If Cameron Won

Neil Clark writes:

Last month I shone the spotlight on David Cameron’s privateering time in office — and how much taxpayers had been short-changed by the coalition’s sell-offs.

Cameron’s track record is a good guide to what will lies in store for us if the Conservatives get re-elected and/or the present coalition continues.

Make no mistake, five more years of Tory-led government would destroy not only the last vestiges of the post-war settlement but even the progressive achievements of earlier 20th-century governments.

Let’s take a closer look at what is likely to happen, if Cameron, the serial privatiser, remains at No 10.

THE NHS

Revealingly, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to give an answer when he was asked if there was a limit to the number of NHS services that he’d be happy to see carried out by the private sector.

Last year the private sector won 36.8 per cent of NHS deals — and the number is going up all the time.

Every major part of the coalition’s NHS “reforms” are designed to help transfer the NHS and its assets to the private sector and move us towards the US model of healthcare provision.

Take the setting up of NHS Property Services. This now owns £3bn of NHS properties which used to be owned by primary health trusts, before the coalition abolished them.

NHS Property Services has already sold off 124 properties for around £58.3 million and more “property dispersals” are in store.

Yesterday NHS Property Services’ official Twitter feed tweeted a newspaper article which said that a sale of NHS property could raise “£7.5bn” “to help pay off its growing deficit.”

Then there’s the compulsory “externalisation” of the 19 NHS commissioning support units.

This has to be achieved by 2016 — among the the private companies that have been bidding to run CSUs are Capita and United Health Care.

The government’s pledge to have GP surgeries open seven days a week is also designed to benefit the private sector.

Smaller GP surgeries simply won’t be able to cope — and the private companies will then step in to “help.”

The introduction of personal healthcare budgets are another step towards the Americanisation of our healthcare.

If the Tories get back in, their aim of destroying Nye Bevan’s NHS will be achieved. One tweet, from Dr Clive Peedell, co-leader of the NHA Party, who is standing against Cameron in Witney says it all:

“As an NHS cancer specialist, I’d be very grateful if you don’t vote Tory. Otherwise the NHS will continue to be dismantled.”

ROADS

This is likely to be the next big Tory privatisation. In 2012 Cameron put it on the agenda when he asked:

“Why is it that other infrastructure, for example water, is funded by private-sector capital through privately owned, independently regulated utilities, but roads in Britain call on the public finances for funding?

“We need to look urgently at the options for getting large-scale private investment into the national roads network — from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other investors.”

But it’s not just the Tories we need to beware of here.

When the investment bank NM Rothschild presented a 2009 paper claiming that a sell-off of Britain’s motorways could raise £100 billion, the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable hailed it as “an attractive, positive idea.”

A new Tory government or Con-Dem coalition would be likely to put road privatisation forward after the election as a way of “reducing the deficit” and of “improving” our major roads.

The Highways Agency, the public body which operated and managed our major roads, has been turned into a “GovCo” — i.e., a government-owned company, making it easier to sell.

But road privatisation and the widespread introduction of tolls would make travelling around Britain by car a very costly business.

We only have to look at what happened to our railways when they were privatised to see what would happen.

THE MET OFFICE, ORDNANCE SURVEY, ROYAL MINT AND THE LAND REGISTRY

Chancellor George Osborne said he wanted to see £20bn of state assets sold by 2020.

The Tories would sell off the weather if they could, but here’s my forecast — they’re likely to try and sell off the Met Office, currently managed by the government’s “Shareholder Executive,” if they get back to power.

The national map-maker, Ordnance Survey, which was established in 1791, is another likely target. Revealingly, it has just been turned into a government-owned company — making it easier to sell.

PCS official Tony Conway expressed his concerns in February:

“We are worried that the creation of the GovCo is the first step to full or partial privatisation. Ordnance Survey should retain its role as our national mapping service, working for the national interest, not for profit.”

The coalition denied it was going to sell the Ordnance Survey earlier this year, but we wouldn’t expect them to say anything else with a general election looming.

The Royal Mint is another historic publicly owned institution which is in danger.

Plans — first put forward by new Labour in 2009 — to sell the 1,000-year-old coin-maker were axed in 2014, after the Royal Mint had made a loss. Expect them to be resuscitated if the Tories get back in.

It could be a similar story with plans to privatise the Land Registry, which were only scrapped by the government after widespread opposition last June.

THE BANKS

“We will continue to sell the government’s stakes in the bailed-out banks and building societies in order to deliver value for money for taxpayers and support the economy,” the Tory election manifesto declares.

Value for money? Well the taxpayer certainly didn’t get that in 2011 when the government sold the most profitable parts of Northern Rock for an upfront payment of £748m, a loss of at least £400m to the taxpayers.

In April, Osborne said he would sell billions of pounds worth of shares in Lloyds to small investors if the Tories won — but we’ve heard this all before.

Think back to the sale of the Royal Mail, and how hedge funds made a killing. The one thing we can “bank” on when the Tories privatise is that its not small investors, or the taxpayers who will be favoured, but the Tories’ super-rich chums in the City. 

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Remember the assault on public libraries which followed the last election in 2010?

Coalition spending cuts threatened public libraries across the country, and since 2009/10, despite great “Save our Library” campaigns fought across the country, we’ve lost 337 libraries.

Expect a fresh assault if Cameron gets back in and the planned Tory cuts are imposed.

Unlike the progressive “one-nation” Tories of the post-war period, today’s neoliberal Tories hate public libraries.

It was a Tory council (Hounslow) which was the first to outsource its library service to a private firm.

“Why should libraries be state run? Doesn’t our civilisation equally reside on the bookshelves of our own home,” asked Tory MEP Daniel Hannan in an article in the Daily Telegraph.

As I wrote in a counter-piece entitled “Don’t privatise our libraries,” it doesn’t seem to occur to Hannan that many people have few books at home because they can’t afford to buy them, and that a public lending library is the only way they can enjoy the pleasure of reading.

Of course, the privatisation threat doesn’t just come from the Conservatives. The Lib Dems have been happily selling off assets with the Tories since 2010.

Although Labour is opposed to the sell-off of the remaining public stake in Royal Mail, and has pledged to repeal the government’s Health and Social Care Act, its commitment to public spending cuts will also mean public libraries and other publicly owned assets, remain under threat.

But let’s be clear — from the anti-privatisation viewpoint there really wouldn’t anything worse than the Tories coming back to power either alone or leading a Tory-Lib Dem coalition.

So let’s use our votes wisely today to make sure that this “worst case scenario” doesn’t happen.