10 Reasons To End Privatisation Now

1. Your services get worse

Public services involve caring about people. But private companies make a profit from public services by cutting corners or under-investing. There is a conflict between making a profit and taking the time to care.

2. Privatisation costs you more

You pay more, both as a taxpayer and directly when they privatise public services. Have you noticed how your water bills, energy bills, train and bus fares keep on rising in real terms? In a privatised service, profits must be paid to shareholders, not reinvested in better services. Interest rates are higher for private companies than they are for government.

3. You can’t hold private companies accountable

If a private company runs a service, they are not democratically accountable to you. You do not have a voice. Contracts to deliver public services are agreed between private companies and government behind closed doors. There is very little transparency, public accountability or scrutiny. The companies are not subject to Freedom of Information requests because of ‘commercial confidentiality’.

4. Privatisation creates a divided society

Public services are important to meet everybody’s basic needs, so we can all be part of the community. Privatisation encourages richer people to pay more and opt out of the services we all use. This leads to division, making it harder to provide excellent public services for everyone.

5. You don’t get a democratic voice

When we go to the shops, we all make our own individual decisions about what we want. Public services are different – they give us a chance to come together to decide what kind of society we want to live in.

6. Public services are natural monopolies

Privatisation was introduced because of a belief in free markets and consumer choice. But public services are often what economists call ‘natural monopolies.’ For example, when you take the train, you do not really have a choice about which one to use. There is no real competition. But with private monopolies you do not have power as a citizen to make the service better through democratic accountability.

7. Private companies cherry pick services

Private companies cherry pick the profitable bits of a service so they can make as much money as possible. For example, bus companies will only run services in busy areas, so rural communities lose out unless government steps in with a subsidy. It is more efficient to run public services in public ownership so that profits can be reinvested across the whole network as needed.

8. Privatisation means fragmentation

When lots of private companies are involved in delivering a public service, this can create a complicated, fragmented system where it is not always clear who is doing what. Private companies don’t necessarily have much incentive to work together to share information. This makes it difficult to provide an integrated service.

9. Privatisation means less flexibility

Councils and government departments are responsible for meeting the needs of the public – but privatisation means less flexibility for changing circumstances. If an outsourcing contract with a private company needs changing, government must pay more to make changes or improvements, add in extras, or opt out. And selling off public assets or public land means we the public have fewer options and resources for delivering the services we’ll need in the future.

10. Privatisation is risky

If private companies are running our public services and they fail, the public has to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.

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Public Sector Review Magazine | AUGUST 2019