General British politics discussion thread

The problem is though, for all the faults of the privatisation system in the UK, giving the DfT more control is not the answer either because the DfT's micromanagement behind the scenes (which Joe public doesn't see and blames the operators for) is a large part of the problem as they have no clue whatsoever what they are doing.

In the last 12-18 months the DfT have got to the point where they run pretty much every line and make almost every single decision, small, medium or large about the train service in the UK, yet the operators, who have even less say since Covid than British Rail did when they existed, get the flack because it's politically convenient for it to be that way.

We've recently saw a modern, reliable fleet scrapped after less than half their service life because of the recent clueless rolling stock policies of the DfT and may be very soon likely to see the most reliable train class almost every year for the last 15 years scrapped also after half it's working life, because the DfT wants to save a few quid by order of central government. That's how dysfunctional things have got.

The privatised system in the UK in reality ended 18 months ago. Whilst private companies are still technically running the trains, they have no decision making power practically at all anymore operationally as the DfT dictates and they follow. It's honestly the worst of both worlds but what it does allow the DfT to do is to deflect the blame onto all their failings for someone else.

I'd be all for the UK to have a proper, publicly owned railway, but everything I have seen over the past 18 months shows that whilst the idea is all well and good, the DfT in the UK are even less adept at delivering a proper rail service than the so called evil privateers.

The DfT is fully in control of fares for most of the country for a while now as due to COVID almost all of the train operators are on essentially management contracts where the department calls the shots on practically everything and they just obey.

If you're talking about trains between Leeds and London, well the fare for that route pre COVID was set by LNER, who are run by a subsidiary of the Department for Transport who could have done something between 2018 and COVID, but chose not to, so yes this is down to the DfT.

If the UK had a proper National Rail Operator, with proper rail people who knew what they were doing I'd all be for such a single system to replace what came before but the simple fact is that whilst the Dft might not be profit driven, they are absolutely clueless when it comes to running a railway.

In the last 18 months, all we have seen since the DfT have taken more of a hands on role, is that they've solved none of the existing problems, haven't done anything meaningful about fares and simply added to the problems that were already and are employing an absolutely ridiculous rolling stock management and allocation system to try and teach the ROSCOs a lesson, regardless of the impact that it has on train services and passengers.

You don't have to take my word for it, the National Audit Office investigated the DfT's two massive rolling stock programmes that they took over from operators thinking they know better (ThamesLink and Intercity Express Program) and found them to be completely incompetent at managing such contracts.

As I said, privatisation of the UK Rail system didn't work, but anyone thinking that the answer is to give the mandarins in the DfT more power is completely mistaken. The DfT themselves are a large part of the problem because they are full of career politicians and civil servants who have no idea at all about the railway. Most of them probably never even use the train.