In 1999, the British deputy prime minister John Prescott MP appointed Morton to the chairmanship of the British Railways Board and, once created from February 2001, the Strategic Rail Authority, from which he resigned in October 2001 in the aftermath of the collapse of Railtrack.
On 31 October 2006, Network Rail (the successor body to Railtrack, formed in the wake of a subsequent train crash at Hatfield) pleaded guilty to charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 in relation to the accident.
The first source of controversy in the Railtrack incident was the decision, taken at short notice with disregard for the regulator Tom Winsor, and implemented over a weekend, to ask the High Court to put the privatised railway infrastructure company Railtrack into railway administration, on 7 October 2001.
Gerald Corbett, Railtrack's chief executive, led the management team, which resisted this new regulatory pressure.
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The controversy of Railtrack's administration blazed on, and Byers' political problems intensified with other problems, including difficulties associated with the actions of his special adviser Jo Moore who had remarked to a colleague at the Department for Transport Local Government and the Regions that 11 September 2001 may be a good day to bury bad news, and the controversial and mishandled departure of his press spokesman Martin Sixsmith.