Sir, – In your leading article on the future of the region’s rail network (D&S Aug 22) you say that the identity of those who run our trains “matters not a jot”. I would argue that it matters a great deal.

The franchises are effectively a licence to print money, underwritten and subsidised by the Government, i.e by all of us. This provides the opportunity for private sector operators to maximize returns to their shareholders, drawing on money that should properly be re-invested in the system.

That these companies invest heavily themselves is a myth; Richard Branson would have us believe that Virgin Trains have effectively upgraded the west coast route single handed whereas in fact this work has been primarily funded from the public purse.

As for the subsidiaries of foreign railways who are bidding for franchises, they surely cannot believe their luck. Secure in the knowledge that their home networks remain in public ownership they are free to repatriate the profits from running our trains to spend on improvements to their own.

None of this would matter so much if it resulted in better services but it doesn’t. Instead we have the highest fares in Europe, a fragmented network, an unintelligible system for buying tickets and standards of service that could at best be described as uneven.

Close to home it is instructive that East Coast Trains, the publicly-owned company that has run the east coast main line since National Express pulled out in 2009, has returned £1bn pounds to the Treasury during that time and regularly records record levels of public satisfaction.

Yet the Government has prohibited it from bidding for the franchise renewal, stating that only private companies can tender including, with delicious irony, a subsidiary of the publicly-operated French railways, SNCF. What a way to run a railway.

ROBIN BROOKS

Barningham, Richmond.