RAIL passengers have wasted more than 11,000 years on delayed trains since the railways were privatised eight years ago, a study has found.

Punctuality has declined in every area of the country except Merseyside and the tiny Isle of Wight line.

More than a billion train journeys have been disrupted since 1997, according to an analysis of Strategic Rail Authority figures by the Liberal Democrats.

Delays on the five worstperforming franchises have tripled compared with the first year of full privatisation. Last year almost one in five trains ran late; passengers spent 1,900 years stuck on delayed services.

Some of the companies with the worst punctuality records have made the greatest profits.

Stagecoach, which operates South West Trains, made more than £43 million from the franchise last year despite running almost a third of its trains late. More than a quarter of GNER services ran late but the company made a £30 million profit. Central Trains recorded the worst rise in delays since privatisation, with 26 per cent of trains late last year compared with 7 per cent in 1996-97.

The study showed that in the first three years after privatisation the proportion of trains delayed remained similar to British Rail’s average of 90 per cent of trains on time. Punctuality dipped sharply after the Hatfield crash of October 2000 and remained poor for the next three years, with more than a fifth of trains late. Performance improved slightly last year.

About half of delays are caused by faults with tracks and signalling, which are the responsibility of Network Rail. The remainder are due to failures by train companies, with top causes including broken-down trains and lack of drivers.

John Thurso, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: “The reality is that Labour cannot make the railways punctual. They are literally wasting passengers’ time. Eleven thousand years is too long for even the most patient commuter to wait.”

Labour had promised in the early 1990s to return the railways to public ownership after it won power. In 1995 the party said that it was still opposed to rail privatisation but was uncertain whether it could afford to renationalise the industry.

Delegates at Labour’s annual conference last September voted overwhelmingly for renationalisation. But ministers refused to make the policy a manifesto commitment, saying it would cost £22 billion to implement. It emerged that the true cost of renationalisation would be a fraction of that sum.

Ministers had arrived at the £22 billion figure by adding the cost of bringing Network Rail’s planned borrowings of £21billion to the Government’s balance sheet. Those borrowings are already guaranteed by taxpayers, who this year will pay more than £5 billion to the privatised railways, compared with £1.5 billion to British Rail.

The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) said it was now harder to deliver a punctual service because the network has 20per cent more trains than at privatisation. Shorter gaps between services mean that there is less time to recover from incidents.

An Atoc spokeswoman said: “We all know that punctuality is not what it was in the years before 2000. But having slipped following Hatfield and its aftermath, punctuality is now improving again and passenger satisfaction levels are at a four-year high.”

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