00:00We're announcing the three train operating companies that are going to come into public
00:04ownership next year. We passed the legislation as a priority, as a new government, so that
00:09we could take these train operating companies into public ownership. And so in May of next
00:15year, South Western Railway will transfer over in July, C2C, and then it will be followed
00:21by Greater Anglia Services in the autumn of next year.
00:25In the budget, the Chancellor announced that fares next year will go up by 4.6%. That's
00:32the lowest absolute increase for three years. We have to make sure that we've got enough
00:39money to run the services that people want, because if you strip back your service provision
00:46so far, then people won't be able to get a train when they want to get it, to where they
00:51want to get it. And then you enter into this death spiral where people think, I'm going
00:54to give up on the train altogether. And so it's really important that we ensure we can
01:01run the services that we need to be running, so that we can get more people using our railway,
01:07because it's a really sustainable and a good way to travel.
01:10And we've inherited a very difficult financial situation. When we came into government back
01:17in July, we inherited a £22 billion black hole. There was massive in-year overspending
01:26by government. We didn't anticipate that level of overspending that we would need to correct.
01:32And so we can't do all the things that we want to do straight away, and the Chancellor's
01:37had to take some difficult decisions. But what I think we need to ensure is that if
01:43we're asking people to pay a bit more on their train fares, that they get a really good quality
01:47service. And what we've seen over the last three decades with the private train operating
01:51companies is that they've presided over delays, cancellation, timetable chaos, waste, inefficiency.
02:01So we can't carry on the way we have been, and we need to turn the page and ensure that
02:06we've got a railway that's fit for the 21st century.
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