Tell us what you think

I was furious when public services were privatised. I could see that it was to offload commitments from the governor and that it would allow the private companies to make large profits for themselves and shareholders to the detriment of the public. I continue to be furious when I hear that my fears are confirmed. Private companies ( often Tory supporters) have profited enormously. Leaving the taxpaying public shortchanged.

I've an inquiry regarding Labours alleged action of moving our rail system into public ownership.

They state the 'rolling stock' will NOT be part of the moving the rail system into public ownership.

Surely the rolling stock is a SIGNIFICANT and vital part of our rail system.

Why does Labour choose to keep rolling stock in the hands of greedy, profit motivated corporations?

What really gets me is that if we renationalise some private companies we might have to pay compensation. The way round this as I suggested some years ago regarding rail is to wait for the contracts to come up and cancel them. But it is still very galling that we would have to wait.

I need to take a full look on your website but I agree with you that water companies such as Thames Water having fallen foul of their contracts, could be renationalised immediately.

With public ownership we need to go further. Around 2009/10, Gordon Brown had a great opportunity to nationalise all of them not just the ones in trouble. Isn’t weird that those were taken over having made losses were sold back at a low price once they made profits again? I think the answer is to leave the independent “mutuals” like Nationwide etc alone but encourage or force cooperatives on the others.

The same could apply to the big high street retailers such as Next, M and S etc. Cooperatives are a great way to have a form of public ownership even socialism without full nationalisation and potential drawbacks. This is why I am not only a Labour Party member but a Cooperative Party member. This isn’t easy to achieve but we must find a way.

We do need to bring public utilities back into public ownership but we need to learn from the past so we avoid the disadvantages of having large public corporations which are unaccountable and alienate both the public and their workers. Of course, there is no perfect solution but having public utilities run as cooperatives with public stakeholders and some genuine industrial democracy is the way forward and 10 times better than what we have.

The same should apply to private companies run as cooperatives.

By the way, public ownership is good for the economy, take Sweden which has real workers rights and high trade union membership and of course a high proportion of public ownership. In 2010, following the crash, their economy was the same as ours. Now, they are one of the most prosperous countries on the planet. No to mention Norway who nationalised North Sea Oil. Thatcherism which we still suffer with was not only wrong it was polar opposite to what is good.

Many pensions have invested in utilities. How do you propose ensuring they can re invest their money as profitably?

British Gas have chosen Fujitsu to provide their main software for billing etc. This should be stopped.

Our PPE stock management is outsourced to private firms by the government

Now, in 2023, The Public Accounts Committee is highly critical of the repeated governance and financial failings at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which was set up under Boris Johnson during the pandemic.

Our PPE stock management is outsourced to private firms by the government. In 2018 Movianto, a subsidiary of US health company won the £55 million contract. In 2020 ( during the pandemic ) the contract was taken over by French company EHDH holding group

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which oversees UKHSA, lacks a strategy for reserves of PPE, vaccines and medicines despite its mandate to protect our health security.

The government owns the PPE stock, but outsources its management to private firms. What possible justification is there for this ?

Hi. I'm 89. I knew when Thatcher was in power. They had no legal right to sell our Utilities. . Government owns Nothing. We the People invested all our lives. In using our Utilities.

But it is difficult. To stop Capitalists stealing What is Not theirs.

We are not a Democracy. We are controlled by Capitalists. In all Political Parties.

I am sick to death of hearing about all the massive profits these private companies are making and the huge bonuses that are being given to the CEOs and shareholders. It is time everything that was publicly owned is once more publicly owned. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

John Bosco you asked for ideas on how to get the labour party on board with deprivitisation of the NHS in their next manifesto. Use poll data to show how popular the ngs is with the vast majority if people. If there are votes to be ghad that will sway them. Use Gary from Gary's economics to make the economic and socially moral case for it. Hopefully he will make them take back the moral high ground when they rea.ise how popular it is

I think we should be aiming for a minimum water/energy in a property has to give per week. So people can least have one bath or one cooked meal a week. We have to be sensible and say it is a minimum an energy provider provide for someone regardless if they can afford it. If people go silly and say that is should be completely free the whole point will be lost in the argument.

A person would have to register their property for say 6 months at time for a minimum water/energy per week and then have to be re-evaluated every six months.

The point is help people not make Rich Labour Charlie arguments or quotes will living in 4 bedroom house, where lots of people will be divided.

A bare minimum for those that are struggling seems a sensible start, so they have some human comfort per week.

The energy providers would bare most of the costs,

We must say to them people before profits, less suffering before dividends

In Luxemburg transportation is free; you just step onto the train without buying a ticket or using a travel card. They have a complex tax system and I wonder if it would be a good option for us to consider. I personally wouldn't mind paying a little bit of tax to use TfL for free all day every day.

