This afternoon MPs are debating the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill – which will see private rail franchises taken into public ownership as they expire.
Today sees the Labour Party begin the process of renationalising the railways after more than 30 years of failure following privatisation.
This afternoon MPs are debating the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill – which will see private rail franchises taken into public ownership as they expire.
Transport Secretary Louise Haigh is set to oversee the biggest overhaul of Britain’s rail network since the 1990s, which her allies say is part of a “radical agenda which has not been picked up in the media” and proves doubters of Labour’s socialist credentials wrong.
Haigh told The Independent: “This bill demonstrates the sheer scale of our ambition to rebuild Britain, putting transport at the heart of our plans for change.
“As ‘passenger-in-chief’, I said we’d move fast and fix things and that’s exactly what we’re doing with this radical legislative agenda.”
Support for nationalising the railways has grown in recent years, with fully three quarters of Britons (76%) saying that railway companies should be run in the public sector, according to YouGov.
The Labour Party has pledged to renationalise the railways within five years of coming to power.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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