In favour of nationalisation? Take a look at Network Rail

We don’t hear enough about Network Rail these days. By that I mean that the entity recently described by the Sunday Times as ‘synonymous with incompetence and delays’ doesn’t receive anything like the abuse it deserves for failing to provide the infrastructure essential for a 21st-century railway. I refer you to the Crossrail project, in which the inability of new trains to connect with old Network Rail signalling systems is one reason for the delayed opening that has become a major national embarrassment. I invite you to observe LNER’s expensive new fleet of Azuma bullet trains that were due to launch in December but delayed by incompatibility with Network Rail signals. And of course if you’re a London commuter, you’ll have your own observation of the frequency with which track and signal failures ruin your day.

But I’ll bet you don’t know who controls Network Rail, or whether it sits in the public or private sector or (as Labour ministers pretended when they confiscated its assets from Railtrack shareholders in 2002) somewhere in between. The answer is that Labour’s sham was unwound several years ago, so that Network Rail is now wholly nationalised, its debts sitting on the Treasury balance sheet and its sole shareholder Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling. One consequence of this change is that, when £1.5 billion-worth of Network Rail’s property was sold to private equity earlier this year (to the distress of railway-arch businesses whose rents shot up in consequence), the Treasury snaffled most of the proceeds as a contribution to deficit reduction, rather than allowing them to be reinvested in overdue rail upgrades.

Why does this matter, apart from the irritation for rail passengers? Because John McDonnell has plans if he comes to power, as well he might, to nationalise utilities ranging from Thames Water to National Grid, with sub-market compensation for shareholders, and to take train franchises into public hands — and voter opinion on this issue is reportedly 80 per cent behind him.