UK Citizens have become slaves of the Globalists, rich investors who milk our country dry. £Billions flow overseas while the UK's £Trillion debt mountain grows. Thatcher started selling off the Family silver, and the Tories continued with the rot to line their own greedy pockets. Property and land is rented out by overseas investors who don't even live here, while our own Citizens cannot get a foot on the property ladder.

I am sick to death witnessing over the last 40 years our governments not standing up for the citizen (not subject of the Crown) being ripped off by private vested interests instead. It is fascial that so much of our vital infrastructure is owned by foreign companies and governments. Our politicians seem incapable of agreeing a future vision for our nation! Why? Is it because they are part of the vested interests associated with the theft of the peoples assets - in other times this would be treason....off with thier heads!

I would also like to see public money being used to install solar panels on public and municipal property,as well as council and private houses.

How does the message get out there? Intelligent people are completely ignorant of the facts. Many don't believe public ownership is a "thing" anymore anywhere in the world. Also, a person whose sole goal is to make money is driven in a way that mere mortals who just want to do the right thing more often than not cannot match - 20 years in the City working for fund managers has show me that. The distribution of information is key here... look at the oil industry and climate change. How much does a TV advert cost?

I'm an Octopus customer. I like Octopus, they're a decent enough company, I raise an issue, they deal with it, but they seemed to struggle after "adopting" 250,000 customers a while back.

My bills were just not right. At first, they assured me they were, but eventually they had to concede that my "Smart" meter wasn't communicating properly. I benefited, in that I was being less than I owed, but imagine, had someone living on the financial edge been billed low, and been obliged to repay a shortfall? As it is, I've doubled my monthly payments this year and am about to raise the payment beyond that...

Really a good company, I like them, but I fear they haven't got the resources to handle another 250,000? customers, and...they need public money to do it?

Their billing is fairly opaque too. They take money from my positive balance at odd times, not simply monthly, and it makes my life difficult analyzing my costs per month. With BG, a company I hate with a vengeance at least that analysis was simple... And...I cannot separate out the cost of charging my electric car from the "general" electrical cost. I have to trust the car's data, displayed quite simply on the dash. Would be handy to have Octopus' data separated out for comparison...

I've just read the piece by Cat Hobbs in the Guardian regarding current Labour policy towards public ownership and agree wholeheartedly with the comments. I now live in Austria where nearly all the public services are still owned by the State. Not even the Austrian Tories (OEVP) would contemplate privatising although they taken some small steps in that direction. I hope that is all it is.

At dinner the other night, I spoke with a friend who had just installed solar panels on his roof to generate electricity. He will shortly have power for nothing and hopes to sell any surplus to the grid. To my mind, this is a perfect example of what a 'green' utility owned by the State could help out with by providing grants and advice whilst helping to grow the green economy. Other householders could get together and supply houses in the area forming a self sufficient hub of power generation. Simples, right?

Keep up the good and important work.

D.

While I personally agree with a vast majority of arguments against privatisation of UK's public services while at the same time improving the level of efficiency of management of these and reducing the waste of public money, I also believe that only essential public services should remain public which includes infrastructure, health and education.

To go even further, most if not all already privatised public services should be reverted back to become public, including for example trains, communication infrastructure and care for people with learning disabilities.

Having said that, television including Channel 4 and BBC do not count as essential public services with the exception of parts of BBC responsible for education, culture (in educational sense) and information (BBC News) mission. Please do not push for these to remain public as we are talking about taxpayers money spent on entertainment programs at the benefit of people watching these but at the expense of everyone else.

I didn't send letter because this is Islington North,they know. Every time there is a gov reorg of the NHS eg. 2012 they are sneakily bringing it ever closer to a US model. I bet the money they profess to spend on NHS is also used to build and establish an ever increasing number of private facilities. Is this a losing battle.?. The Euroean model where the state runs non profit insurane scheme with built-in protections worth studying. Campaigning for this could achieve more and alarm a profiteering greedy govt. Campaigning for something rather than reacting and never catching up with gov's machinations.

I am partially sighted

It's much worse

“Capital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation.   Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.  When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers.   These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world.   By dividing the voter through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance.   It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”

Montagu Norman – Governor of the Bank of England – addressing the United States Bankers’ Association, New York City, 1924

Scary

You say "privatisation is not wrong per se", well it is when applied to strategic requirements of the UK nationally, or people individually, in terms of services/goods essential to life. I never imagined that water, energy, rail, housing (selling off of council houses), health care would ever be privatised, I thought the public would not stand for it. However offer shares at a low enough price, or houses at about half price or so, and thoughts of the future consequences were ignored. Very sad what people can be bribed to do.

All energy companies must be under UK government so that it should be make as cheaper and the profits should go the government not into the private hands.....thanks.

It's time that the public had a say in energy suppliers and our water companies

I am fully in agreement about public services being run for the good of the country rather than for private profit.

I would, however, stipulate that they should be run independently of micro-management by any Government and not interfered with for political advantage.

Any Government should only be allowed to make general guidance as to the way the service is run.