E-mails expose Railtrack fears

Government advisers were paranoid that the Rail Regulator Tom Winsor would scupper its plans to push Railtrack into insolvency, internal Whitehall documents reveal.

Government advisers were paranoid that the Rail Regulator Tom Winsor would scupper its plans to push Railtrack into insolvency, internal Whitehall documents reveal.

In one e-mail, sent on the Friday before Railtrack was put into railway administration in October 2001, Shriti Vadera, a special adviser to Gordon Brown, referred to Mr Winsor as "a total wild card" who was "not on the same book leave alone the same page".

The e-mail continued: "If we cannot silence him over the weekend, and if he stands up and says he has a grand plan which could keep the company solvent, we're up the creek."

In the event, the then Transport Secretary Stephen Byers told Mr Winsor that if he sought to conduct an emergency review of Railtrack's funding, he would invoke special parliamentary powers to prevent the Rail Regulator from doing so.

The e-mails and other correspondence form part of court documents being used in the case brought against the Government by the Private Railtrack Shareholders Action Group, which claims Mr Byers abused his office when he forced the company into administration.

The documents suggest that the Government had been making preparations to trigger Railtrack's collapse for some weeks but was also concerned about the potential financial exposure.