Burnham to nationalise UK’s busiest rail route in months: West Coast Main Line to be taken over ‘at earliest alternative’

Britain’s busiest railway line is to be taken into public ownership as Labour steps up its nationalisation drive.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on Sunday said Avanti West Coast would be taken over at the ‘earliest possible opportunity’ when its latest franchise expires in March. 

She said the firm had been ‘underperforming’ for years, with passengers ‘left paying the price’.

In a speech to Labour’s annual conference on Monday, she will joke it ‘may be the first time Avanti and “earliest” have ever been heard in the same sentence’.

Avanti West Coast is to be taken into public ownership as Labour steps up its nationalisation drive

Ms Alexander said the service provided by Avanti, which operates trains from London to the North West, Scotland, the West Midlands and North Wales, ‘hasn’t been good enough’.

Avanti recorded the highest proportion of cancellations in Britain this summer at double the national average.