The damage wrought to Britain’s public services by the Tory/Labour privatisation obsession madness has been summed up with the news that a train from Cornwall to Scotland will cost £1,002, compared to a return flight to Melbourne, Australia, which costs £655.

The shocking price of the train ticket was revealed by a rail expert, Barry Doe, who researched transport costs in Britain. Mr Doe said that the price of travel over long distances has risen three times the rate of inflation since the rail service was privatised in the mid-1990s.

In his research, Mr Doe discovered that the price of the same ticket from Newquay, in Cornwall, to Kyle of Lochalsh, in the Scottish Highlands, could have been purchased as recently as 2008 for “as little as” £486. Even that figure is outrageous when compared to the cost of a return air ticket to Melbourne, Australia.

Mr Doe’s research revealed that the rail journey covers three separate rail firms (First Great Western, Cross Country and Scotrail). Just to add to the confusion, the actual railway track is owned by a fourth company.

The Tories were the first to initiate the privatisation of British Rail in 1993 under John Major’s government. The operations of the British Railways Board (BRB) were broken up and sold off piecemeal in a process which was little short of disastrous.

The Labour government, elected in 1997 on a promise of reversing that disaster, refused to fulfil its election promise and completed the privatisation process with the last remaining sales.

Despite allegedly being “privatised,” all the rail services are still subsidised by public money.  Last year, the eight largest franchises received a total of more than £800 million from the taxpayer.

National Express East Coast received a subsidy of £7 million in the first five months of its franchise, which started in December 2007. South West Trains (SWT) received £28 million this financial year, and is cutting the length of 100 trains in order to reduce its electricity and maintenance bills. Many 10-carriage trains will have only five carriages.

A 2004 report revealed that even Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin train companies are receiving more than £1 billion in subsidies from taxpayers. Under the plan drawn up at the time of privatisation in 1996, Sir Richard’s rail interests should have been making contributions to the Exchequer, rather than the other way round. Virgin received £394 million from taxpayers in 2002–3 and £514 million in 2003–4.

Stagecoach, which successfully bid for South West Trains, the first franchise, is given £27 million per year more in subsidy than the amount required to give a reasonable rate of return.

Other companies likely to face difficulties include National Express’s ScotRail, with an annual shortfall of £63 million, and the two northern regional railways companies — now called First North Western and Northern Spirit — both with shortfalls of over £33m a year.

In July this year, the East Coast rail service, run by National Express, was taken back into state ownership after collapsing.

It is clear that to any objective observer that the privatisation of British Rail has been an unmitigated disaster. The taxpayer has been forced to throw billions into the pockets of private shareholders — cash which should have been used to fix and upgrade the rail network and return British Rail to what it always was: a service delivered in the national interest.