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Our privatised train service is one of the big scandals of our time. British Rail wasn’t perfect. But the principle of being publicly-owned and accountable was – and still is.

Nothing highlights that more than the scandal of the East Coast route from London to Scotland.

When I inherited the privatised train system as Transport Secretary in 1997, it was a mess. British Rail, which had looked after the trains and track, had been abolished and the two functions split.

The train routes went as separate franchises to the highest bidder. And the track was controlled by a private company called Railtrack .

I had two options. Nationalise, or try to make it work better. If I’d nationalised I’d have had to give billions to the private train firms.

Instead I introduced the Strategic Rail Authority to ensure they met standards and performance targets.

(Image: Getty)

My greater concern was with Railtrack. This was borne out when it became clear they were using private firms, which were doing a poor job, to do track maintenance.

This led to the appalling disaster at Potters Bar that killed seven passengers – bringing Railtrack’s collapse and Labour replacing it with the non-profit Network Rail, which took maintenance in house.

Potters Bar proved you should never put profit before people.

The fact is, when a government takes control, we can deliver better. When private companies couldn’t deliver the High Speed Link (HS1) for the Channel Tunnel, I took it into public ownership and we delivered on time and on budget.

(Image: PA)

The same happened with the East Coast route. National Express and GNER both ended up handing back the franchise because they couldn’t make enough profit. So the last Labour government took it back into public ownership.

In the next six years, East Coast Trains delivered £1billion in profit back to the taxpayer. Over the same period, Virgin West Coast – running a similar London to Scotland service – delivered just a third of that to its shareholders.

Publicly-run railways are more efficient and cost-effective, and deliver a profit back to the people.

But in 2015, the Tories rushed through the East Coast sell-off to Virgin East Coast Trains , 90 per cent owned by Stagecoach, on an eight-year franchise.

This week Transport Secretary Chris “Failing” Grayling revealed they’re ending the franchise three years early as Virgin East Coast isn’t making enough profit.

Instead it’ll be a “public private partnership”. But it also means Virgin East Coast gets out of making £2billion in payments.

Which means more of our taxpayers’ money will subsidise the new East Coast private “partner”. We already subsidise these firms to the tune of £3billion a year, and rail prices have soared by 32 per cent since 2010.

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That’s twice as much as pay has risen. And now the train operators want to raise fares by the maximum allowed 3.6 per cent in January.

It’s a modern day Great Train Robbery and every taxpayer and passenger is getting ripped off.

So let’s take back control, one by one, as the franchises lapse.

It’ll give us a better and more strategic train service that can keep fares down and serve the passengers – and not the shareholders.