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Labour will pledge to renationalise the railways if elected, in what the party will call the “biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation.”
A Labour government would expect to transfer rail networks to public ownership within its first term by folding existing private passenger rail contracts into a new body as they expire, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh will say at a launch event on Thursday.
The plan will nationalise the network “without the taxpayer paying a penny in compensation costs”, the party will say.
The Government’s own proposals for rail reform, published in a draft Bill in February, include the creation of a new public sector body named Great British Railways (GBR) to hold responsibility for rail infrastructure and awarding contracts to operate trains.
But a Labour government would create a “unified, publicly owned, accountable and arm’s length” version of GBR …