Labour pledges to make Sunday trains as reliable as weekday services
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Government plans to renationalise railways will establish new public body to improve the network. Sunday train services will be as reliable as those on weekdays under plans to renationalise the railways, the new transport secretary will claim in a keynote speech on Monday.
![[Heidi Alexander and Keir Starmer ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e256dbb9f2a0271c4d67047373cc92e38652dbd5/0_569_4770_2862/master/4770.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Issuing a series of pledges on which the government will be judged by millions of passengers – as well as its political opponents – Heidi Alexander will cite the creation of a network “where Sunday services are as reliable as Monday’s” as one of her key priorities.
In her first speech on rail since taking over from Louise Haigh, who resigned in November, Alexander will spell out the scale of the task ahead. She will say the new public body Great British Railways (GBR), which will be established by legislation to be introduced late this year, will become “second in size and importance only to the NHS”.
It is expected that GBR will employ a total of about 90,000 people, while the NHS in England employs about 1.5 million staff. The rail organisation will manage the process of bringing the network under national ownership as private operators’ franchises expire, and will establish the running of trains and tracks under the same body.
Rail experts will be sceptical about the government’s chances of creating a Sunday service on a par with that of weekdays without first taking on powerful rail unions, which are likely to resist more Sunday working. Just before the general election last year, rail industry leaders urged ministers to tackle the issue of poor services on Sundays caused by staff shortages, as many services became very severely depleted.
