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The Daily Mirror is today throwing its weight behind growing calls to renationalise the railways.

With ­passengers facing yet another day of disruption, the measure is backed by union bosses, MPs and the public.

Labour’s Andy McDonald said: “The franchise system isn’t working.

“Taking our railways back into public ownership is extremely popular.”

As the train drivers’ strike caused chaos for hundreds of thousands of passengers on some of the UK’s busiest routes, the Mirror has backed union calls to “end the madness”.

Mick Cash, chief of the 80,000-strong RMT union, said: “Privatisation has amounted to two decades of the great train robbery.

“The Tories love state ownership of the railways, as long as it is any state, but Britain. And passengers foot the bill with the highest fares in Europe for the worst services while profits are siphoned off to subsidise fares in France and Germany. It is time to end this madness.”

Manuel Cortes, of the 22,300-strong TSSA union added: “Britain’s rail passengers are locked into a criminally abusive relationship with train operating companies.

(Image: London News Pictures Ltd)

“When you pay for a seat and have to stand, when you pay for a ticket and the train doesn’t stop at your station, when you pay for a season ticket but are delayed daily then frankly, you are being robbed blind by privateers whose interest is in fleecing passengers not delivering them.

“I am delighted the Mirror supports the reintegration of our railways through public ownership. This is not something that is just welcomed and timely - our country is crying out for it.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn revaled plans to bring the railways back into public ownership earlier this year.

Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald said: “The franchise system isn’t working and has been failing people on these services for a long time. People understand this and taking our ­railways back into public ownership is extremely popular.

“Privatisation has produced an inefficient and expensive service. It is the passengers and taxpayers who pay the price and it is about time we brought this to an end and put fairness and value into the way we run our railways.”

Yesterday more than 300,000 commuters were hit as a 48-hour drivers strike by Southern Railway drivers got under way.

(Image: London News Pictures Ltd)

It affected routes linking parts of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire with London with people warned not to travel.

Platforms, including at London Victoria, were crammed as commuters battled to get to work on any service available.

Talks to resolve the dispute will be held between Southern Railway bosses and union leaders at the conciliation service Acas today. Another 24-hour strike is planned for Friday.

They are locked in a long-running dispute about driver-only trains which they argue will put passengers’ safety at risk if guards lose their ‘safety critical’ role of opening and closing doors.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, who is facing calls to resign over the crisis, condemned the strikes as “union militancy at its worst”.

Labour’s Mr McDonald said passengers using Southern spend on average 17% of their median earnings on rail travel compared to the 7% paid by passengers in France and Germany.

He said state-owned foreign railways ere now running our services and “extracting value and profit” from the system. Mr McDonald added: “It’s a rip-off railway system writ large and people have reached the end of their teether,” he said.

Mick Whelan, leader of Aslef, said privatisation was a “spectacular failure” and recently told MPs that £1 billion a year could be saved by bringing the railways back under public ownership.

Labour MP Clive Efford, a member of the Transport select committee, said the focus should be on passengers and the quality of the service, not shareholders. He accused the Tories of “ pure political dogma” by refusing to look at public ownership models when franchises came up for renewal.

(Image: Getty)

‘They are determined to privatise everything. They would privatise Network Rail if they could afford it. It is another example of the Government putting politics before rail users.”

Meanwhile, David Brown, the chief executive of Go-Ahead, which owns Southern Rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), who waived his bonus as the company reported profits of nearly £100m this year, still banked £2.1m.

Three Go-Ahead franchises — Govia Thameslink Railway, Southeastern and Great Northern — being voted the UK’s worst in survey for consumer group Which?.

In Network Rail’s most recent data on punctuality and reliability the GTR franchise scored a 80.7% average, lower than any franchise in England or Wales. The group had the most delays — 62,000 — caused by lack of staff.

As normally busy railway stations were deserted while passengers worked from home or struggled to work by other routes, the human cost of the walkout was revealed.

Angry passengers took to Twitter to complain of yet more disruption with many blaming the rail firm and not the unions. They complain that the service is poor every day - not just during strike action.

And it emerged that dozens of Southern rail commuters have been forced to quit their jobs or move house after enduring months of travel chaos.

(Image: PA)

Jim Boyden, a management consultant, from Shoreham, West Sussex,said hewill be forced to stay in a London hotel until Thursday because of the lack of trains between his home and Victoria.

