Apologies for going back to the start....
There are a lot of people in the press, twitter and on here who complain about the amount of subsidies the TOC's receive. My question to people is this:
Would you rather TOCs stopped operating services that are loss making or would you rather the same level of service was kept with the TOCs getting the subsidies to run services that run at a loss?
I don't have a problem with subsidies for the service, I have problems with subsidies for profit.
McDonalds has a set standard for food, uniform, branding and service quality, Subway is the same, but these are franchises, proper franchises, where the operating company (franchisee) pays the owning company (franchisor) for the privilege of using the brand. The franchisees have to abide by that standard or lose their rights to use the name.
What is to stop the government telling the railway companies the standard they have to set? Nothing.
What is to stop the Government telling the franchises they have to pay rather than receive? Nothing.
The problem is that if the railway companies are told to have a set standard and told to pay, and not receive, many will not take up the franchise, leaving the government with a set of services it doesn't want to pay for and a clear indication that franchising a public service simply doesn't work. Those that do get taken up will likely see a rise in fares 'for profit'.
A Northern Rail (NR) director recently told me that passenger fares make up an average of £3 per NR journey and that the cost of the average NR journey is £6. If true, the government is giving NR it's £40m profit each year. That is not a franchise.
Given the way these 'franchises' seem to operate, and the way Government controls them, they are little more than management contracts dressed up in wordplay.