It will have gladdened the hearts of millions to hear parliamentarians standing up for the rail traveller, but the research from the Public Accounts Committee, which showed a £1bn cost to passengers in terms of lost time, tells only part of the story. Travellers' frustration, misery and impotence in the face of consistent failures on the rail network, seen most vividly in the fiasco after engineering works last Christmas, also feature.

The poor state of the UK's railways is a long-running tale, and now it has started going backwards, with MPs saying that performance levels have only just reached those that existed at the time of the fatal crash at Hatfield in 2000.

And despite billions of pounds of investment, the future looks bleak. The rail network is increasingly congested, leading to greater disruption when problems occur.

Overcrowding has long been a strain for the rush-hour traveller and now, perhaps most worryingly, we have been warned that fire and rescue services do not always know how to contact Network Rail.

Meanwhile, the cost of all this for the passenger rises. Sharp increases in fares, which some in Yorkshire struggle to afford, have become as certain as death and taxes.

If the Government forced Network Rail and the train operating companies to get their act together, it could prove far more popular than any number of eye-catching initiatives developed by Gordon Brown.

Britons are sick and tired of having terrible experiences on the railways. With the Christmas getaway set to begin in just over a month, now would be an opportune time for Mr Brown to remind the people who run our trains how their customers really feel.