Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
Mayor of London
City Hall
Kamal Chunchie Way
London E16 1ZE
18th October 2024
Dear Sadiq,
Future of the Elizabeth Line and London Overground
We’re writing to you jointly to urge you to take both the Elizabeth Line and London Overground into public ownership.
The new Labour government has moved fast to fix our railways, recognising that privatisation has been a costly, inefficient failure that has resulted in fragmented and expensive services for passengers. Legislation will soon be on the books that makes public ownership the default option for the rest of the UK’s railways.
The government’s own impact assessment on its legislation spells out the benefits that passengers and taxpayers will see, saying that “there will be significant savings to government’ and noting that ‘public ownership represents an opportunity to improve [passenger rail service…by removing the commercially driven focus on individual operators profit it increases scope for decisions to be made with reference to optimising for the whole rail system, rather than individual commercial interests.”
We agree and we want to see TfL and London’s rail network benefit in the same way. Londoners deserve every penny of fare revenue to go back into their network rather than flowing out into shareholders pockets through dividends to the same operators who
have failed our national rail network. Last year, MTR paid out a dividend to £7.6 million, equivalent to a 2.4% cut in Elizabeth Line fares. In the same year, Arriva Rail London paid a dividend of £9.6 million, equivalent to a 4.4% cut in Overground fares. Londoners deserve the benefits that public ownership and integration will bring to the coordination of services across the capital.
We also believe that taking the Elizabeth Line and London Overground into public ownership would serve your aspiration to have greater devolved control over rail services in the capital. London would not only share the same policy direction as the national government, but public ownership would make it significantly easier to create the kind of governance structures that would enable greater devolution to London.
The reality is that if you do not take action, London’s rail network will be an island of privatisation, used as an advertisement by the private companies who have sweated our railways for 30 years and denying Londoners the improvements that public ownership could bring.
While nationally, Labour will be building Great British Railways, the shortlist for the Elizabeth Line indicates that London’s railways will be run by and create profits for an operator from France, China or Japan.
The time to do this is now. The contracts on both the Elizabeth Line and London Overground are coming to an end and you have the powers you need to take both into public ownership. The government has been clear that it’s your decision.
We urge you to seize this moment and announce that you will take both into public ownership.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Lynch General Secretary, RMT
Mick Whelan, General Secretary, ASLEF