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Rail staff to target East Coast privateer bid

Eurostar/Keolis takeover presentation to be hit by demonstration

Railway workers and supporters are to protest at an event staged by a privateer bidder for Britain’s only publicly owned intercity rail service.

Eurostar/Keolis wants to take over East Coast — Britain’s most efficiently run and profitable rail service.

It was taken back into public ownership in 2009 when profiteers proved incapable of operating it.

Under public control it has provided about £800 million to the Treasury.

But the Tory-Lib Dem coalition plans to hand it back to the private sector before next year’s general election.

Rail unions RMT and TSSA will demonstrate when Eurostar/Keolis stages a presentation in Newcastle.

The protest takes place outside the banqueting suite at Newcastle’s Centre for Life at 12 noon on Friday April 11.

RMT acting general secretary Mick Cash said: “Privatisation has been a disaster for Britain’s railways. They now cost between three and four times more in taxpayer subsidy than the publicly owned British Rail.”

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