Greens respond to Labour on railway nationalisation

 
A letter from 30 Labour PPCs to the Observer has been prominently featured today and has earnt top billing on the BBC news and current affairs programmes this morning. The letter calls on Ed Miliband to make public ownership of the railways a key part of Labour policy going into the general election.

Rupert Read the Green Party spokesperson for Transport issued the following response:

After many years of being in government, sitting and watching the privatised rail monopolies rake in huge profits, are Labour about to do something? Or at least "consider" doing something?

The Labour Party might finally be starting to catch up with the Green Party, on this key issue

The truth is that the British public have been down this road before with the Labour party and they have been let down time and again. You simply can't trust Labour to do what they say they are going to do."

Caroline Lucas MP has a bill in the House of Commons right now calling for exactly this. Labour had more than a decade in government to do something about this and they didn't lift a finger to help.

This is a flagship Green Party policy; Caroline Lucas has made it central to her agenda; the media really ought to report that Labour is hardly engaging in original thinking: simply stumbling falteringly toward something that voters can already plump for in unadulterated form by voting Green.

The letter from the Labour PPCs come as another poll shows the Greens overtaking the Liberal Democrats in the European Elections. The Green Party is on course to return its highest ever number of MEPs on May 22^nd.

Demonstrate for a People's Budget: Downing Street Wednesday

Greens: Bring rail back into public hands following more fare rises

As rail companies in England announced fare rises for 2014,  commuters and their household budgets received more bad news.

Firms are allowed to put fares up by much as 2% above the agreed price-increase figure which, for 2014, is 3.1%.

Among the fares announced were annual seasons for travel between Reading in Berkshire and London, which is up 3.23% to  £4,088. and travellers from Dover Priory and Deal to London see annual fares rising 3.04% to £5,012.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said:

This latest price hike is going to put a dampener on many commuters' Christmas, and be a boost to support for Green MP Caroline Lucas's private members' bill calling for the railways to be brought back into public hands.

Travellers face overcrowded journeys as standard on too many routes, on the most crowded trains in Europe.

They face immensely costly journeys, and they know that more than £1bn of their cash is going into the 'black hole' of privatisation inefficiencies, plus billions more in declared and undeclared
government subsidies.

Casual users face a confusing fare structure that often leaves them paying more than they need or trapped with penalty fares due to confusion.

It's time to say enough is enough: privatisation has failed, we need to bring the railways back into public hands.

Green Party condemns Royal Mail sell-off and supports CWU resistance

Responding to the announcement yesterday by Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable that a majority stake in the Royal Mail would be sold off by the government, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said:

The privatisation of Royal Mail is the latest ideologically driven, disastrous step by this government which is doing nothing to start the essential reshaping of the British economy, but is determined to hand over the last bits of the family silver to multinational companies.

The approach of privatisation has proved disastrous for our water system, disastrous for our electricity and gas supplies, and particularly disastrous for our railways. Yet still the push towards it, from Margaret Thatcher through Tony Blair to David Cameron continues.

Green MP Caroline Lucas, with her private members' bill to bring the railways back into public ownership is leading the way to reverse this trend. What we need is for the Labour Party to show that it has broken with its New Labour past and back it. That would add a sense of verisimilitude to Labour’s criticisms in parliament today of the Royal Mail move.

Bennett offered congratulations to the CWU and the Royal Mail workers, who are resisting the government's attempts to buy them off with a share handout to staff:
 
They understand that privatisation is a devil's pact that inevitably results in damage to staff pay and conditions, cuts to services, and profits stuffed into shareholder's pockets, all too often through the conduit of tax havens.

Greens back rail fare protests and renew call for renationalisation

Caroline Lucas, Green MP and other Sussex Greens this morning

 Green Party leader Natalie Bennett pledged the party's support  this morning's demonstrations against the further significant rise in rail fares as Green Brighton and Hove MP, Caroline Lucas, joined in the protests.. British rail fares have been hiked for 10 years in succession and our trains are now the most expensive in Europe.

 

Natalie said: 

Households already struggling with fast-rising rents, food prices and energy costs are going to suffer a new blow. Many households that consider themselves middle class, who only a few years ago were comfortably off, are now struggling, finding themselves able to make ends meet only by extreme economies ranging from skipping meals to unhealthily cutting heating.

Many others have already been priced off the rails – forced into convoluted, long bus journeys or into their cars when they’d rather not be, adding to congestion on our roads and increasing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Natalie added: 

All of this only highlights the sense of renationalising the railways, to save us the £1.2 billion additional costs caused by the fragmentation and profit-taking in the current system, as the Rebuilding Rail LINK report last year showed.

Privatisation has also given us a fragile, unreliable system in which fewer than 70% of trains run on time, i.e. within a minute, the measure used in much of the rest of Europe.

 There were, however, broader issues:.

Britons have the longest commutes in Europe, reflecting the concentration of job opportunities in larger centres, and high house prices, rents and the shortage of social housing.

We need to cut the cost of train travel, but we also need to reduce people’s need to travel.

This is one more reason why we need to look to rebuild strong local economies, promoting small businesses and cooperatives  that are growing food, making the goods we need and provide services on a local scale.

 The Green Party is backing the Fair Fares campaign which is supported by a coalition of rail passenger groups, rail unions and transport campaigners.

Greens call for renationalisation of all UK railways

 The  UK’s busiest intercity rail route should be taken back into public ownership, after a debacle which provides further proof that all UK railways should be renationalised, the Green Party believes.
 

The Department for Transport announced this morning that it will scrap its decision to award the West Coast mainline franchise to FirstGroup – at a cost of £40m.

Green Party transport spokesman Alan Francis said: ‘This debacle is further evidence that the privatised rail system is not fit for purpose – with passengers having to foot the bill for an increasingly expensive service and, as we have claimed for many years, that the franchise system itself is fatally flawed.’

The 13-year franchise was awarded to FirstGroup ahead of three other firms, including Virgin, which already runs it and will continue to until December 9. 

Mr Francis said: ‘The £40m cost to the taxpayer is to compensate all four firms for their expenses during the failed bidding process. However this is a tiny fraction of the money wasted on the privatised railways every year. Rail privatisation costs passengers and taxpayers £1.2bn per year more than it did in the last years of the nationalised system.’

The DfT‘s announcement came just 24 hours before a High Court challenge against the decision by Virgin Rail was due to begin.

And its decision leaves the franchise’s 31m passengers not knowing who will run the services they rely on from December 10 this year.

Mr Francis added: ‘The Green Party wants the franchise to be run by the government-owned Directly Operated Railways (DOR) from December 10th. DOR already operates the East Coast franchise, after the previous private operator withdrew prematurely, and as other franchises expire they too should be taken over by DOR. That way, we will get back a publicly owned and integrated railway without having to pay millions of pounds compensation to private operators.’

The Green Party stands for the renationalisation of all rail services in the UK, to ensure the best deal for rail users and all taxpayers. 

Since privatisation, public subsidy for rail services has doubled,while fares are higher than in any other country in Europe. 

Rail is vital to the UK’s transport needs, and this latest debacle shows that not only are private companies unable to deliver a cost effective, reliable service to the public, even the system by which franchises are awarded does not work.

Privatisation has failed the UK, and it’s time to bring a vital public service back into public ownership.