End the plunder says RMT, as Stagecoach rail profits leap 16 per cent

Publication Date: June 28 2006

THE PLUNDER of Britain’s rail industry must be ended, Britain’s biggest rail union says today as the Stagecaoch group announced rail-sector profits up 16 per cent to £58 million.

As Stagecoach revealed group operating profits of £156 million, up from £153m, with bus operating profits up from £87.7 million to £88.6 million and rail profits up from £50 million to £58 million, RMT general secretary Bob Crow said:

"Every penny made by the train-operating companies is money taken out the the railway industry, and every penny comes ultimately from the pockets of taxpayers and fare-payers.

"The privatised rail operators are getting three times the public subsidy that British Rail got.

"South West Trains got £38.6 million in public money in 2004-05, while the Virgin West Coast and Cross Country franchises, which Stagecoach has a 49 per cent stake in, got more than £200 million between them.

"If Stagecoach can afford to increase dividend payouts to its shareholders by another 12 pecrent, then our members in both rail and bus subsidiaries should be able to look forward to substantial pay rises in the next pay round.

"The private sector remains a massive drain on the railway industry, and the only way to ensure that the public money going in will not simply be sucked out again as profits is to bring the whole industry back into public ownership," Bob Crow said