THE nationalised railway company operating the East Coast Main Line has returned £208.7 million to taxpayers as revenues soared, fuelling the debate over plans to return it to private hands.
Directly Operated Railways (DOR), which took over the running of the London-Scotland route four years ago, saw the figure increase 6.6% in the year to the end of March.
Turnover rose 4.2% to £693.8m and total sales were up 4.2%, including ticket revenues, as well as other income, such as catering and car parks.
The figures reignited the debate about the Government's intention to re-privatise the line - with a new franchise expected to start in February 2015. They also revealed Michael Holden, chief executive of DOR, was paid a salary of £224,800.
Labour and rail unions have questioned the need for re-privatisation, saying DOR is returning a high level of money to the Department of Transport and gets a lower taxpayer subsidy than others.
Last week it was announced Channel Tunnel company Eurostar was bidding to operate the route jointly with French firm Keolis.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said: "These figures destroy this Government's case for handing the East Coast back to the rip-off merchants from the private sector.
"DOR is paying even more money back to the Treasury, in contrast to the fat profits extracted from the privatised routes, yet the politicians are prepared to ignore that."
Doug Sutherland, DOR chairman , said East Coast had improved levels of customer satisfaction and punctuality.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article