MERSEYRAIL hiked fares by almost 19 per cent, to cash in on one of the country’s most popular events this past weekend. No doubt there will have been winners and losers throughout the festivities at the Aintree Grand National. But for passengers travelling to the races by train, they will have definitely lost out.

At a time when working people, whether low-paid or well-paid, are seeing a diminishing of their spending power, it is a disgrace that a multimillion-pound rail company is fleecing its passengers in this way.

Merseyrail is a cash machine for its private operators, Serco and Transport UK. Since 2003, they’ve taken over £212 million in dividends out of the railway. That is money which should have gone back into the network — to keep fares down, upgrade infrastructure and improve services for passengers. Instead, it’s gone straight into shareholders’ pockets with much of the money leaving the country altogether.

Now we have a Labour government in Westminster that is finally doing the right thing and legislating to bring rail passenger services into public ownership. The Public Ownership Act 2024 means the failed model of privatisation is starting to be dismantled. Even the government’s own figures show it will save money and lead to better services. It is a positive step forward — one that passengers and rail workers have been demanding for years.

So why is Labour in Liverpool looking the other way? The Merseyrail contract is up in 2028. That should be the moment the region joins the national effort to rebuild our railway as a public service run in our interests, not private shareholders.

But instead, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has agreed to actively consider extending the private contract or awarding a new one to a private operator.

It would seem to me the height of hypocrisy for any politician to support a Labour platform nationally that is committed to public ownership and then hand a golden ticket to rapacious profit-hungry private rail companies to continue ripping off passengers on Merseyside.

Let us not forget, it is not just rail users who are getting the short straw. Our members both directly employed and outsourced on Merseyrail are being forced to threaten strike action just to get a fair deal at work.

Recently cleaners who are outsourced to Churchill won a much-improved offer after voting to go on strike during the Grand National weekend.

Although we did not need to go on strike after gaining concessions, it should never have got to that point. Outsourcing has no place on a publicly funded railway. It drives down wages and conditions, weakens safety and undermines the service.

When Merseyrail is brought into public ownership — and it must be — every worker on that network should be directly employed with decent terms and conditions. The Labour government has given us the tools. Now it’s up to Labour locally in Liverpool to use them and act in the public interest.

We are calling on the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and its mayor Steve Rotheram to rule out any further privatisation of Merseyrail. The trade union movement locally in the north-west is behind our campaign and so is the voting public. So let’s keep the grubby corporate weasels off our railway and bring Merseyrail back into the hands of the people of Liverpool for the foreseeable future.