Southeastern should be stripped of its franchise immediately and put into public ownership, according to Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

He spoke out on the issue on a visit to Thanet to address a public meeting organised by the campaign group Momentum, saying renationalisation could cut fares.

A petition signed by thousands of people, which calls for the franchise to be taken away from Southeastern is due to be handed in to the government today.

Mr McDonnell told the KM Group: “If you look at what went on in the past, and recent years, where private companies running the railway services have gone into administration and been taken into public ownership, they have been the most successful in the whole system.”

He added: “It demonstrates that it can be done. If you did that on a national basis, you would have an integrated system as well. That would reduce fares and increase the opportunities for investment.”

“If you look at what went on in the past, and recent years, where private companies running the railway services have gone into administration and been taken into public ownership, they have been the most successful in the whole system...” - John McDonnell

More than 12,000 signatures have been added to the petition to scrap the service and Faversham and Mid Kent MP Helen Whately will be speaking to rail minister Claire Perry today.

The petition was launched earlier this month which says that the company "consistently let down their paying customers, cancelling trains strategically so they don't have to pay refunds, while making £12.8m in profit".

It continues: "Their customer service is beyond useless and the people of the South East have suffered for long enough."

Mr McDonnell defended the party’s stance on immigration in the face of an internal report on why it lost the general election.

That report said the party was seen as lacking credibility on the issue.

“Migrants coming to this country provide us with a workforce that has basically supplied the staff for our hospitals, with our infrastructure.

"That is the modern world. What we have got to do is make sure people are not using immigration as an exploitative mechanism.

"We are trying to make sure wages and jobs are protected so migrants are not used by exploitative employers to undercut wages. In that way, that protects the workforce whether they are migrants or are people living in this country.”