The government is to sell off the British taxpayers’ stake in the Eurostar rail service, it announced yesterday.

Eurostar, which is increasingly profitable as passenger numbers rise year after year, is 40 per cent owned by the British people.

The sell-off mirrors the transfer of Royal Mail from public ownership to profiteers, which cost the British taxpayer £1 billion.

As reported by the Morning Star, 20 out of 27 British rail network franchises are now owned by foreign state-owned companies, mainly French, German and Dutch.

Profits from British rail companies are subsidising state-owned rail operations in Europe.

“This is a gross act of betrayal of the British people by a right-wing government hell-bent on selling off the family silver regardless of the real cost,” said rail union RMT general secretary Mick Cash.

“This compounds the issue of foreign ownership of Britain’s railways as the French state have first refusal on our slice of the highly profitable Eurostar cake.”

He vowed resistance to the government’s “industrial vandalism.”

“With Eurostar a strong contender for the resale of the East Coast franchise we could easily end up within the next few years with the French

State having complete control of rail services from Paris to Inverness,” he added.

Fellow rail union TSSA leader Manuel Cortes said that selling the stake was “ideologically-driven madness.”

Labour shadow transport secretary Mary Creagh said: “Eurostar is a national strategic asset that is set to grow and to return increased profits to the UK taxpayer with new routes to Geneva, Lyon, Marseille and Amsterdam.

“After the staggering incompetence of the Royal Mail sale fiasco, which lost taxpayers £1bn, people will worry that this is yet another rushed and undervalued sell-off.”

She called on the National Audit Office to urgently conduct a value-for-money inquiry before the sale proceeded to ensure that taxpayers were “not ripped off again by bungling ministers and poor financial advice from the City.”

Chancellor George Osborne said that potential bidders should respond by the end of the month and that the aim was to maximise value for money for the taxpayer.