Last night the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill passed its Third Reading in the Commons, turning a page on the 30-year failed experiment of rail privatisation. RMT welcomes this historic first step in building an integrated publicly owned railway.

So it's coming in to public ownership which means paid for by us, also paid by us will be the inflation busting pay rises. Does this mean that fares will be cheaper? If not what benefits to the general public will there be?

Here's a graph showing how much more taxpayer subsidy the railway has required since privatisation. By removing the profit motive, any operating surpluses can go toward maintenance and renewals and offsetting fares.

Back to the “success” of the 70s then! British Rail was far worse than what we have now: always late, frequently cancelled, often on strike, filthy, lousy food, non existent customer service. And those were the better points.

Memories are subjective.

My concern is that you lot couldn't run a bath let alone an effective public service and this would just be a money pit and opportunity for banks, unions and government to perform money laundering at the taxpayers expense, what do you think?

Don’t worry, your bath is safe. We wouldn’t be running anything. This graph nicely illustrates the scale of taxpayer subsidy to the railways since privatisation. We do still need to own our trains, rather than lease them, though.

Rolling Stock, maintenance contractors, freight, 'open access' operators? No, I thought not.

No, you're correct. We will continue to campaign for a fully nationalised railway.

Who remembers the joke that was British Rail 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️

3p in the ticket £ is all the profits there were. You have set yourselves for a massive fail.

Guaranteed profit for no risk and no investment is a great return, however, surely that money is better spent by being reinvested into the network rather than being turned into shareholder dividend or subsidising foreign, state-owned railways?