This government is in the
process of selling off our public services to the private sector at a rate
never seen before. They are making
Thatcher's government look like a street corner barrowman by comparison. They have no mandate to do what they are doing
and yet the magnitude of their actions is breath-taking. And much of what has been and is being done
is irretrievable, in other words ‘When It’s Gone It’s Gone’. We hear the words 'academy' but not private
school, we hear 'foundation hospital' not private hospital; and yet that what
we've got. Some might think 'but surely
that's okay isn't it? Aren't private schools
and hospitals operated to a higher standard than state run ones?' Well if you imagine a private hospital run by
a private healthcare company with patients funded by private health insurance
that may be so. Or perhaps if you
imagine a private school funded by the wealthy parents of its pupils at
thousands of pounds a term. But don't
imagine that that is what academies or foundation hospitals are like. Many will be run by and for the profit of
shareholders of enormous companies (many from overseas) whose sole raison
d'etre is provide the lowest possible service level for the highest possible price
and to make the greatest possible profit margin.
Why am I returning to this
theme you might ask? Well this is an
extremely important time, this is a week where the government has revealed that
‘E-ACT, one of England’s biggest academy chains, is to be stripped of almost a
third of its schools amid serious concerns over education standards’. This piece of news reveals so much more than just
what it says. First of all E-ACT is only
one of England’s academy chains! My
children have long since grown up and left home so I was more than a little
surprised to learn that there was such a thing as a ‘chain’ of academies. I imagined that the whole point of these
so-called academies was that they were independent. On its website, E-ACT proudly claims that
they, ‘have a proven national record of
developing schools into high attaining institutions and were delighted to
celebrate a fourth year of improvements across all E-ACT academies in 2012’. Well so much for the improvement and their
national record then. It was also interesting
to read that they claim to be ‘sponsors’ of education. I had always thought that a sponsor in this
context was a person or organisation that contributes towards the costs of
something, not an organisation that takes public money to provide a service.
This episode with academies is
just the latest in a long list of privatisation adventures by the
coalition. The entirety of these
policies is a scandal of monumental proportions. Public money is routinely being given to
private companies who cannot or will not provide the services they are paid to. The welfare state in all its facets is being
systematically dismantled by a government that has no mandate to do it. They claim it is an ideological thing, as if
that makes it okay to do it without seeking an electoral mandate to make such
an enormous shift in public service policy.
They say that the ideology is that by moving things to the private
sector it creates wealth that we all benefit from; however, the only wealth
that is being created is for the shareholders and executives of huge corporate
companies who mostly pay their taxes abroad.
It was recently revealed that at least two of the biggest of these
companies paid zero corporation tax in the UK last year. They claim that these changes will save money;
that is not true either, mostly they only appear to save money by shifting
additional costs into a different budget.
For example when making the changes to Legal Aid this will add enormous
costs to court operating costs whilst appearing to make Legal Aid cheaper.
All this would be absolutely
fine I suppose if we actually were saving money and/or being provided with the better
services we have been promised, except of course we are not. Time and time again we see examples of privatised
services coming short of the standards expected, repeatedly we find service
providers unable to fulfil the promises they made when taking the contract,
some even having to relinquish the task, unable provide even the unexacting
standards demanded by this government.
We even see examples of deliberate fraud where the government is billed
for services never provided or asked for. You could be forgiven for thinking that these
failings are rare and or only of insignificant sums amounts because sometimes they
barely get a mention in much of the press.
They disappear from the front pages to be replaced by news of Simon Cowles baby or other such trivial nonsense.
Whenever some new titbit of
public service comes up for sale the usual suspects are there slavering at the
bit, waiting to get their greasy little fingers on another little piece of the
action. It matters not that these
companies mostly have no history in providing that service; or that many do
have a long and proven history of incompetence and/or fraud. Indeed many of these companies can boast
ministers and MPs as shareholders.
This week also marks a
tragedy for Britain with the final nail in the coffin of our reputation for
being a just and fair nation, and being considered a beacon for justice
throughout the world. Today the
government have announced their final plans for Legal Aid. These plans will inevitably, in the short
term, lead to the closure of hundreds of small solicitors firms with all their highly
qualified and support staff finding themselves out of work. In the longer term the system will become
unviable leaving the way clear for one of the usual suspects to move in and
employ poorly qualified staff to represent accused people in court. Or worse still, people forced to defend
themselves in court. The long
established Criminal Bar which both defends and prosecutes people accused of
criminal offences may actually not survive.
There will be many miscarriages of justice innocent people found guilty,
perhaps even jailed for crimes they did not commit, and the guilty left to walk
the streets and possibly re-offend. If
you were the victim of rape would you want to be cross-examined in court by the
accused because he couldn’t get a lawyer?
The changes announced today
will NOT save money but will indeed increase costs. They have been condemned almost unanimously
by every section of the legal profession, ie barristers, judges, magistrates, solicitors,
legal executives and court interpreters.
Even the government’s own lawyers have criticised them. And yet Chris Grayling the Lord Chancellor
and Secretary of State for Justice is pushing them through. This is a man who has absolutely no training
or experience in the law, has consistently used spurious statistics, misled
parliament on a number of occasions and made defamatory remarks about the legal
profession in order to support his arguments.
Has been found to have lied on several occasions. A man who claimed thousands of pounds to
decorate a second home yet lives only 16 miles from parliament; and who employs
his wife as his secretary at £37,000 pa cost to the nation.
There are many aspects of
the these changes that are wrong, and I have covered most of them in earlier
postings of my blog, but suffice it to say that our Criminal Justice System is just
the latest of our public services being sacrificed on the altar of profit.
For your information:
A list
of some of the companies that are buying us up:
G4S,
Serco, Capita, Atos, E-ACT
A list
of some services that have been sold off or are about to be:
Court
interpreting, disability assessments, schools, hospitals, legal aid lawyers
(defence & prosecution), prisons, police back office functions, prisoner
transport, fire service, pension payments, council office functions, many NHS
services, probation services.
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