Chapter 49
Sidetrack (x) - We Used To Own That.
On Beta Arietis, sixty years from now, the Research Committee responsible for monitoring developing lifeforms across the galaxy was in special session: another alarm had been triggered following the latest status report on the planet called Earth. Conducted every ten earth years, these reviews were usually routine assessments with rarely anything to get excited about. It was only when apparent progress in the wellbeing of a planet and its inhabitants suddenly showed a reverse trend that the Committee became interested.
The data now flowing from their sample nation, the island that called itself the United Kingdom, seemed to show that all was not well. This was particularly disappointing as only seven decades earlier this little country had been a star example of ‘social progress’, one of the Arietis’ key measures of successful civilisations across the galaxy. Battered, bankrupt and weary after five years of fighting a total war for freedom against an evil tyranny, the UK government had created a new vision, a vision that recognised an obligation to support their fellows in need, to provide a helping hand when times got hard, to care and repair whenever their inhabitants were hurt or sick, and to educate and encourage their children. Around this vision had been created an infrastructure of institutions, processes and facilities that were designed to deliver the objectives using reliable, effective and, above all, fair methods. Over the following decades, the vision and methods had slowly evolved and the nation’s peoples had steadily felt the benefits; it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always as efficient as it could be, but it worked and everyone benefited. Most importantly, it was theirs; theirs to praise, theirs to grumble about, theirs to pay for, theirs to reap the benefits. For three decades, the UK received a ‘merit’ mark as it picked its uncertain way towards a more egalitarian society, the wide gap between the extremes of wealth and poverty inching ever closer. Successive governments of either colour bought into the vision; in reality there was little to choose between the policies adopted by the moderate socialists in red and the Tory paternalists in blue; both parties were social engineers using similar tools they’d borrowed from the Keynesian tool box.
Things were not so rosy by the Fourth Decade. The distant observers noted that the UK economy had been knocked hard by an oil crisis, shortages in supply creating fearsome inflation that upset the delicate balance between wages, profits and living standards. The Blues lost the support of the country after a series of confrontations, before the Reds were able to steady the ship for a few years with the help of a rather tenuous social contract. Unfortunately, this contract didn’t hold as a further wave of oil price rises, emanating again from the Middle East, spread around the globe and organised groups of workers once again demanded matching wage rises. The Research Committee recorded that the next government would need to be firm, fair, and good communicators to remind the population of the vision and the further benefits to be reaped on the long-term journey their society was on.
What they hadn’t envisaged was the UK taking a complete change of direction as the new Blue leader and her team embarked on a voyage along a totally different path. Worryingly, many of the population followed, hoodwinked by the alternative message, bribed by false promises of new shared wealth, or selfishly opting for the course that promoted self-interest and good fortune over the common good. For nearly two decades the Blues drove hard along their new route, their leader continually advocating the use of different ‘monetarist’ tools and social engineering policies based on the market, the fundamental theme being that competition would drive efficiency and subsequent profits would eventually trickle down to those lower in the food chain via increased tax revenues and economic growth. With some concern the alien observers spotted a distasteful trait amongst the new Blues and their communication team. Much more than in the past, the influential media were used to push the new philosophy and any critical voices were ignored or ridiculed. That a previous Blue leader of relatively humble origins, who had displayed bravery and fortitude in an earlier life, landing under fire on the Normandy beaches and battling across northern Europe, could be described as a ‘wet’ and regularly humiliated by the new leader if he raised points of view at odds to hers, was just one example.
It was a split decision at the Fifth Decade Review on whether to raise a ‘demerit’. Clearly, on most of their measures, the UK had gone backwards; social cohesion, wealth distribution, the provision of services, and corruption levels were all drifting quickly in the wrong direction. For example, big issues remained around attitudes to women and minorities, not least in the police. On the other hand, the country still had some notable plusses; it was part of a brotherhood of neighbouring nations that promoted trade, shared scientific research and above all fostered a harmony that had held for half a century. Additionally, one of its scientists had just unlocked the key to a global data revolution which, if used sensibly, could help transform the way people lived for the better, and, always the marker of a healthy society, its music scene was as strong as ever. In the end, the fact that a new Red government team were now back in control and steering the country back towards the original vision gave cause for hope and they cautiously decided to award a ‘neutral’ score.
