Secret fares-hike deal 'utterly counter-productive', says RMT

Publication Date: June 29 2006

THE SECRET deal between ministers and the First group to raise peak-time fares to price people out of overcrowded trains is utterly counter-productive, Britain’s biggest rail union says today.

Following news that the First group was quietly given the nod to impose massive hikes on some afternoon fares in order to ease congestion, RMT general secretary Bob Crow today said:

"The way to ease congestion is to increase capacity, not to hit already overcharged passengers with increases that price them off trains.

"The government has been talking about the environmental need to get people out of their cars and onto the railways, but this will achieve the exact opposite.

"Far better to heed the advice of the transport select committee, which only last month condemned fares policies aimed simply at maximising profits and urged the government to use the next rail white paper to take proper control of fares.

"As it is, after ten years of privatisation open single fares are three times more expensive in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.

"The First Group are having a good laugh at everyone else's expense, because this way they get to line their shareholders' pockets whatever happens.

"If we had a little less secrecy and a little more openness we would have had a chance to head this nonsense off before the damage was done," Bob Crow said.