Britain’s Labour government will carry out the first renationalization of a private train operator in May, transport minister Heidi Alexander announced on Wednesday, December 4. Returning all the country’s rail operators into public ownership is among the key policies Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched since his party’s election five months ago.
Train passengers in Britain suffer from frequent cancelations of their journeys in addition to high ticket prices. “For too long, the British public has had to put up with rail services that simply don’t work,” Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a statement. “A complex system of private train operators has too often failed its users.”
Alexander said South Western Railway, offering journeys between London and towns in southern England, will be the first to transfer into public ownership in May. This will be followed by two more operators serving English towns and cities by late 2025. Despite the transition, passengers are set to face higher fares from March, based on an annual government calculation.
Poor performance
Alexander has been in the job just a few days, replacing Louise Haigh who resigned as transport secretary on Friday. That followed revelations that Haigh pleaded guilty to a criminal offense before becoming a member of parliament. Haigh also oversaw the progress of Britain’s new high-speed HS2 train line, which has been mired in controversy since the previous Conservative government axed key legs of the railway because of spiraling costs.
Four of the 14 operators in England are already run by the state owing to poor performance in recent years. The main rail operators in Scotland and Wales, where transport policy is handled by the devolved administrations in Edinburgh and Cardiff, are also state-owned.
The government has said it will be able to avoid having to pay compensation fees to rail operators, with all the current contracts set to expire by 2027. The privatization of rail operations took place in the mid-1990s under the Conservative prime minister John Major, but the rail network remained public, run by Network Rail.