What Have the Privatisers Ever Done for Us?

For decades now the Thatcherite mantra has kept going: “If you bring in the private sector, things will get so much better”. Some people still believe that. And there are politicians who, finding themselves constrained by the state of public finances, think the private sector may give them a way out. 

So for the benefit of all who pine for private sector salvation, let us recap on just what handing public money and control over to private companies has done for us.

Once the national assets we used to own have been sold off cheaply to private firms, those firms gain from the rising value of the assets in years to come, and the country is left with much depleted capital resources.

With vital services they can charge for, private firms will focus on making a profit out of us and pay billions in dividends to their shareholders; and whenever it proves difficult to make enough money, they call for support and demand billions more in subsidies from the public purse. 

When things go wrong, we can’t hold the government to account because they say it’s not a matter for them, but for the private company in charge; and the private company refuses to disclose anything on the grounds that their business activities are protected by commercial confidentiality. If we nonetheless press for public action against them, they hold us to ransom by saying that if they were not left to get on with things as they see fit, they could step away and leave us with no service at all.

For any of us who can’t pay the escalating prices they ask for, they threaten to cut off the service in question, regardless of how essential it is.

Let them … 

·      take charge of water, and they leak sewage into rivers and beaches; and where disease causing parasites are found in the water they are supposed to make safe to drink, they blame it on rising temperature.

·      take charge of our country’s information technology infrastructure, and the rolling out of a reliable fibre optic network for broadband communications is repeatedly delayed, especially in our rural (not-so-profitable for them) areas.

·      take charge of trains and buses, and services routinely run late and many routes get cut altogether.

·      take charge of energy, and they will take no notice of what people can actually afford, and leave it to the government to use public money to bail out any cost-of-living problems, while keeping them in profit.

·      take charge of schools, and they remove requirements for teaching qualifications so they can pay staff less, while they push up their own exorbitant salaries.

With PFI (private finance initiative), they build facilities which they own and we pay ever-rising rent and assorted fees to them on their terms, as we cannot afford not to have access to those facilities on which crucial public services rely.

With competitive tendering, they bid to deliver public services at a cheaper rate by reducing service quality, making people redundant, and cutting the pay of many of the remaining workers; and next time round they bid at a higher rate when the public sector team has been disbanded.

Of course, some private sector firms have helped to improve the provision of public services. But there are many cases of improvement which have not required any private sector input at all. The key to improvement is to combine effective public accountability, stakeholder challenge, and citizen involvement in quality control. The height of folly is to assume private companies will put public wellbeing above their own financial interests.