Rail union RMT demanded an urgent parliamentary inquiry yesterday into the “appalling racket” that has left most of Britain’s railway network under foreign state control.

Union research showed that 20 of Britain’s 27 private rail contracts are now run by foreign state-backed railways, with the vast majority being from France, Germany and the Netherlands.

“There must be a full parliamentary inquiry into this appalling racket,” RMT general secretary Mick Cash told the Morning Star.

“The true scale of the way the railways here in Britain are being used as a cash-cow to hold down fares and improve services across the rest of Europe will shock passengers as they prepare for another week of being crammed into creaking cattle trucks while being bled dry when they pay for their ticket.”

The Scottish government decided last week to award the Scotrail franchise to Dutch state-owned firm Abellio in a joint venture with privateer Serco from April 2015.

Mr Cash said: “With the planned reprivatisation of the East Coast Main Line by this rotten government we are rapidly heading towards a situation where almost the entire train operation in Britain is in the hands of overseas companies sucking out profits to benefit their own domestic transport services.”

The union’s research quotes a German Transport Ministry spokesperson admitting such a strategy in relation to state operator Deutsche Bahn.

“We’re skimming profit from the entire Deutsche Bahn and ensuring that it is anchored in our budget — that way we can make sure it is invested in the rail network here in Germany,” the statement reads.

A second statement on the Abellio UK corporate website describes how the business was founded by Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways) in 2001 “to take advantage of the liberalisation of the European transport sector.”

Mr Cash said: “This outrageous situation is solely down to the right-wing ideology of this government, clearly shared by the SNP in Scotland, which says you can have state operation of railways in Britain as long as it isn’t by the British state for the benefit of the British people.”