Labour’s Parliamentary candidates in Cornwall have welcomed the latest government U turn: the decision not to close rail ticket offices and reduce staff at stations. 

 Jayne Kirkham, standing in Truro and Falmouth, said: “This proposal would have made access to our railways much harder for so many people.  I am very glad the government has seen sense and scrapped it – the idea should have been ditched before money was wasted trying to foist it on the public. Labour will focus on bringing our railways back into public ownership and making them more accessible and user friendly, not less.” 

 Camborne & Redruth candidate Perran Moon said: “ Our campaign to reverse this decision has worked and and I want to thank all those who helped collect petition signatures and responses to the consultation.

 “ Government is blaming rail operators for this fiasco and the operators say the government asked them to do it. Once again, it shows the utter incompetence of Ministers, wasting time and money on chaotic ideas, while our railways are crying out for investment to create a rail network fit for the future.”   

 Commenting on the government u-turn on ticket office closures, Louise Haigh MP, Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary, said:

 “These shambolic plans have fallen apart under scrutiny.

 “The government failed to come clean on the impact of these proposals for accessibility and job security and now have been forced into a humiliating climb down, disowning the very proposals ministers championed from the start.

 “Tory ministers have serious questions to answer on their colossal waste of taxpayers’ money after spending months on these flawed proposals.

 “This is yet another example of how this broken government’s time is up.

 “A Labour government would end the chaos on our railways by delivering a publicly owned and unified rail network, bringing contracts into public ownership as they expire, with every decision tested against delivering for the passenger.”