Criticism by the National Audit Office over the sale of the UK Government’s stake in Eurostar will come as little surprise to taxpayers in Scotland who have been short-changed by the sale not only of the Eurostar train operator but also the 2010 sale of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

In a report just published, the public spending watchdog said that the sale of the UK's stake in Eurostar – the sole operator of high-speed passenger trains between the UK and continental Europe – was driven by the General Election in May, even though ministers believed that the low sale price of £581 million would rise if they delayed the sale until after the election.

The NAO concluded that, in the Government’s rush to sell its 40 per cent holding before the election, the taxpayer was left £2.3bn out of pocket by the deal which deprived the Treasury of a further £743m in future dividends.

The report found that the Government also missed out on expected rising profits at the high-speed rail business following the introduction of new trains and routes.

The sale of the UK's 40 per cent stake in the cross-channel operator to the Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and British investor Hermes was finalised in March. The NAO calculated that the taxpayer had invested £3.1bn in Eurostar over the years: some £2.3bn more than the total proceeds from the sale.

The building of the Channel Tunnel was originally approved by Westminster politicians in the 1980s after assurances by the Conservative government of the time that Scotland and the north of England would benefit as much from the investment as the south of England.

A promised Nightstar sleeper service would have allowed passengers to board overnight services at Glasgow Central and to wake up in Brussels or Paris. Sleeper carriages were built but, before the Channel Tunnel had even opened, the project was cancelled and the stock sold to Canada.

Scots were also promised that daytime Regional Eurostar services would whisk them to the continent, without having to change trains in London. That project was also cancelled without trial.

The official reason provided for the cancellation of both services was supposed lack of commercial viability but the fragmentation and privatisation of Britain’s rail network during the 1990s as well as the growth of budget airllnes were also blamed.

With both the UK's stake in the Eurostar train service and the UK's only high-speed railway line, the HS1 Channel Tunnel Rail Link between London and Dover, now in private hands, the likelihood of day or night time through services between Scotland and Europe ever launching are now smaller than they have ever been. 

The majority shareholder in the Eurostar is the French state railway company SNCF, which holds 55 per cent of equity, while the Belgian state railway SNCB / NMBS owns 5 per cent.

Eurostar is currently awaiting delivery of 17 new higher capacity trains, the first of which is expected to enter service within weeks.

In May Eurostar launched a new direct service from London to the south of France and plans to launch a new route to Amsterdam in 2017.

Last year Germany’s Deutsche Bahn announced that it had put on hold plans to launch a service between Frankfurt and and London, blaming delivery delays on new train sets from Siemens.

The launch of a Frankfurt-London service had originally been slated for 2013. The decision to put the project on ice means that Eurostar continues to operate cross-channel passenger services as a monopoly and fares are, per mile travelled, generally higher than other high speed lines across Europe.