Spending review: selling off our assets

This analysis from our director Cat Hobbs was first published by Class.

In George Osborne’s speech yesterday, he barely mentioned the word ‘asset’. But in the accompanying spending review documents, the word ‘asset’ is mentioned many, many times. And it’s all about selling them off.

National assets are up for grabs. Osborne is going ahead with re-privatising the banks, selling off the Green Investment Bank and student loans. The government is looking at options for privatising Network Rail and allowing it in turn to sell off land and property. Osborne wants to ‘explore’ selling off the government’s stake in National Air Traffic Services, privatise the Land Registry and look at bringing the private sector into Ordnance Survey.

Government departments are all being told to look at their own land and property and flog off as much as possible. The Department of Health will sell off assets worth nearly £2 billion. The Ministry of Defence will raise £1 billion from asset sales. It's hard to believe that all these assets are 'surplus' and disposable - clearly there would be benefits in keeping them public.

Local government meanwhile is being hit hard with cuts and offered a cunning bribe. If they sell off local assets (which could mean parks, swimming pools, community centres, places that make life liveable) they are allowed to keep 100% of the proceeds. This is the opposite of devolution. Destructive cuts enforced from central government, followed by pressure to sell off local assets to soften the blow.

Osborne is putting at risk our future communities and the resources they will have available with a clever story. He's talking about the need to cut debt and increase housing but never mentioning the role the private sector could play in responding to these issues. He is utterly, ideologically committed to transferring assets from the public to the private sector and the impact will be devastating: loss of future revenue for government and a damaging effect on all of our public services. They are called ‘assets’ for a reason.