THOUGH the report into the 1997 Southall rail crash, in which seven people died, lays much of the blame on the driver of the express involved, privatisation and fragmentation of the rail network are also cited as culprits.
But with the verdict yet to be delivered on the even worse disaster at Paddington last year, what do we find the Government doing when the finding in one case and the charge in the other is that allowing responsibility for safety to be in the same hands as the businesses of running the railways for profit has led to lethally lax standards?
Amazingly, we find the Transport Secretary John Prescott announcing - and with appallingly tactless timing during the inquests into the Paddington victims and on the eve of the Southall report - that Railtrack is to remain in charge of rail safety.
But it is not just this that angers the relatives of the dead and injured as well as travellers generally.
It also perplexes all those who once might have expected a Labour government, above all, to jump on the verdict that privatisation jeopardises their safety.
Few expect that any government would or could now go back to nationalisation.
But, to untangle the privatised hotch-potch in which rail safety standards degenerated, most would have expected the government to now declare that rail safety was its concern and no longer that of rail commerce.
What confidence can people have unless safety is supervised by a totally independent body?
Mr Prescott has fast run up a reputation as a bungling transport minister, but this decision is his most dreadful mistake - one he may rue.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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