Of course the rail system must be renationalised. But no money should change hands

A remarkable opinion poll this week found that 73% of voters believe the government should buy back Railtrack into public ownership. The thing that makes this finding most remarkable is the word "buy". But perhaps "take" was not offered as a suggestion.

If cost is a genuine obstacle to renationalisation, then we need to look at ways of reducing that cost. We have to balance the safety of investments with that cost. Shareholding is never 100% safe. I thought that was supposed to be part of the fun.

All those who gathered for the kill when the previous government decided to take things which were owned by us all ( seize them, if you like) and redistribute them to a smaller number (the few and not the many) knew they were taking a risk. It would have been clearer to them that they were taking a risk if the Labour opposition had issued a warning of renational isation without compensation. It might be said that telling people in advance the result of their speculation destroys the whole point. But the element of uncertainty would have been preserved by the fact that Labour politicians made all kinds of promises in opposition.

None the less, such a policy would have been an investment for Labour because no one would now be able to say they hadn't been warned. It might also have made the sell-offs harder to accomplish, if the promise looked as though it might be kept.

Privatisation is a tricky business and investors can be put off. In February 1995, a memo to the Railtrack board warned against installing automatic train protection (ATP) because the cost would affect the share value on its flotation as private company.

Share values, after all, have no ethical dimension. Let us look at the railway construction company, Jarvis, expected to win a large part of the business generated by the Paddington disaster. The crash added £35m to the value of the company, share prices jumping by 29p. A nation united in grief?

But let us look forward. Already it is being recognised by the government that the public would like to be in charge of their own safety. The government's supporters are at pains to point out that, if Railtrack is brought in to make money out of the London Underground, safety will not be part of the deal. Similarly, the government says that when air traffic control is taken from us and given to privateers, the responsibility for making sure the planes don't bump into each other is best not entrusted to the market.

Labour speaks of partnership rather than privatisation. But does there not seem to be an implicit unhappiness in such partnerships? How do sectors work together when one knows that the other can't be trusted not to kill the customers? Somehow ministers are able to sort this in their minds. The free market, they appear to believe, is a healthy, life-giving force, which brings nice coffee to railway stations and hospital reception areas.

The only drawback with the private sector is that it operates on the principle that saving lives is unprofitable. Of course, killing people is profitable; that is why suited men in suburban Surrey glades can square the fact that the costs of their daughters' ski trips are amply met by the proceeds of selling instruments of torture to military regimes. Such men have no particular interest in torture; they'd be as happy selling safety equipment if there were as much money in it.

I digress. Slightly. However, the fact that corners are cut to keep costs down is not a secret and is not unique to the private sector. The public sector does the same thing because it is impelled to act as though it were the private sector. The more the market ethos infects public services, the worse they become.

Regrettably, I should imagine that most of those polled this week on the ownership of Railtrack would not argue for widespread nationalisation. Most of them probably favour a mixed economy and believe that some things are best in one sector and some in another. But what they undoubtedly recognise is that market values are bad for our health, and that the more important a thing is, the more important that it be under democratic control. The coffee they are less concerned about, although if they knew how the people of developing countries suffer for that coffee, they'd probably favour seizure of the beverage industry as well.

While rescue workers throw themselves into doing their jobs as best they can, and railway employees who have just done 12-hour night shifts come freely back to work to join in, other imperatives are at work. At the Southall inquiry this week, Detective Superintendent Graham Satchwell of the British Transport Police, spoke of how Railtrack reacted to the crash. Railtrack sought access to witnesses whom detectives were questioning. Railtrack should have provided a railways incident officer to give technical advice but "that man was invisible". However, the Transport Police did receive frequent calls from Railtrack, pushing for the line to reopen that same night.

Buy back? My arse.