Michael Portillo: As the founders of the modern railway, why has Britain fallen so far behind?

The British are particularly captivated by railways because their story began 200 years ago in England, in Stockton and Darlington, where history was made with the world’s first public railway to transport goods and passengers using steam locomotives. As a catalyst for a second industrial revolution, railways transformed our economic life, expanding our horizons. It’s these origins, told in our BBC documentary, that help maintain our national nostalgia about railways.

But it’s a nostalgia chequered today by bad decisions. We were the first country to introduce public railways, and that made us lazy. We stopped innovating and stuck with steam for too long. British Rail became obsessed with replacing steam with diesel, without considering a move to electric. Less than 40 per cent of our network is electrified, which is poor compared with most developed countries, and we are decades behind in high-speed rail.

For an alternative, look to Japan. In 1964 they produced the high-speed train, which was way ahead of anyone else and made a huge contribution to the restoration of national pride following the war. Their railways – which are nationally run – are associated with reliability, safety and prestige. Every train leaves on time. We have underinvested in our railways and as a result we respect them less. The situation isn’t helped by strikes – they make the service unreliable.

There are some good news stories. We are introducing new trains and that does lift passengers’ morale. But we’ve gone for a very high specification of high-speed train. That’s extremely expensive. HS2 is designed to run at 225mph – faster than today’s Japanese Shinkansen, and with greater frequency.

In 1996, while in government, I drew up plans to privatise the railways. At the time, there were nearly 800 million passenger journeys a year. Just before the pandemic, the figure was 1.7 billion. The number of passenger journeys under privatisation rose by about a billion, so I think that was pretty successful. But the railways have not, since the earliest days, run at a profit, and whether they’re privatised or nationalised, they’re reliant on taxpayer subsidy.

Britain needs new railway lines but we have allowed the cost to go through the roof, sabotaging the benefits. When people get a junction built near where they live, they’re less likely to object to motorways. One of the problems in places affected by HS2 – which has been described by the Public Accounts Committee as “a casebook example of how not to run a major project” – is they don’t get a benefit, because the trains go rushing past them.

Our decision-making has been absurd when it comes to environmental concerns. We built motorways without exaggerated environmental measures that would have made them uneconomic. Suddenly now, railways must be in tunnels wherever they cross a pretty landscape. I don’t accept that. A railway crossing a beautiful landscape very often enhances it. A viaduct across the valley can sometimes be beautiful.

Some 200 years on since 27 September 1825 and the birth of the modern railway, when George Stephenson’s Locomotion No 1 hauled wagons of coal, flour and passengers at 15mph along the Stockton and Darlington tracks, it’s not impossible to get back to a system that we’re proud of. But it will require a vast amount of money and time. I hope we’re prepared to make the sacrifice.

Michael Portillo’s 200 Years of the Railways is on Tuesday at 8pm on BBC Two and on iPlayer

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Michael Portillo's 200 Years of the Railways begins at 8pm on Tuesday 16 September on BBC Two and iPlayer.

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