Their optimism seemed justified, at least for most of the next decade. The Red government chose not to undo the one or two things that had proved successful over the past twenty years. They kept a grip on the economy, reduced the nation’s debt, and slowly but surely started to rebuild the damage done to institutions and services. Until, that is, it was hit by a global financial tsunami that plunged economies everywhere into recession. Forced to rapidly adopt a large scale Keynesian Rescue Plan right at the end of the decade, the Reds were left exposed; easy meat for their opponents who could point to the excessive expenditure and conveniently fail to mention that the benefits of this rescue plan would start to reappear a year or so later. Again, at the Sixth Decade Review, the Arietis Research Committee sat on the fence, unsure what approach the new coalition of Blue and Yellow would take, deciding to maintain the ‘neutral’ score and assuming the new government wouldn’t ignore the early signs that the economy was bouncing back and stick with the main themes of the apparently successful rescue plan.
They were wrong. The Yellows forgot their principles and were bullied by the Blues who, once again, were determined to squeeze incomes, services and investment. Forget Tory Paternalism and Keynesian economics; monetary control and balancing of the books were the objectives. They branded their approach ‘austerity’ and that’s exactly what the result proved to be.
The special session dragged on longer than usual, partly because the Research Committee found it hard to believe the data. How could the trend towards a fairer wealth distribution now be rapidly in reverse? How could the health provision be in decline? How could the provision of public transport be less available? What had happened to the social housing stock? Why did university students now have to pay huge sums for their further education? Why were some of the basic necessities of power, heat, light and water now subject to the vagaries of the market and under the control of foreign owners. The list went on…
Normally planets, nations, societies and their governments, once committed to a social vision, tended to stick with the general direction. Something was clearly going wrong in the UK, as the same concerns were nothing like as apparent in their neighbouring nations, most of whom seemed to be still ploughing ahead, though not necessarily always smoothly, in a common direction.
They decided on two actions:
- Firstly, the scorecard would record a ‘cause for concern’ status.
- Secondly, in order to try and understand what had gone wrong, they would once again delve deeper into the detail, using the experiences of their original sample family and the individual who had now lived through more than six decades of the welfare state.
Note: The performance of the factory where I spent most of my working life was continually monitored over the months and years by our various owners, whether British, Italian or American. If our Government was also scrutinised and judged by its results against objectives then the well-being of the nation’s inhabitants would be the key performance indicator. Equally as important would be their level of competence in meeting several other measures that society, their electorate, deemed essential. Nothing too outrageous, just the basic requirements that the population of a developed 21st century nation should expect from those entrusted with the public purse and the public vision. A roof over their heads and a helping hand when things went wrong, they became sick, or they couldn’t help themselves, a decent education and fair opportunities for their children perhaps?
So…..Whatever happened to the welfare state?
Note – this section leans heavily on Stuart Maconie’s ‘The Nanny State Made Me’ and I’ve lifted the odd sentence where his writing hits the nail on the head and I’m incapable of expressing my thoughts any better.
Just a spoonful of sugar…
I was born in an NHS hospital, one of the first privileged generation to benefit from the added reassurance that this afforded. Vaccinated, measured and monitored throughout my early years, I accepted that eyesight tests, hearing tests and dietary assessments were a normal, scheduled part of school life, much like the requirement to drink a small bottle of milk on a daily basis or the annual need for a school photo. If I was poorly, Mum would walk me to the local doctor’s where we’d sit in the sparse, strangely smelling waiting room until Dr Margaret would see us. If I was really poorly, I would stay in bed and the doctor would visit our house, pronounce on my condition and prescribe some appropriate medicine; the orange one tasted great, the red one horrid, although it was an unpredictable toss-up which one I’d get. Every six months, Mum would drag us to see Mr Wood or Mr Vint, the evil dentists, and any holes in our sugar-loving teeth were rapidly plugged. By the end of my childhood, I intuitively realised that the NHS was there to look after everyone; not just to fix Dad’s torn cartilage or take out my tonsils - twice! (First attempt was aborted halfway through as I apparently woke up during the op’.)