The 38-year-old shared a photo of his one-year-old son Zac and wrote an emotional tweet to Southern: “Because of your strike, I am unable to travel home until Thursday and read him and his sister a story. Because of your strike, we will not discover what animal is hiding in his favourite book tonight, or tomorrow night.”

Despite Mr Grayling blaming the unions for months of disruption, Aslef and the RMT said rail ministers had been preventing Southern from negotiating properly.

Mr Whelan accused the Transport Secretary of being “less than honest on all counts”.

He said: “Earlier this year Peter Wilkinson, the £265,000 a year director of rail passenger services, said on a public platform that the aim of the Department for Transport is to force train drivers - men and women he derisively referred to as ‘muppets’ - ‘out of my industry’.

“Mr Wilkinson said he was determined to provoke industrial confrontation and, indeed, was looking forward to ‘punch-ups’ with trade unions.

“The strikes this week are not, whatever Mr Grayling tries to suggest, politically motivated. We have a trade dispute with GTR/Southern, and only a poor government would seek to spin it any other way. I think their motives are clear.”

Rail experts have estimated that £1.2 billion a year, which is lost to the railways thrpugh privatisation, is equivalent to a fares cut of 18%. Instead fares will rise by more than double inflation to 2.3% from January 2.

(Image: Getty)

Since rail privatisation in 1995 up to 2015, all tickets (regulated and unregulated) have increased by an average of 117%, or by 24% in real terms.

Official figures show that all but one of the private train operators in the UK receive more in subsidies than they return in the form of franchise payments to the government. In 2013–14, the government contributed £3.8bn to the UK rail industry.

HM Chief Inspector of Railways Ian Prosser said in a recent letter to the Transport Select Committee: “Trains with doors operated by drivers (known in the industry as Driver Only Operation) have been in operation in Great Britain for more than 30 years.

“ORR has scrutinised this approach, and our inspectors are satisfied that, with suitable equipment, proper procedures and competent staff in place, it is a safe method of working.”

The cost of taking railways back into public ownership has not been estimated as it would depend on compensation for rail firms.

But some experts say this could be done at no cost to the taxpayer as the train companies have time-limited franchises and when they have expired the government could take them back at no cost.

Most of the franchises expire during this parliament, which runs until May 2020. The exceptions are East Coast (2023), Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern, Chiltern (2021), and Essex Thameside - branded C2C - (2029).

Last night a Southern spokesman said:”These strikes are wholly unjustified and we must find a way forward.

“We want to talk to Aslef’s leadership to try and find a way to resolve this dispute. We have invited them to meet and we hope we’ll be able to begin those talks soon.”

They grab £4.4billion more a year

When John Major privatised the railways, travellers were told prices would fall.

The then Transport Secretary, John MacGregor, told MPs in 1993: “I see no reason fares should increase faster under the new system. In many cases, they will be more flexible and will be reduced.”

Yet the cost of some tickets has risen by more than 250% in the 23 years since.

A single from London to Manchester has gone up by 232%, from £50 in 1994 to £166 today. And an “anytime” return between the two cities has increased by 243% from £96 in 1995 to £329 in 2015.

Figures from the Office for Rail and Road show between 1995 and 2015 the average rise across all fares was 117.2% – 24% in real terms, adjusted for inflation.

While ticket revenue has soared from £3.2billion then to £7.7billion in 2013, the railways have also received more than £3billion each year in public subsidy.

The figures below are based on peak time open-ended return fares.

Top ten fare increases between 1995 and 2015

From London:

Bristol £57 (fare 1995) £197 - (2105) = 246 % (percentage increase)

Manchester (fare 1995) £96 - (2105) = £329 243 %

Liverpool (fare 1995) £93 - (2105) £309 = 232 %

Cardiff (fare 1995) £70 - (2105) £218 = 216 %

Birmingham (fare 1995) - (2105) £55 £168 = 211 %

Glasgow (fare 1995) - (2105) £130 £361 = 178 %

Nottingham (fare 1995) - (2105) £59 £160.50p = 172 %

Leeds (fare 1995) £96 - (2105) £249 = 159 %

Newcastle (fare 1995) £112 £308 148 %

Edinburgh (fare 1995) £130 £313 141 %