It’s safe to say Steve White has his fair share of experience in the UK’s railway industry.
The Derby-born boss of Southeastern, the rail operator connecting Kent, East Sussex and London, has been all over the shop in a 40-year career spanning Eurostar, Siemens and Transport for London (TfL).
Then-deputy chief executive of Southeastern’s former owner, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), White joined the operator in 2021 at a highly turbulent time.
Southeastern had just been brought under government ownership after an investigation uncovered “serious breaches” of its franchise agreement. Some £25m in taxpayer funding that should have been returned had been left undeclared, leading former transport secretary Grant Shapps to say the company had “breached the trust that is fundamental to the success of our railways.”
Southeastern promptly self-referred itself to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and has henceforth acted as a publicly owned body.
Now, the picture is different. According to a recent survey, Southeastern ranked fifth among all UK train operators for reliability, a far cry from the second bottom it scored back in 2016, and passenger satisfaction is also on the up.
You’d think, given the shift, White would be all-aboard the nationalisation train, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. “In my mind, this isn’t a public or private debate,” he tells City AM in an interview.
Political talking points have often centred around whether to nationalise, or not to nationalise. Yet the view that such a debate does not capture the complexity of how to fix Britain’s beleaguered railways also garners some sympathy. While Japan runs one of the most successful, fully privatised, rail network’s in the world, Switzerland has drawn similar praise under a public model.
Still, White shares the near-unanimous opinion that some form of long-term reform is a must following an extended period characterised by industrial action, broken finances and delays and cancellations.
Labour’s nationalisation proposals are a “very positive step forward… a piece of the jigsaw,” White says. But the key change comes with the introduction of Great British Railways (GBR), the ‘guiding mind’ body first-envisaged during Boris Johnson’s premiership.
Labour’s ‘Shadow GBR’ keeps Johnson’s name but will function differently given the former Conservative premier’s plans were built for a largely privatised system. The new government sees GBR more as a tool to bring management of the network’s infrastructure, under Network Rail, together with train operation.
White is in favour of the plans either way. “The most effective way to operate a railway to recover from the pandemic is to bring track and train together,” he says.
“The last government had intended to do that, this government intends to do it. They might have done it slightly differently but primarily, that is fundamentally what changes the delivery of a railway.”
What of Southeastern though? The operator is an interesting case study, given it has already been nationalised for the best part of four years.
It faced backlash in October after it emerged taxpayer backing had soared to three times the level of 2019, when it was privately owned, despite fares and passenger numbers also increasing.
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