LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) - Britain's rail industry,
privatised in the mid-1990s, is now back under state control --
in the eyes of the country's statistics agency.
Britain's Office for National Statistics said on Friday the
scale of government intervention in the country's patchwork of
train operators since the start of a national COVID-19 lockdown
meant the firms would now count as part of the public sector.
The decision does not change the legal ownership of the
franchises. But official statistics will now class rail staff
as public-sector employees, and rail operators' borrowing will
count towards Britain's 1.98 trillion pounds ($2.6 trillion) of
public debt.
The ONS said it believed train companies' debts were quite
low, and a more exact estimate would appear in official data as
soon as possible.
Ticket sales collapsed in March after the government ordered
people to avoid non-essential journeys to curb the spread of
COVID-19, and the private-sector companies that bid for the
right to run rail services in different parts of Britain have
renegotiated their contracts.
"Under the emergency measures agreements, normal franchise
mechanisms have been amended, transferring almost all revenue
and cost risk to government," the ONS said.
Opinion polls show a majority of Britons want the rail
industry to be renationalised.
Passenger numbers have more than doubled since privatisation
but complaints are common about overcrowding and the cost and
complexity of tickets, despite continued public subsidies.
Most British rail franchises are run by the commercial arms
of state railway operators from Japan, Germany, France, Italy
and the Netherlands, or one of two British companies -- First
Group and Go-Ahead Group.
Railway tracks are publicly owned, after the private company
established to manage them collapsed in 2001.
The ONS said it would review the classification of rail
operators after emergency arrangements expire.
($1 = 0.7616 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken, Editing by Timothy Heritage)