Renfe, Spain’s national rail company, has said that it plans to submit bids for all the UK rail franchises that are due to come up for tender over the coming months.
These include ‘prestigious’ franchises such as East Coast and Great Western.
Despite failing to be short listed for both the Greater Anglia and West Coast franchises, Renfe say that following talks with the DfT that outlined the reasons why the operator didn’t make it onto the list, they are now in a much stronger position to bid for future franchises.
Renfe’s chairman and chief executive Teofilo Serrano said:
“We need to operate in the UK as all the big state companies are here. There is very strong competition here but the system is good for operators.
“The refocus of the DfT on value for money gives us opportunities to deploy our experience.”
If Renfe was to be awarded a rail franchise it would assist them to enter the competition for the contract to construct and operate HS2.
“all the big state companies are here”…. whatever happened to the British “big state company”? Why did we throw that all away, so that we have to look to Europe to find someone to run our railways?
Bus companies were doing well, National Express is huge in the US, Arriva was huge on the continent until it was bought.
If the Lib Dem/Tory coalition is determined to force through cuts in the public sector and then talk about encouraging an “expanded and successful” private sector to soak up the unemployment figures, why are they allowing our rail services to be run foreign public sector organisations? Perhaps they have come to accept that the likes of state-owned (i.e. nationalised) Deutsche Bahn, NS/Abellio, SNCF and RENFE are far more efficient transport undertakings than Virgin, National Express, Stagecoach etc!
Mike, it’s not so much that these big foreign companies are more efficient than Virgin, Stagecoach and National Express. Their governments clearly recognise that transport infrastructure is of key importance to their nation and as a result back them financially. They also work the EU laws very cleverly in that Germanany buys German manufactured trains, France buys French manufactured trains and Spain buys Spanish manufactured trains. Having saturated their home markets it is natural for them to look at foreign markets for expansion. these firms may be foreign owned but they do employ a tremendous amount of people in the UK and contribute to the UK tax system. The last figures I looked at suggested there were 232,000 people employed in the UK rail sector.
The government are clearly on the one hand trying to generate as much revenue from the TOC’s for franchise bids and if they can get more money from a Spanish state banked transport operator than a homegrown partnership between Virgin and Stagecoach sadly they will take it as their thoughts of loyalty to UK workers died when the last one pulled the ladder up a long time ago. It’s a horrible generailisation but all politicians are the same or end up being the same, they enter for noble thoughts and ideas and want to make change and when they realise they cant change the system they end up towing the line like the party tells them to. it’s a shame but its the way it is