A Key Progressive Cause

Over on Comment Is Free (apparently a regular recipient of communications, pseudonymous and otherwise, that I wish as much success as they have had in blacklisting the author of the following - but then, what else do News International employees have to do these days?), Neil Clark writes:

Thirty-two years after Margaret Thatcher swept into Downing Street promising to roll back the frontiers of the state, the neoliberal drive towards a fully privatised Britain is entering its final stages. The government's new Open Public Services white paper, revealed by David Cameron last week, may have passed under the radar somewhat due to the scandals engulfing the Murdoch media empire, but it's an important document nonetheless. The coalition claims that "reform of public services is a key progressive cause", and that its proposals "give power to those who have been overlooked and underserved", but in reality there is nothing progressive about its underlying objective to radically change the role of the state from a provider of public services to one that will merely ensure "fair access" to them.

For all its touchy-feely language – added, of course, to gain Lib Dem acceptance – Open Public Services is a document that Sir Keith Joseph and Friedrich Hayek, those two hardcore critics of postwar collectivism, would have had no trouble in endorsing. And the main beneficiaries of the reforms are not likely to be poor and disadvantaged, but private companies who will be able to bid to run a whole host of services currently provided by the state and local authorities.

The white paper claims that the planned reforms are non-ideological, but its assertion that "the old, centralised approach to public service delivery is broken" and its obsession with increasing "choice" and "competition" reveals its inherent anti-state bias. And its assumption that reducing the role of the state and opening the door to "new providers" leads to better services doesn't tally with the experiences of millions of Britons since privatisation started in 1979. You won't read about it in Open Public Services, or on the websites of freemarket thinktanks, but the record of the state was far superior to that of the private companies who have since taken over its responsibilities.

The much-maligned British Rail cost the taxpayer about five times less in subsidies and delivered much cheaper fares than the likes of First Great Western and Virgin Trains. The state-owned National Bus Company and its local subsidiaries also served the travelling public better than today's privately owned bus operators, who, like their train counterparts, suck in huge amounts of public subsidy, yet still have the chutzpah to charge us some of the highest fares in Europe. The state-owned BBC, when all its production was carried out "in house", produced some of the best television programmes made anywhere in the world – certainly better than anything Sky has ever produced. And the NHS, routinely denounced as a Stalinist bureaucracy by rightwing commentators, did rather more to improve the nation's health and increase life expectancy than the woefully inadequate mix of private and charitable hospitals that existed before 1948.

The neoliberal "private ownership good, public ownership bad" mantra also doesn't explain how two of western Europe's most successful postwar economies, those of Norway and Austria, operated a large state-run sector.

Rather than being the disaster that free marketeers claim, the massive increase in the role of the state in the years following the second world war was of huge benefit to the vast majority of ordinary Britons. Dirigiste economic policies ensured full employment, while increased state spending on education, health and welfare led to major increases in the quality of life.

The rolling back of the state since 1979 may have benefited merchant bankers and wealthy investors, but it has come with an extremely high price tag for everyone else. The government now wants us to believe that creating "greater diversity in the provision of public services" will deliver enormous benefits to the public, but our experience with neoliberal reforms of the past tells us exactly the opposite is likely to happen. And while the white paper claims "there is a huge appetite for people to get directly involved with the deliveries of services they use", there is little, if any public enthusiasm for a further reduction of the state. Last month, 38 Degrees handed in a petition of 420,000 signatures against the planned reforms to the NHS. A similar campaign derailed the government's plans to sell off England's forests. Around 70% of people would like to see our railways renationalised. And after British Gas's announcement of an 18% hike in its gas tariffs, having posted record profits of £742m last year, it's highly probable that a similar proportion would favour taking the once state-owned company back into public ownership.

Yet despite public opinion, the government remains hell-bent on reducing state provision. Only yesterday, the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, announced that more than £1bn of NHS services would be opened up to competition from private companies and charities. Once again, all the talk is of providing "real choices for people", but the reality, as the BMA warns, is likely to be the very opposite.

For Labour, the coalition's anti-state obsession provides a golden opportunity. If Ed Miliband is looking for an issue that is both a vote winner and in tune with his party's traditional values, then he could do far worse than to end Labour's flirtation with neoliberalism and champion the progressive role of the state as a provider not just of public services, but of public transport and utilities too. Vigorously opposing Open Public Services and the reactionary rightwing ideology that underpins it would be a good way to start.