DEBATE: Is transport secretary Chris Grayling right to blame the unions for rail fare hikes?

Is transport secretary Chris Grayling right to blame the unions for rail fare hikes?

Duncan Simpson, policy analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says YES.

This week’s fare rise is, quite understandably, infuriating for many commuters. But passenger outrage is being misdirected.

Huge progress has been made since privatisation: passenger numbers and overall satisfaction are up, and the people who actually use the trains are paying for their commutes, rather than the taxpayers who don’t.

The chief barrier to further progress – as the transport secretary has pointed out – is the railway unions.

Take Christmas 2017. Aslef, a train drivers’ union, stopped 18 months of strikes after concerns about passenger safety were addressed and Southern Rail backed down from introducing driverless trains. Yet it also accepted a 28 per cent pay rise. A curious coincidence, or selective memory about the true reasons for the strikes?

Automation and other improvements will not happen overnight. But the sooner we stop the unions putting a gun to the head of commuters and taxpayers with their infantile strikes, the better. And if fares seem out of line with service improvements, we know who to blame.

Andy McDonald, Labour MP and shadow transport secretary, says NO.

It is telling that Chris Grayling wants to shift the blame for his shambolic policy decisions onto the staff who run the railway, but makes no mention of the billions of pounds dished out in salaries and dividends to private train company executives.

Our economy and wider society benefit from the rail network. Roads, for example, would be much more congested without our rail system. And yet the chancellor has frozen fuel duty for more than eight years, at a cost of more than £50bn, while bus and rail fares have soared.

This year’s rail fare hikes are nothing to do with the unions. This is a deliberate political choice from a discredited government to push the cost of our railways onto passengers, and it is bad news for the economy and the environment.

In contrast, the next Labour government will prioritise public transport and take our railways back into public ownership.