Transport Secretary failed to commit to cheaper rail fares from the transfer of train companies into public ownership next year.
This will happen to South Western Railway, c2c and Greater Anglia but Heidi Alexander signalled that she expected the move to reduce cancellations and late trains.
“The primary aim of this is to improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellation, the waste and the inefficiency that we’ve seen over the last 30 years,” Heidi Alexander told BBC Breakfast.
“We’ve had private train-operating companies running train services in this country over the last few decades, and it clearly hasn’t worked.”
She said bringing the operators into public ownership was a “first step” to a “more integrated and unified railway”, and pointed to the impact seen by bringing LNER and Southeastern into public ownership.
“So if you look at LNER for example, we have reduced the number of trains that are cancelled because of staff shortages to basically zero, and we reduced other cancellations to about 5%.
“Southeastern, which is also now in public ownership, is in the top five of train operators for punctuality.”
Ms Alexander could not say what the cost of nationalising rail operators will be, but said it would be “a fraction” of what is currently paid in management fees to train companies.
She told LBC radio: “So it will be a fraction of the costs, for example – to bring them over and also sort of set up Great British Railways – a fraction of what we’re paying in terms of the management fees.
“At the moment, we pay roughly about £150 million pounds in management fees to the train operating companies.”
Ms Alexander said she did not have a specific figure but added the setup cost would be less than the £150 million current management figure.
Today’s announcement will see services across southern England and East Anglia come back into public control by autumn 2025.
The Government said it delivers on Labour’s manifesto commitment to bring contracts with existing rail operators into public ownership as they expire without costing taxpayers a penny in compensation.
