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A short time ago this month, on the 1 August, RATP Group completed the purchase of Stagecoach Metrolink Limited to its subsidary RATP Dev UK Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of RATP Group. RATP Group itself is a French government owned operator. The most prominent of these operations include the Paris Metro and Paris bus services.
Not widely known is that the French government also operates under the guise of RATP Group other UK operations: Bath Bus Company, London United and Yellow Buses in Bournemouth. This is not the complete extent of the French government’s purchase of the United Kingdom’s so-called privatised transport operations. Through Keolis, it also has substantial stakes in the United Kingdom’s railway network including the Transpennine Express in partnership with First and also Southern, Southeastern and London Midland franchises through its partnership with Go-Ahead.
Keolis advertises itself as a private sector operation. The only slightly problem with that assertion is that it is majority owned by French state railways operator, SNCF with a 56.53% holding in the company. This is of course hot on the heels of recent vast purchases of the UK transport market by Deutsche Bahn, the German state railways operator.
We have now lost much of our transport market out of private hands and it is being run by state companies with no stake in the communities that these companies serve.
Why else would we see Northern Rail continue to run dilapidated services around some of the most populous conurbations of Europe? In case you didn’t realise – Northern Rail is yet another so-called ‘privatised’ operator but look under the hood and you find out that it is a joint partnership between Serco and Abellio. Abellio is another state owned subsidary, this time in Holland where its parent company runs the Dutch state railways.
It is high time that people concerned about this sell off of UK assets to overseas state companies write to their MPs because what may on the face of it look like a privatised railway network, very little of it still actually is. Next time you complain about Virgin, consider this point carefully!
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