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Why ScotRail stops short of public ownership
VINCE MILLS exposes the SNP’s agenda of keeping the train service in private hands to comply with EU directives
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WHO could blame RMT’s general secretary Mick Cash when he said: “We have long campaigned for the Scottish government to utilise its existing powers and take Scotland’s rail passenger services into public ownership and today’s announcement represents a clear victory for this campaign.”
Except that the Scottish government has not taken ScotRail into public ownership. Instead, a publicly owned “operator of last resort” (OLR) will take over the ScotRail franchise in 12 months’ time when the Abellio franchise ends in March next year.
What’s the difference? The difference is that although the SNP is complaining about the current franchising model, it is committed to competition in rail services because it wants an independent Scotland to join the EU, and in the EU it is obligatory for member countries to allow competition for rail services.
In fact, the whole point of OLR was to allow the private sector back in to running the particular franchise in trouble after the state had moved in to run failing private-sector efforts.
Consider the publicly owned LNER, also set up on the OLR basis. It took over East Coast rail services that had previously been run by National Express and then by a consortium of Virgin Trains and Stagecoach after they all failed. GNER, the franchise holder prior to National Express, had also failed.
Despite that history of failures, the Department for Transport planned to launch a new body taking responsibility for both track and train operation last year. But of course, the pandemic put paid to that. The DfT had to agree to suspend all of Britain’s rail franchise agreements to avoid train companies collapsing, at a cost of up to £3.5 billion — yet another example of the state supporting private enterprise, not only ideologically but materially.
The SNP’s actions in Scotland are hardly any different. It makes no secret of its desire to get Scotland back into the EU the moment we leave Britain. Here’s the rub. The year of 2021 is the European Commission’s “year of rail.” Part of the EC celebration is that 2021 will be the first full year in which the rules agreed under the Fourth Railway Package will be implemented throughout the EU.
What is at the heart of the Fourth Railway Package? Here it is in the words of the International Railway Journal: “Companies will be allowed to offer competing commercial services or to bid for public service contracts, which account for over 90 per cent of rail journeys in the EU and will become subject to mandatory tendering.”
Or in other words, franchising. What the SNP has done with ScotRail is nothing more than a holding operation pending the day when, if the party is successful, we will be back in the arms of the neoliberal EU, with state aid prohibited and rail franchising obligatory. As Jim Royle would say: “Public ownership my …”
Vince Mills is joint secretary of Radical Options for Scotland and Europe.
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