It is easy to blame the train companies for putting up fares well above inflation from January 2. Certainly, they are taking advantage of a largely captive market of travellers who have few alternatives on offer for making the same journey in the same amount time.

However, the real culprit in what has become an annual price-gouging exercise is the Government.

In the rail White Paper published in July last year, the Government stated its intention to raise the total amount paid annually by rail passengers from £5.5 billion last year to £9 billion by 2014, a rise of 63 per cent.

Part of the additional £3.5billion is expected to come from an increase in the number of passengers. But the Department for Transport is only planning to provide enough extra carriages to accommodate 22.5 per cent more passengers.

The White Paper also said that passengers would have to shoulder a much greater proportion of the cost of running the railway. Presently, passengers pay 25 per cent and taxpayers pay 75 per cent. The Government intends that, by 2014, the cost should be divided equally between passengers and taxpayers.

It has signed contracts with train companies which require them to pay billions of pounds in fees for their franchises. National Express, for example, has agreed to pay £1.4 billion for its seven-and-a-half year East Coast franchise.

The Government signed these contracts in the full knowledge that the companies would have to put up fares every year in order to pay the fees. Ministers pretended to be surprised by fare increases in previous years but in reality they knew they were coming.

They continue to hope the public will blame greedy train companies rather than the Government. But the Department for Transport had made clear to the companies that their bids for franchises would not succeed unless they proposed big increases in fares. Train companies are not charities: they are primarily in the business for a profit. If the Government had said it wanted fares to be frozen in real terms, the companies would have happily obliged but adjusted downwards the fees they were willing to pay to run their franchises.

When the three million daily passengers return to the rail network after the Christmas shutdown and find their fares have risen by up to 11 per cent, they should blame the Government's franchising system, not its operators.

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