The Government shares Railtrack's desire to put safety responsibility into one organisation, not three, but it is not about to embark on a full scale rethink of privatisation. They have already handed out a couple and they are going to hand out another one in the coming week. Gerald Corbett says that privatisation was driven by the Treasury and the need for tax cuts and now even the party that drove it through is changing its tune. One of John Prescott's former Labour colleagues says this new concensus on the flaws in privatisation means the Government must rethink its public private partnership for London's underground. All I am saying is don't lets do the same thing to the Underground.
Lets learn from what has gone wrong here.
Don't break up the lines of responsibility. Railtrack tonight is emphasising the need to rethink its contracts with train companies. As it stands Railtrack says it can face penalties for taking time to repair track. But there have clearly been much deeper misgivings right at the top of Railtrack, about balancing private goals of shareholder value with public imperatives of safety and investment.