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29-663: The British Railways Board ( BRB ) was a nationalised industry in the United Kingdom that operated from 1963 to 2001. Until 1997, it was responsible for most railway services in Great Britain , trading under the brand name British Railways and, from 1965, British Rail . It did not operate railways in Northern Ireland , where railways were the responsibility of the Government of Northern Ireland . It

58-404: A state-owned enterprise . A state-owned enterprise might variously operate as a not-for-profit corporation , as it may not be required to generate a profit; as a commercial enterprise in competitive sectors; or as a natural monopoly . Governments may also use the profitable entities they own to support the general budget. The creation of a state-owned enterprise from other forms of public property

87-406: A central government or state entity. Municipalization is the process of transferring private or state assets to a municipal government. A state-owned enterprise is a commercial enterprise owned by a government entity in a capitalist market or mixed economy . Reasons for state ownership of commercial enterprises are that the enterprise in question is a natural monopoly or because the government

116-423: A specific state institution or branch of government, used exclusively by that branch, such as a research laboratory. The latter refers to assets and resources owned by the population of a state which are mostly available to the entire public for use, such as a public park (see public space ). In neoclassical economic theory , the desirability of state ownership has been studied using contract theory . According to

145-406: A whole. As such, state ownership is only one possible expression of public ownership, which itself is one variation of the broader concept of social ownership. In the context of socialism, public ownership implies that the surplus product generated by publicly owned assets accrues to all of society in the form of a social dividend , as opposed to a distinct class of private capital owners. There

174-604: Is a statutory corporation , which when operating consisted of a chairman and nine to fifteen other members appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport . The Board, now reduced to a minimum membership of a chairman and one other member, continues to exist to hold the French law benefits and obligations of the Channel Tunnel Rail Usage Contract. The BRB was created on 1 January 1963 under

203-416: Is a wide variety of organizational forms for state-run industry, ranging from specialized technocratic management to direct workers' self-management . In traditional conceptions of non-market socialism, public ownership is a tool to consolidate the means of production as a precursor to the establishment of economic planning for the allocation of resources between organizations, as required by government or by

232-602: Is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning the regulatory structure for railways in the United Kingdom . The bill was introduced and published on 25 November 2004 and received royal assent on 7 April 2005. The act implemented the institutional changes published in the Department for Transport 's white paper on rail of 15 July 2004, principally: During the final parliamentary stages of

261-431: Is called corporatization . In Soviet-type economies , state property was the dominant form of industry as property. The state held a monopoly on land and natural resources, and enterprises operated under the legal framework of a nominally planned economy , and thus according to different criteria than enterprises in market and mixed economies. Nationalization is a process of transferring private or municipal assets to

290-563: Is desirable. In their model, the government and a private firm can invest to improve the quality of a public good and to reduce its production costs. It turns out that private ownership results in strong incentives to reduce costs, but it may also lead to poor quality. Hence, depending on the available investment technologies, there are situations in which state ownership is better. The Hart-Shleifer-Vishny theory has been extended in many directions. For instance, some authors have also considered mixed forms of private ownership and state ownership. In

319-500: Is promoting economic development and industrialization . State-owned enterprises may or may not be expected to operate in a broadly commercial manner and may or may not have monopolies in their areas of activity. The transformation of public entities and government agencies into government-owned corporations is sometimes a precursor to privatization . State capitalist economies are capitalist market economies that have high degrees of government-owned businesses. Public ownership of

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348-722: The British Film Institute in London , photographs to the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York , and most papers to the Public Record Office . State ownership In market-based economies, state-owned assets are often managed and operated as joint-stock corporations with a government owning all or a controlling stake of the company's shares . This form is often referred to as

377-777: The Transport Act 1962 by Harold Macmillan 's Conservative government to inherit the railway responsibilities of the British Transport Commission , which was dissolved at the same time. Initially, and for the majority of its history, the BRB operated under the structure inherited from the BTC Railway Executive. Operations were initially divided into six regions – Eastern , London Midland , North Eastern , Western , Southern and Scottish (later rebranded ScotRail ). The North Eastern region

406-423: The means of production is a subset of social ownership , which is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy. However, state ownership and nationalization by themselves are not socialist, as they can exist under a wide variety of different political and economic systems for a variety of different reasons. State ownership by itself does not imply social ownership where income rights belong to society as

435-553: The BRB also ran ferry services (later as Sealink ) and hotels . These were sold in the 1980s. The final BRB structure (1994–1997) was a shadow form of the future privatised railway industry, becoming a holding company for over 100 subsidiaries, including 25 passenger train operating, six freight, three rolling stock leasing, and a number of track maintenance companies. These were slowly sold during privatisation (the passenger subsidiaries were franchised to private sector concerns). On 1 April 1994, railway infrastructure became

