Unions blamed for rail fare rises

Transport secretary Chris Grayling has blamed trade unions for above-inflation fare rises on the railways. “I want the rate of increase of rail fares to come down,” he told MPs. “The biggest barrier to that is the Labour Party’s and the trade unions’ insistence that the RPI measure has to be at the heart of every pay increase in the rail industry. The industry collectively needs to move to RPI, but the training manuals for the unions that back the Labour Party insist that it is unacceptable to negotiate on anything except an RPI increase.”