"The rolling-stock companies have been making a mint out of leasing public assets back to the public at exorbitant rates," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"The banks that own our trains have sweated assets paid for by taxpayers, made hundreds of millions of pounds at rates that would make the mafia blush, and have helped push rail fares to ludicrous levels.

"The notion that there is any sort of healthy competition or functioning market among the Roscos is absolute nonsense, as is the idea that they have been investing their own money in new rolling stock.

"If the hundreds of millions the Roscos have taken out of the industry as alleged profits had been invested in building new stock, the thousands of people who have lost their jobs at Eastleigh, Crewe, Washwood Heath, and Derby might still be building and maintaining trains.

"An investiagtion into their profiteering is overdue and very welcome, but if the government is to regain control of the railway industry and begin encouraging people out of their cars and back onto trains, it must not shrink away from the logical conclusion.

"Last year's Railways Act was supposed to hand back control of the rail industry to ministers, but the government ducked the opportunity even to regulate the Roscos.

"Britain's trains are too valuable an asset to be left to people who see them only as vehicles for profit, and they should be brought back into the public sector where they belong," Bob Crow said.

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For further information contact Derek Kotz on 020 7529 8803 or 07939 595 092