A transport union's motion calling for the renationalistaion of the railways has been passed by a large majority at the Labour conference.

The TSSA's push for a commitment to an "integrated, accountable and publicly owned railway" gained 63.7 per cent of the vote with 36.3 per cent backing the leadership.

The party leadership had argued the measure would cost £20 billion to implement and was therefore far too expensive.

On Monday, transport secretary Alistair Darling had tried to persuade delegates at the annual gathering in Brighton to tone down the pledge, holding out the prospect of ever greater government control of the privatised train network.

The Cabinet minister said it was "practically" and "philosophically" wrong to support renationalisation by stealth.

In the end Darling was able to get the votes of 72 per cent of constituency votes but the union vote of 99.5 per cent in support of the measure was more than enough to push it through.

Earlier chancellor Gordon Brown had also said renationalisation would not be a priority for government spending.

"If the government had £22 billion to spend it will not be for an expensive renationalisation," he said.

"We will put investment in schools and hospitals first."

Defeat

The defeat is a blow to the prime minister who is struggling to assert his authority over activists, having already been defeated over a policy on local government powers and a motion on whether to debate the war in Iraq.

The TSSA's general secretary Gerry Docherty told ePolitix.com that the move would be popular among voters, pointing to a YouGov survey showing 67 per cent of the electorate believe passenger rail services should be run in the public sector.

"We think it is important that every penny that goes into the railway is actually spent on the railway providing better services; it is clear that that isn't happening at the moment," he said.

"We think that having an integrated service is essential because it would streamline decision making. You need to have an integrated decision making structure because you need a very clear chain of command – one person has overall control of what is happening not only on the infrastructure side but also on the passenger services side.

"We have done some polling and only one in 10 people think that rail passenger services should be run by the private sector as they are now.

"There is clearly room for change and we think it is in the Labour Party's best interest to adopt this as a policy, to help them campaign for, and win a historic third term. We certainly want to see Labour win the election; we think this is a popular, vote winning policy."