We're all in this together, survey confirms

George Woods from the We Own It team says people value public services, publicly owned and are willing to pay for them.

Much of the media coverage around the release of the annual findings of the British Social Attitudes Survey last month centered on the rising support for benefit claimants compared to the downward trend of recent years.

But there was also much in the report of interest to those concerned with society’s perceptions of state spending and public services. A third of the public expressed support for increased tax and higher government spending, whilst more than half wanted spending to remain at current levels. Interestingly, these statistics are very similar to those for the early 1980s, suggesting the public are fairly fixed in their support for public service provision.

Far from the dogmatic views held by many supporters of privatisation, the majority of the British public are not in favour of cutting public services. 81% believe that it is the government’s responsibility to provide decent housing for those who can’t afford it, reflecting the market’s failure to provide adequate housing over the past 25 years. 97% say that the government should provide health care for the sick. So outside of pro-free market think tanks, there is little appetite for opening up healthcare to corporate privateers. Indeed, 71% identified health spending as their number one priority for government spending. Education was ranked second.

The report’s authors concluded: “Generally speaking, the last 30 years have not seen a shift to a less collectivist Britain – the public’s views on taxation and social protection are very similar to those seen in 1983.” Demand for quality public services, funded by government spending, is high - but is it being met?

Many of the survey’s conclusions on public ownership corroborate with other polls. A ComRes report earlier this month “found that 69 per cent wanted energy renationalised. Seventy per cent are against the sell-off of the Royal Mail, 53 per cent believe private sector involvement in the NHS undermines the health service and, as for the railways, a poll conducted last year found that over half the public supported full nationalisation,” according to the Left Foot Forward website.

And of course, our own polling, conducted by Survation and released this summer, confirms that most people support public ownership as the default for public services.

People all over Britain want to see high quality, accountable public services that keep getting better over time. It's about time the government started paying attention to that demand. We really are all in this together.