The new transport secretary has declined to say whether Transport for London would be allowed to take over Southeastern Metro trains – but said that mayor Sadiq Khan would be given a greater role in rail services.
All three of London’s mayors since the post was created – Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Khan – have supported allowing TfL to run Southeastern and other National Rail services within the capital, but the Conservative government refused to devolve local trains to City Hall.
Before the election, it was reported that Labour was also not keen, with a source telling the Financial Times that the lines would be run by the state-run Great British Railways instead.
While visiting Waterloo bus garage with Khan, Louise Haigh told Ross Lydall, the City Hall editor of the Evening Standard: “My priority is getting GBR established and getting the basics right because we’ve suffered from delays and cancellations for too long – that’s my immediate priority.
“But we have said that we want the mayors to have more of a role in GBR, whether it be the planning, the timetabling, or indeed the running, so I look forward to working with Sadiq to establish how that would happen.”
TfL already runs parts of the National Rail network – the London Overground since 2007 and it took over parts of what is now the Elizabeth Line in 2015.
But in that time Southeastern and other National Rail services have been subject to higher fares under central government control, while services were cut during the pandemic and not fully restored.
Last year a petition started by The Greenwich Wire calling for Southeastern Metro services to be taken over by TfL was signed by 5,900 people.
Khan is not the only mayor with designs on running train services – Andy Burnham hopes to bring eight lines in Greater Manchester under local control by 2028.
Southeastern, which also runs trains to the Kent coast and East Sussex, is already under state control after financial irregularities were found under its previous operator, Govia, in 2021.
Thameslink, which is still run by Govia and operates trains via Greenwich, could be nationalised as soon as April if the legislation behind GBR is passed in time.
Haigh indicated there would be a change of approach to London under the new government, after eight years of conflict between City Hall and Westminster.
“As a Yorkshire MP there’s always this tension between London and the north, but we know that investment in London supports the rest of the country,” she said.
“We make buses in Yorkshire and Northern Ireland that are driven on the roads of London. I don’t want there to be this conflict any more and that is why I wanted to see Sadiq and do a visit in London early on to demonstrate that this government isn’t going to work against London any more.
“We’re going to work in partnership and we’re going to work to deliver.”
Lydall’s interview with Haigh was posted to social media but did not make it onto the paper’s website.