MUCH of the debate about future rail policy concerns the former franchised passenger services, which are currently operated by a mixture of contracted private companies and public sector entities such as the Department for Transport in England and the devolved Scottish and Welsh governments.
The current Conservative Government policy is to retain the private sector operators and ultimately transfer those that are presently sponsored by the DfT back to the private sector when the conditions are right using concession-based contracts.
Labour disagrees and does not see a role for the private sector operating these services. Its policy document‘Getting Britain Moving’states that the passenger services will become the responsibility of the proposed state-owned entity Great British Railways as current contracts expire. Its justification is that bidding costs and the bureaucracy from overseeing the contracts, as well as private sector profit margins, will be avoided and thus save
