.png){kind=small}
Privatisation
Privatisation was supposed to bring choice, innovation and lower prices. Instead we have worse services at higher costs than for the same services in comparable countries. Whereas before, profits that these utilities made were reinvested, they now go to shareholders.
We want public ownership
Bringing essential services back into public ownership is popular with the public. Even Conservative voters are in favour. We rarely see this represented in the news, or even with many politicians, because so many rich people are invested in private companies that they would personally lose money if key services were in public hands.
Privatisation doesn't benefit the public
Lack of accountability
Privatisation takes power away from public. Instead of these utilities being oversaw by Governments, who can be voted out, now control is with big business.
Outsourcing
Every aspect of business is divided up, and farmed out to contractors and subcontractors. This aggressive outsourcing maximises profitability but rips off consumers.
​
Rail is a clear example of the impact the practice of dividing up and outsourcing different aspects of an industry has to the public and customers. The video below describes the practice of "rolling stock" outsourcing.
There's no competition
There is no competition, so customers have nowhere to go other than to the companies that the Government award the contracts. You cannot change who supplies your water, or which company's train to use. This causes monopolies which have given these corporations great power- they can charge what they want and provide poor service. There is nothing we can do about it.
Examples of where privatisation hasn’t worked
Water
England and Wales are the only countries in the world with fully privatised water and sewerage systems. By comparison, Scotland, whose water is not privatised, received 35% more investment per household than south of the border between 2002-2018.
English water was privatised 1989. Since then, water companies in England have racked up debts of more than £64 billion, yet paid out more than £78 billion to shareholders. From 2021-2023, water companies paid themselves £2.5 billion in dividends. Money has not been re-invested properly and the Victorian sewerage system which hasn't been properly upgraded leaks 2.4 billion litres of water every day. Raw sewage has been spewed into open water around the country, to the point where many waterways are not swimmable.
​​
The Environment Agency recorded 464,056 sewage discharges lasting 3.6 million hours in total in 2023. In 2024, English rivers were teaming with E.coli. People in south west England were told to boil their drinking water as it was unsafe.
But companies cannot fix the broken system because they’re in £8.2 billion debt, so the water companies want to increase bills. Southern Water are proposed a 66% increase in bills, Severn Trent proposed a 37% hike and Thames Water want to charge customers 44%.
Foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses in tax havens own more than 70% of the water industry in England. These firms do not care about the UK environment, and have no stake in ensuring the good of the environment. And then when the Government fines them for poor service, it's still cheaper than upgrading.
​
The incompetence and greed of the privatised water companies is perfeclty summed up by this audience member form Question Time from May 2024:
​
"The water industry is the perfect business model. Their market is every home, every business, their customers are forced to use their company, there's zero competition. They're selling a product made up of 70% of the earth's surface. If you cannot get that right, you should not be running a business."
Energy
Energy companies using the country's resources: the North Sea oil, to make profits for themselves. Worse still the UK government subsidises them billions to do this.
​
Privatisation has not brought prices down. In the UK energy we are paid more in energy bills in winter 2022, when wholesale prices were at their highest, than other European countries. For example, in France, where energy is publicly owned, paying far less.
​
Rail
Rail companies across the UK have been privatised since the 1980s. Since then, £31 billion has went from the network into private hands.
Despite being privately owned, rail companies are still heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. In leaked documents, privately owned Avanti West Coast joked about getting "free money" that's "too good to be true" because they get this money even for substandard performance.
Some services have been taken back into public hands, given how bad things have become, like Scotrail and LNER.
​
Other countries across Europe have better service, lower prices and are publicly owned. Why are we putting up with getting so much less for more money?
Healthcare
In the UK, the NHS is funded through the taxpayer and publicly run. The NHS is underfunded, which has led to poorer service and longer waiting lists. Rather than investing more into the service, the solution, from both Conservatives and Labour in the UK, is more private involvement.
​
The previous Labouir government, elected in 1997, begus Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) in the NHS, which is a long-term contract between the government and the private sector to finance, design, build, and maintain hospitals. The work done by these contracts would have cost £13 billion if the government had done it themselves. Instead, we paid £80 billion to the pockets of private investors- a £67 billion waste.
We are seeing more private interference into the NHS, leading many to believe that privatisation is coming. As of 2023, with waiting lists for operations so long, cases of people paying privately for these procedures has increased by one third since the COVID pandemic.
​
These suspicions are backed by the fact many politicians have close links to private healthcare firms, through being employed or receiving donations form them.
​
There is clear evidence that privatised healthcare systems are inefficient and less effective. The increasing interference of the private sector into the NHS has already been linked to 557 "treatable" deaths from 2014-2018
In America, one of the few countries without a nationalised healthcare system, pay the highest prices for prescription medicine than any other country and have one of the lowest life expectancies in the developed world.
​
America spends more on healthcare per person than any other OECD country. People do not receive healthcare on their need but their ability to pay. You either face a massive bill, or go without.
​
Tremendous bureaucracy in assessing, processing payments and employing insurance company administrators (not to mention huge salaries for CEOs of these companies. This all costs money.
​
In social care, which is largely privately owned in the UK, there are dire problems with quality while owners and CEOs make a fortune. Residents of care homes in a Mirror investigation, who pay up to £1,000 per week to stay in places with a 1 stay hygiene rating, eat out of date food while bosses make half a million per year from companies that make millions.
Why is privatisation so popular with the wealthy?
Despite how popular public ownership is with the public, much of the super wealthy, the billionaire-backed media and politicians think privatisation is the best option for essential services.
​
This is because they make a lot of money from it.
​
Collectively, CEOs of the six biggest train companies took home a combined salary of more than £5m in 2020, according to OpenDemocracy.
​
FirstGroup paid £50 million in share dividends in 2021, and the CEO may have received as much as £3 million
Since Water has been privatised in England, £57 billion has been paid to shareholders from the profits, £1.2 billion in 2022 alone.
​
Water companies, such as Yorkshire Water, who are responsible for dumping raw sewage into rivers, has donated to the Conservative party while they were in government.
