In the letter, RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey wrote:- "I'm writing to you to ask you to meet with me to discuss the future of the Merseyrail concession. I also want to take the opportunity to reiterate my Trade Union’s position and urge you to endorse the option of bringing Merseyrail into public ownership. Across the UK, rail franchises are coming into public ownership, saving an estimated £150 million a year in profits in the immediate term and delivering other efficiency savings and operational benefits from greater integration. Merseyrail are currently arguing that they should be allowed to continue to operate the Concession in the Liverpool City Region. My union does not believe this is in the best interests of the people of the Region, or the British taxpayer. The investment that has supported the quality of Merseyrail’s services owes nothing to the concession operator and everything to public funding. These were investments made by the public under your direction, investments of which you and the Combined Authority should rightly be proud. The operator, a joint venture between:- Serco and Transport UK, has been an almost solely extractive and parasitic enterprise that’s sucked more than £212 million out of the service since its contract began. The Merseyrail Electrics joint venture has paid out an eyewatering £212 million in dividends since 2003 to their shareholders, averaging 105% of their profits over the period of the contract. Merseyrail accounted for just :-1.7% of total UK passenger journeys last year, but its:- £43.8 million dividend payment represented:- 26% of total UK private operators’ dividend payments. That’s equivalent to shareholders getting:- £1.52 for every passenger journey on Merseyrail services. Merseyrail takes no risks with its own capital to justify such grotesque dividend extraction. Rail privatisation in general has been a risk- ree business for private operators: ‘examples of private investment in our railway infrastructure have been fairly thin on the ground in the privatisation era…. even 100% private sector ownership of train operating companies under franchising has not resulted in large investments being funded by those companies’. Merseyrail’s is:- 182%. That is a staggering return on almost no risk. It is predominantly the City Region and UK taxpayer that has subsidised Merseyrail’s performance and enabled its profiteering. This should be called what it is, a licensed rip off of passengers and public by private interests. We agree with the rail minister Lord Hendy when he said in Parliament recently:- ‘a concession model would mean the taxpayer continuing to fund substantial profits for private sector operator.’  I believe it is time that the rip off was put to an end for good and the Combined Authority was enabled to run the services directly, ensuring that every penny of Merseyrail’s revenue went to support transport services in the City Region."