Revealed: Most of our rail journeys are on foreign-owned trains

Almost one billion such trips were made in the 12 months to September which is 57 per cent of all journeys, according to new analysis of industry data.

This is predominantly made up of companies from Germany (23%), the Netherlands (15%), and France (7%).

West Midlands Railway took over services, including those in Shropshire and Mid Wales, from London Midland earlier this month.

The new operator has promised to invest £1 billion in the network, including new carriages and additional services to alleviate congestion on a variety of lines.

That includes the promise of an additional service per hour between Birmingham and Shrewsbury by the end of next year, doubling the number of West Midlands network trains running between Shropshire and the Second City.

But the company has no British investment. The ownership of the new operator is a partnership which is 70 per cent from the Netherlands and 30 per cent from Japan, replacing London Midland’s parent company Govia, which is 65 per cent UK-owned.

Campaign group Railfuture’s spokesman Bruce Williams described the UK figures as “perverse”.

He said: “It does raise the question about what is the point of privatising the railway if it’s then going to be owned and operated by the states of other countries.

“It’s OK for the French government to run our railways but it’s not OK for the British government to run our railways.”

Passengers, who lost at least 3.6 million hours due to significantly delayed trains in 2016/17, will be hit with an average fare hike of 3.4 per cent on Tuesday.

Bringing franchises back into public ownership when current contracts expire is a key policy of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Today’s figures reveal London Overground is the busiest rail company fully or partly owned overseas, with 189 million journeys. It is part of Arriva, a subsidiary of German state-owned Deutsche Bahn.

Northern, part of the same firm, is the second busiest operator under foreign ownership with 107 million journeys in 2016/17. The totals are based on the number of journeys made with each company according to Office of Rail and Road figures, and adjusted by the proportion that firms are owned overseas.

The proportion of services run by foreign companies increased in 2017.

Hong Kong company MTR began running South Western Railway with First Group in August, taking over from British firm Stagecoach’s South West Trains.

In February, Italian state operator Trenitalia took over the c2c franchise from Birmingham-based National Express.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, said: “It is splendidly ironic that the Tory Government believes in state ownership of Britain’s railways, as long as they are foreign state-owned companies. The only state that cannot, under the Tories, run our railways is the British state. That’s why we believe in bringing Britain’s railways back into public ownership, a policy now popular with Conservative as well as Labour voters.”

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the Commons in November that privatisation of the network in the mid-1990s “sparked a remarkable turnaround in the railway’s fortunes”, with passenger numbers more than doubling.

Office of Rail and Road figures show that £4.2 billion of taxpayers’ cash went to the rail industry in 2016/17.

Taking inflation into account, this is down almost 13 per cent on the previous year but more than twice as much as British Rail used to get before privatisation.

The Rail Delivery Group, representing train companies, says profit margins are about three per cent and private investment in rail reached a record £925 million in 2016/17.