CHAOTIC privateer Northern Rail is demanding that transport ministers hand over more taxpayers’ cash to maintain services, despite currently receiving subsidies of £282 million a year.

Rail union RMT demanded yesterday that German state-owned Arriva Rail North, which runs Northern Rail, be stripped of its government franchise and that the service be taken back into public ownership.

The union made the call as rail workers protested in Westminster demanding an end to the Tories’ failed rail privatisation project exactly 25 years since the legislation was forced through Parliament when John Major was at the helm.

The protesters were urging the government to repeal the Railway Act, which had enabled privatisation to take hold.

Northern Rail operates services stretching from the Scottish border south to Nottinghamshire and from the east to west coasts.

The company, which is part of the German national rail operator Deutsche Bahn, is heading for the buffers, in the same way that in May  Virgin-Stagecoach’s East Coast Main Line operations fell into disarray, said RMT.

As reported in yesterday’s Star, Britain’s rail privateers are being subsidised by taxpayers to the tune of £5 billion a year, with a further £4.1bn going to Network Rail, which maintains the rail infrastructure to enable the privateers to operate.

At the same time, long-suffering passengers have suffered fare increases which in some cases are more than 200 per cent above inflation since privatisation took place in 1993.

RMT members at Northern Rail are staging strikes every Saturday to defend the role of safety-critical guards, which the company wants to remove from trains to increase profits.

The union’s general secretary Mick Cash described Northern Rail as being in its “death throes.”

He said: “This scandal needs to end immediately and that means the government taking immediate action to bring the Northern routes into direct public ownership and control with the services run on the basis of safety, security and access and not private profit.

“That means a guard on every train and proper staffing at station level as well.”

Labour has pledged to take the rail network back into public ownership if it is elected to government.