Burnham Speech put Avanti West Coast at the centre of a wider rail shift. The operator will come under public ownership on 7 March when its contract ends. For passengers on the route between London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the change lands on a service that has already drawn heavy criticism.
Andy Burnham said “enough is enough” for passengers who had put up with a rail service “that has failed them time and time again”. His intervention matched the political mood around the company, which links the north-west of England with London and also serves Wales and Scotland.
Heidi Alexander at Labour conference
Heidi Alexander formally announced the decision at the Labour conference on Tuesday afternoon. She paired the Avanti move with a broader argument about rail costs, saying operators had spent over £4bn in 2024 leasing and maintaining trains they did not own, and that this was about one third of the total day-to-day running costs of operating railway services.
She also said the state should explore whether it can directly own the new trains it orders. In her speech, Alexander said that, as Great British Railways is set up, the government will “explore whether the state can directly own the new trains we order” and added, “If GBR owning trains would best serve taxpayers and passengers, then we should do it.”
Roscos and new trains
The practical divide is between existing fleets and future orders. Train operators currently lease trains from private rolling-stock companies at a cost of several billion pounds a year, and Alexander said those contracts carry financing, transaction and return costs that end up on taxpayers and passengers. But a rolling stock firm director who had been briefed indicated there was no question of nationalising existing trains.
That leaves the government’s pledge focused on the next batch of trains it orders, not the stock already in service. For passengers, the immediate change is ownership of Avanti West Coast from 7 March; for the wider railway, the open question is which new trains, if any, will be bought directly by the state under the case-by-case approach.
