Government ‘rewriting history’ over East Coast rail sell-off

Shadow transport minister Lilian Greenwood said ministers are so keen to privatise the route between London and Edinburgh, they redacted a prospectus for the proposed sell-off.

The line was placed under public ownership in the autumn of 2009 but it is due to be transferred back into private hands in two years time.

As part of the privatisation, a prospectus has been drawn up outlining details of the sell-off.

Ms Greenwood said Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin should not try to force through the privatisation.

But Ms Greenwood told a debate in Westminster Hall that a number of changes had been made to the report to make it appear that public ownership of the line had not been successful.

She said: “We saw the same confusion at work in the leaked East Coast Franchise Prospectus, which raised the prospect of third class travel.

“It is clear that at a late stage a decision was taken to alter the positive references to East Coast’s performance since 2009. So the sentence ‘staff engagement is at an all time high’ was altered to ‘staff engagement has improved’.

“Then there was a reference to ‘the current successful business’, downgraded to just ‘the current business’.

“Then the facts were erased completely. I would like to share just a few examples - page 19, ‘East Coast Mainline’s public reputation has remained consistently high’. Page 20, ‘since beginning of 2011/12 East Coast Mainline has been the recipient of 35 industry awards’. Page 27, ‘East Coast’s passenger satisfaction was higher than the 89% for all long distant operators’.

“And on page 31, ‘over the last two years East Coast Mainline has developed genuine choice for customers in terms of fares and customer offering’. All deleted and we do not know who ordered those changes but perhaps the minister could tell us today?

“(Mr McLoughlin) may believes he speaks on behalf of passengers... but I am sure they wouldn’t want to see Government ministers re-writing history in this way.”

She added ministers were now trying to “rush through a botched privatisation”.

She told MPs: “I will make no apology for the persistent questions from the Labour benches over this unneeded, unwanted and wasteful privatisation because the answers have changed each time but the absence of a credible case has remained constant.

“Firstly we were told that privatisation was needed because punctuality had plateaued but better punctuality has been achieved than under the previous failed private operators. We were also told that we had to sell off East Coast to secure outside investment but ministers then had to admit in answers to written questions that the cost track upgrades and rolling-stock procurement would in fact be met by the taxpayer.”

The details of the changes come in the wake of a long-running campaign to stop the line being privatised.

More than 60 MPs from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Green and Scottish National (SNP) parties have signed an early day motion calling on the Government not to re-privatise the line.

Campaigners have highlighted figures announced last month which showed that East Coast paid £208 million in premium and dividend payments to the Treasury in the last financial year (2012/13).

Its turnover increased by 4.2% and it carried more than 19 million passengers - up 1% on the previous year.