464-498: The Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model it is assumed that all parties have the same information, while Schmitz (2023) has studied an extension of their analysis allowing for asymmetric information . Moreover, the Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model assumes that the private party derives no utility from provision of the public good. Besley and Ghatak (2001) have shown that if the private party (a non-governmental organization) cares about

493-820: The Secretary of State for Transport. In this function it has outlived its own residuary company, which was wound up on until 30 September 2013, pursuant to the Public Bodies review. Through its subsidiary Rail Property Ltd, BRB (Residuary) retained responsibility for non-operational railway land, for example railway lines closed in the Beeching Axe that have not been sold. The BRB owned a large amount of archive material, including papers, maps, films and photographs, dating back before nationalisation. In 1997 these were distributed to other bodies: films (the bulk of which had been produced by British Transport Films ) to

522-478: The amendment was reversed the same day in the House of Commons with a much weaker provision substituted for it. The House of Lords did not insist on their original amendment, and the legislation was passed without the protections which the train operators needed. Critics regarded this as an unjustified interference in an inter-dependent contractual matrix, contrary to the legitimate expectations of private investors in

551-533: The means of production may be labelled state socialism . State ownership was recognized by Friedrich Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific as, by itself, not doing away with capitalism, including the process of capital accumulation and structure of wage labor. Engels argued that state ownership of commercial industry would represent the final stage of capitalism, consisting of ownership and management of large-scale production and manufacture by

580-809: The minimum membership of the Board itself was reduced to the chairman and one other member. With the dissolution of the SRA under the Railways Act 2005 , BRB (Residuary) became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Secretary of State for Transport . While the Transport Act allowed for BRB to be abolished, the Board's remaining function is to hold the French law benefits and obligations of the Channel Tunnel Rail Usage Contract on trust for

609-505: The passage of the Railways Act 2005, the government sustained a defeat in the House of Lords over an amendment which would have protected passenger and train operators against a diminution of infrastructure quality or performance – or being held rigidly to their contracts for the provision of railway services which assumed no such diminution - if the Secretary of State for Transport restricted funds available to Network Rail . However,

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638-399: The property rights approach based on incomplete contracting (developed by Oliver Hart and his co-authors), ownership matters because it determines what happens in contingencies that were not considered in prevailing contracts. The work by Hart, Shleifer and Vishny (1997) is the leading application of the property rights approach to the question whether state ownership or private ownership

667-524: The public good, then the party with the larger valuation of the public good should always be the owner, regardless of the parties' investment technologies. More recently, some authors have shown that the investment technology also matters in the Besley-Ghatak framework if an investing party is indispensable or if there are bargaining frictions between the government and the private party. Railways Act 2005 The Railways Act 2005 (c. 14)

696-522: The responsibility of public limited company Railtrack , initially Government owned. The BRB continued to operate all trains until 1996, when the process of transferring them to the private sector began. Privatisation was completed in 1997, but the BRB continued to discharge residual functions relating to non-operational railway land and BR pensions, and to have responsibility for the British Transport Police . In 1999 Alistair Morton

725-484: The state's management policies, though these rights are not property rights as they are not transmissible. For example, if a family is allocated an apartment that is state owned, it will have been granted a tenancy of the apartment, which may be lifelong or inheritable, but the management and control rights are held by various government departments . There is a distinction to be made between state ownership and public property. The former may refer to assets operated by

754-513: The state. Within the United Kingdom, public ownership is mostly associated with the Labour Party (a centre-left democratic socialist party), specifically due to the creation of Clause IV of the "Labour Party Manifesto" in 1918. "Clause IV" was written by Fabian Society member Sidney Webb . When ownership of a resource is vested in the state, or any branch of the state such as a local authority , individual use "rights" are based on

783-527: The state. State ownership is advocated as a form of social ownership for practical concerns, with the state being seen as the obvious candidate for owning and operating the means of production. Proponents assume that the state, as the representative of the public interest , would manage resources and production for the benefit of the public. As a form of social ownership, state ownership may be contrasted with cooperatives and common ownership. Socialist theories and political ideologies that favor state ownership of

812-747: Was appointed the last chairman of the BRB, which began to advise on passenger railway matters. During this time it operated with the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising under the trading name of the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority . Under the Transport Act 2000 , the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising was abolished and the majority of BRB's functions were transferred to the Strategic Rail Authority 's wholly owned subsidiary BRB (Residuary) Limited . In 2001

841-558: Was merged into the Eastern Region in 1967. In the 1980s, the BRB moved to a sectoral model based on business activity – InterCity for long-distance passenger trains, Network SouthEast for commuter trains in London , and Regional Railways for short-distance and commuter trains outside the Network SouthEast area. Railfreight was organised separately. As well as the railway network, for much of its history

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