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New Opportunities for the Railways: The Privatisation of British Rail

Document Summary

The white paper which preceded the controversial privatisation of Britain's railways. A document remarkable for its brevity, and for what is left unsaid (undecided?) as much as for what is stated. It sets out the proposal to split infrastructure from operations, creating Railtrack to look after the former, and private sector franchises to run the latter.

Intercity is noted as profit-making, and therefore not to be sold "at this stage": Network Southeast, which is heavily loss-making, "will be franchised". As far as through ticketing goes, "it will be for train service operators to make arrangements to accept each others' tickets".

Subcontracting out of maintenance is covered in one sentence; possibly a mistake in hindsight. A franchising regulator is proposed, and safety is given to HSE. Privatisation of Railtrack is barely mentioned; only that "powers will...be taken to allow the future privatisation of all BR track..."

This document was published on 14th July 1992 by Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

It was written by Department of Transport.

The original document format was Paper, and comprised 24 pages.

This document was kindly sourced from Christian Wolmar and is in our White papers collection. It was added to the Archive on 5th October 2004.

Copyright Information

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"Privatisation is one of the great success stories of this Government...The time has come to extend these benefits to the railways. This calls for a new approach. BR makes large losses. It cannot therefore be sold as a complete concern in the same way as other industries which we have privatised and there will not be substantial proceeds to the Exchequer. Our objective is to improve the quality of railway services by creating many new opportunities for private sector involvement. This will mean more competition, greater efficiency and a wider choice of services more closely tailored to what customers want."