Rail firm 'put profits first'

From the archive, first published Friday 12th May 2000.

Commuters on Thames Trains could have been protected from the Paddington rail smash if the company had been prepared to trim its profits and spend more on safety, it was claimed.

Thames Trains refused to spend 5.26m on a train protection system which could have prevented the Paddington collision, an inquiry into the accident was told.

Yet the company later paid out a dividend to shareholders of 4.23m. A year later the company paid a further dividend of 3.25m. A barrister representing crash victims said Thames could have comfortably paid in two years the whole 20-year cost to equip their trains with automatic train protection (ATP) from Paddington Station to Didcot and still given away more than 2m in dividends.

Tony Beeton, 47, a father-of-two from Wheatfields, Didcot, was one of 31 people who died in the disaster.

Many other commuters from Oxfordshire and the surrounding area were seriously injured in the tragedy. The financial figures were given yesterday by John Hendy QC, in an opening statement on behalf of 148 of those involved in the Paddington crash, including 21 bereaved.

A Thames train collided with a London-bound Great Western train in the accident on October 5 last year. The Thames train went 700 yards past a red signal at Ladbroke Grove.

Mr Hendy said the decision by Thames not to fit ATP between Paddington and Oxfordshire was taken in 1998 after the 1997 Southall rail accident. Mr Hendy said that it seemed "incomprehensible" to his clients that Thames directors refused to spend the money on ATP.

He added that in November 1999 dividends of 500,000 had been paid out to Thames directors and a further 230,000 had been paid in April 2000. He added that these payments were in addition to their combined salaries of 339,000. Mr Hendy described the accident not as "an act of God" but "a man-made event". He said his clients were outraged at this week's decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions that there will be no prosecutions over Paddington.

Mr Hendy said: "Our clients do not mince their words they consider that the announcement of this decision at the outset of the inquiry is an insult to the inquiry and an insult to them."

Archive Home