LABOUR’S plans to renationalise the rail firms by taking over the train operating companies (TOCs) as their contracts come to an end is a big deal.

These are privately run but very heavily publicly subsidised companies that want to pump cash out of the government and passengers and then pump it into their investors’ hands. They are so keen to get the cash that they are rubbish at running the railways. Renationalising them is a good idea.

But if you want to know how some rail privatisation will continue even after Labour’s plans — and how it will continue to squeeze private cash out of public services, it’s worth having a look at the annual accounts of Eversholt UK Rails Ltd, which were published to zero media interest at the end of last month.

The newspapers weren’t interested in the company’s accounts, even though they showed the movement of millions of pounds from the taxpayer to a Hong Kong billionaire’s company. Passengers also won’t generally know Eversholt even exists, which is part of the trick of privatisation.

When the nationally owned British Rail was privatised in the 1990s, it was broken up into three main parts. The track was privatised and handed over to Railtrack, which had to be renationalised in 2002 after the firm did such poor maintenance that passengers started dying in crashes and train speeds were cut to a crawl.

Different regional TOCs were given contracts to run the services on this track. Labour will slowly renationalise these. But TOCs don’t own the trains: the “rolling stock,” the actual engines and carriages were sold off cheaply to three private rolling stock companies or “Roscos.”

The three — Eversholt, Porterbrook and Angel Trains — still dominate the market. Passengers might think they are travelling on trains owned by TOCs like Southeastern, Great Western or Midland Main Line because that’s what it says on the side of the carriages.

But actually, Eversholt or another Rosco will own the trains and carriages and lease them to the TOCs. Eversholt and the other Roscos still lease out trains that were built by the old nationalised company British Rail Engineering, although they have also used their regular income from the rail firms to buy some new rolling stock.

The railways have only kept running in recent years thanks to billions in subsidies to the TOCs, which kept the trains running as passenger numbers fell thanks to Covid. But the Roscos like Eversholt have continued squeezing cash out of the subsidised system with no interruption.

It’s very big business. Eversholt’s latest accounts show it took £298 million from the rail firms in 2023. It made £8.5m profit and paid £33.7m dividends to its owners. That’s money squeezed out of publicly subsidised railways for investors.

Eversholt is owned by firms run by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing — the 31st richest man in the world — and his family. Li Ka-Shing has a taste for profiting out of formerly publicly owned British assets. His firms also, for example, own Northumbrian Water. The figures for the other two Roscos, Angel Trains and Porterbrook, are similar: all told the Roscos squeeze about £1.2 billion a year from the rail firms

Will this situation change? Eversholt says it won’t. Its accounts note that in 2021 the Tory government announced a new organisation, Great British Railways (GBR), will be created to try to take charge of the dysfunctional railway system. It notes that this GBR plan is stalled in the sidings: “Precise plans have not yet been set out for the rollout of, and transition to, GBR.”

But this doesn’t bother it either way because the GBR plan “recognised the importance of the private sector and the proposed reforms do not assume any direct change to the current industry model for procurement of train fleets and maintenance by independent train-leasing companies.”

The Tories won’t threaten Eversholt’s business — but will Labour? Keir Starmer is still committed to slowly renationalising the TOCs as their contracts come to an end, and uniting them under his, more public version of GBR.

This is good, but will it change the Roscos’ ability to squeeze cash from rail? Not according to Eversholt. The firm says: “There will be a UK general election in 2024 but no change in demand for private finance for rolling stock is anticipated.” While Labour says they will take over the TOCs, they have no intention of reversing Thatcher’s privatisation of the engines and the carriages themselves.

NHS England is not in safe hands

In another move Tory-fy supposedly “independent” public bodies, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins put former Tory health minister Jane Ellison on the board of NHS England.

The government put Ellison on the NHS England board in February, but because the appointment was only announced by NHS England itself, without any Department of Health press release (even though this was a ministerial appointment), this latest Tory-gives-public-job-to-Tory move slipped past the newspapers.

Ellison was Conservative MP for Battersea from 2010-17 until she was knocked out of Parliament by Labour’s Marsha de Cordova in the 2017 election. Voters might have rejected her, but the government has put this Tory back in power over the NHS.

Ellison was a junior health minister from 2013-17 and a Treasury minister from then until she lost her seat. As such, Ellison was a reliable defender of Conservative cuts to and outsourcing of the NHS.

The Conservatives have very much shaped the NHS England board in their image. In 2022 then-health secretary Sajid Javid made major Tory donor and private health investor Wol Kolade deputy chair of NHS England, and banker Richard Meddings, who was at the time a member of the board of collapsing Swiss bank Credit Suisse, the chair.

Readers might expect an incoming Labour government to stop the board of NHS England from being dominated by Tories and bankers — however, as these board members share Wes Streeting’s belief in keeping NHS funds low and outsourcing high, these Tory appointees could hang onto their jobs under a Labour health secretary.

Follow Solomon on X @SolHughesWriter.