under Labour’s plans, a new arm’s-length body, Great British Railways (GBR), would take over the service contracts currently held by private firms in England as they expire in the future.

However, GBR would continue to lease rolling stock from private firms, and the there is no plan to nationalise rail freight companies.

Whether it will make the trains run better “comes down to how they’re going to fund things”, says Peter Simmons, deputy editor at International Railway Journal.

“The issue under the old days of nationalisation was that the government of the day wasn’t prepared to fund things in a way that allowed major construction projects to move forward.”