Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill receives Royal Assent

Head Office Circular: NP/288/24

28^th November 2024

 

To: The Secretary

ALL RAIL BRANCHES

REGIONAL COUNCILS

 

 

 

Dear Colleague,

 

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill receives Royal Assent 

 

Dear colleague, 

 

I am writing to let you know that thirty-one years after passing the 1993 Railways Act by the then Conservative Government which privatised Great Britain’s railways including rail passenger services, the Labour Government’s Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill has today received Royal Assent, meaning it has now completed the parliamentary process and become law. 

 

This significant occasion is a victory for the years of campaigning by RMT through successive governments and everyone involved in supporting renationalisation of our railways. 

 

The legal effect of this legislation is to reverse the presumption about who can run rail passenger services to mean that the default position is that all rail passenger franchises managed by the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments must be run in the public sector. 

 

In Scotland, the ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper franchises are already run by the Scottish Government in public ownership and similarly the Transport for Wales franchise is run in public ownership by the Welsh Government. The Bill makes provision for these rail services to remain permanently in public sector operation. 

 

There are four Department for Transport managed Train Operators (LNER, Southeastern, Northern and Transpennine Express) already operated in public ownership via the Operator of Last Resort (OLR). The new legislation gives the UK Government powers to bring the other train operating companies it manages (Avanti West Coast, C2C, Chiltern, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Greater Anglia, GTR, GWR, Southern, SWR, West Midlands Railway) into public ownership as their contracts expire. The Government has said it intends to bring all these services into public ownership within the next three years and has said it will shortly publish a timetable for this process. When more details are available regarding this transfer into public ownership we will contact members. 

 

The Government will now be bringing forward further legislation to establish Great British Railways (GBR) the organisation which will absorb Network Rail and the TOCs and will be consulting on the structure of GBR. I will be providing more information on this shortly. 

 

Furthermore, the Union will be continuing to campaign to ensure that GBR moves to end outsourcing, absorbs open access operations and rail freight, ends the profiteering of the rolling stock leasing companies and develops publicly owned rolling stock ownership and manufacturing and to continue to campaign for the complete nationalisation of the railways. 

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Michael Lynch

General Secretary