My latest press release, on train fares rising by around 20%:
"Meriden’s prospective Labour parliamentary candidate Tom McNeil has hit out at the latest round of rail fare increases which mean thousands of people who commute from places such as Dorridge, Balsall Common and Marston Green face higher commuting costs.
And now he is calling for an urgent review into whether the railways should be taken back into public ownership.
His call comes as fares rise by an average of just over two per cent meaning that they have gone up by around 20 per cent since the coalition government came into power in 2010.
He says:
“With the latest increase in rail fares adding to the financial pressures ordinary people are facing it’s now time to examine whether it would be better if the industry was back in public hands, rather than making millions for the companies which currently own the train companies.
We’ve already seen what an improvement there has been since the profit-making Railtrack was replaced by the non-for-profit Network Rail and now is the time to see if it would be better to have the train companies run in a similar way.
This isn’t a recipe for spending billions of pounds. When the current franchises expire they could come back into public ownership at no cost at all to the taxpayers as happened when the private owners of East Coast trains walked away from the business after failing to make a success of it.”
He added:
“Thousands of people who commute to work from places such as Dorridge, Marston Green and Berkswell are fed up with the rip-off railways and want to see them run in their interest, not those of the rail owners.”
