Labour's broken promises over rail renationalisation

British rail tickets are the worst in Europe. For every £10 spent you get 27 miles in our country, compared with 58 miles in France, 37 in Germany and a whopping 383 in Latvia.

In 1997 Labour promised to turn the chaotic privatised railway into a publicly run and owned transport system. This promise, like many others, was broken.

Instead we have more public subsidy than at any time in history going directly into the coffers of the private companies ever-eager to put profit before a modern and affordable railway system.

British Rail in its last year cost taxpayers £1.6 billion (£2.2bn in today's terms). The government now spends over £5bn of our money to support the greed of private train operators every year.

The maths and politics are easy. Privatisation has clearly failed. It's just a mechanism to transfer public money into private hands.

The rail system desperately needs to be brought back into public ownership, which is something neither new Labour nor the Tories will do.

Tickets could easily be made more affordable, but unless Carlisle, as a great railway city, has an MP committed to campaigning against the private ownership of the railways, then profit will always take precedence over public transport needs.

The current incumbent has not done this and my general election opponents only offer more public subsidy to swell the already bloated profits of the unaccountable private railway companies.

John Metcalfe Socialist parliamentary candidate for Carlisle