The portrayal of rail workers' pay by the Government's McNulty review has been dismissed by railway expert Paul Salveson.

"To single them out when private firms are raking in considerable profits is bare-faced cheek," said Paul. "Bad, very bad."

He added: "I asked some mates of mine who worked for Northern Rail about their pay.

"A conductor gets under £20k and a driver just under ￡40k. Both are demanding, responsible and often dangerous jobs involving highly anti-social hours.

"Drivers are paid what is, in railway terms, a good but not exorbitant salary; conductors are grossly underpaid, as are track workers and many other grades."

The rail unions agree with Paul.

They say independent monitoring shows that train operators’ labour costs have risen at a lower rate than those for the UK economy as a whole.

Matt Dykes of the TUC said that the median annual wage for rail workers is £26,000, based on information from TAS Business Monitor.

He said: "McNulty’s recommendations on rail industry pay and conditions are wide of the mark."

Hugh Potton, a train driver at Paddington, has also criticised McNulty's ideas for "re-admitting the private sector via the back door of 'vertical integration' into the safety-critical railway maintenance" as "Son of Railtrack".

He told Aslef's magazine that it would "prove categorically that both the industry and the Government have learned absolutely nothing from the horrendous mistakes and catastrophic failures of its recent past".

For more information on rail industry wages, see Matt Dykes

For more information about Paul Salveson: Paul Salveson