BRITAIN: Pressure was growing on the Transport Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers, yesterday to order a public inquiry into last week's Potters Bar rail crash in which seven people were killed.
In a statement to MPs in the Commons, Mr Byers confirmed that early indications showed points failure on the track had caused Friday's derailment.
The points, which were eight-years-old and had not been replaced last December as Railtrack had originally reported, although they were well within their 25-year life-span, moved as the fourth carriage of the West Anglia Great Northern train from London to King's Lynn passed across them. The points had moved because two nut bolts had become detached and a metal bar supporting the structure broke under the train's weight causing the carriage to spin off the tracks.
The Conservative transport spokeswoman, Ms Theresa May, urged Mr Byers to establish a public inquiry if it was proved that the derailment was not a freak accident. But the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) went further and rejected an assertion by Mr Byers and Railtrack that the incident appeared to be a "one-off", insisting track inspections were poor and carried out by sub-contractors who were only interested in profits.
The RMT general secretary, Mr Bob Crow, said track maintenance was "shambolic" and had been "fatally undermined" by fragmentation of the rail network. "We have contractors who use sub-contractors, sub-contractors who use agency staff, agencies who use casual labour and they are all in it for profits, not safety," he said.
Resisting the demands, Mr Byers pointed out that the Health and Safety Executive would publish an interim report focusing on the points failure within days and he said he would only make a decision on whether a public investigation was necessary once the report was released.
He also revealed that Railtrack had inspected 800 sets of points across the country and found no similar defects to those at Potters Bar. The calls for a public inquiry came as the RMT revealed that an employee had raised concerns with his managers about track problems close to the crash three weeks before Friday's incident.
It also emerged yesterday that Mr John Armitt, the chief executive of the rail operator, Railtrack, had expressed concern about the use of unqualified labour to carry out track maintenance to the London Times newspaper 48 hours before the derailment.