Some would argue that the profit is better spent in reinvestment. However the average profit margin for franchises was around 2%. Since the end of franchising in 2020, operators have been paid a flat fee by government. This amounts to around £150m p.a, but total government spending on rail is around £50bn p.a so it’s not going to make a big difference. The savings would include redundancies for duplicated roles at management level, but that would be somewhat mitigated by the unions being able to focus on one set of negotiations.

Fares are priced to a number of factors. A particularly important one is to price peak tickets high enough to moderate demand on the busiest routes. Lowering prices would require more capacity, and that’s hugely expensive and disruptive, and for some bottlenecks such as the Welwyn viaduct it simply isn’t feasible. So new routes need to be built, but that hasn’t gone well lately either.

It’s mostly an ideological exercise.