By the seventies, the NHS was under increasing financial scrutiny; the adventures of Dr Finlay and Carry on Doctor/Nurse /Matron might be embedded within the nation’s psyche but it’s an expensive service and the funding requirement continues to increase each year.
By the end of Eighties, the original vision had been diluted by the actions of various governments and parts of the NHS were no longer free; opticians, dentists, pharmacies were all charging for their services, some moving quickly to largely privatised operations. Meanwhile, increasingly generous arrangements between government, the doctors’ union, the BMA, private hospitals and insurance companies opened up alternative options for those with the funds, and extra income for those with the skills. Unfortunately, the overall pot is finite so the loser in income, resources and staff has tended to be the NHS. Every few years, the government would announce something different: a White paper, a Royal Commission, Trusts, re-organisations, new computer systems, new pay structures, private-public initiatives but, apart from wasting a huge chunk of money on consultants, the net result has been unsatisfactory and the NHS continues to be mismanaged, sometimes wasteful, and increasingly underfunded.
Thanks to a renewed investment during the first decade of the new century, the service recovered some of the lost ground and performance measures improved; it wasn’t to be sustained. Since 2010 the drive towards privatisation has gained pace, whilst at the same time being publicly denied. The 2012 Health Act extended market-based opportunities, emphasising spurious competition and equally spurious notions of choice. The consequence has been another money pot for consultants and lucrative contracts for profit driven firms like Richard Branson’s Virgin Care which has won £2 billion worth of deals over the last five years. And don’t even mention the Test and Trace contract which ignored the fact that the local health authorities and the NHS were best placed to deliver this objective and awarded the business to Serco resulting in the enormous financial gain of their bosses and shareholders but equally to mass public dissatisfaction. Of course, it is pure coincidence that the person who headed up this fiasco is a riding chum of the then Health Secretary.
But don’t panic, help is on the way. There was a promise, displayed on the side of buses and voiced frequently by a future prime minister and members of the current government that, as a result of Brexit, the NHS would receive an additional £350 million a week. A bare-faced lie that mis-used the loyalty and affection of us all to the institution; the one we applauded loudly during the pandemic but are finding hard to reconcile with its original charter.
So, as waiting lists continue to climb, A&E queues continue to grow, no-one can find a dentist or get an urgent doctor’s appointment, and staff shortages threaten even worse in the future. What’s the answer? If they can do it in France, Scandinavia, Germany and even Cuba, which according to the WHO runs one of the most effective heath care systems on the planet, how do we solve the crisis here? Rather than bore you with all the data as it’s quite easy to find on the internet, just couple of examples can help sketch a story that is consistent with pretty much every other healthcare measure you care to look at. Take staffing: there are at least ten other European OECD countries with better doctor or nurse to population ratios than the UK; this is a significantly worse situation than we found ourselves in ten years ago when we’d actually attempted to do something about reversing the decline. Don’t even mention the mess we’re now in with dental care where it’s virtually impossible to even find a dentist prepared to take on anyone on under NHS terms. And when it comes to funding, the average increase per year has failed to match the requirements of an increasing and ageing population combined with growing complexity and technology. During the sixties and seventies, funding increases averaged 4.2% pa, dropping to 2.7% during the eighties, recovering to 5.4% during the nineties and noughties before austerity slashes dropped it to 1.7% over the last ten years. Clearly levels can’t increase indefinitely but until other issues in public health and social care are properly addressed, we have to at least make sure the NHS doesn’t go backwards. You’ll have to read Manifesto for my take on the answers.
School’s Out
When it comes to education it seemed, by the time I reached my teens that the system had evolved into something that was at least capable of delivering a result that was broadly appropriate for everyone; the individual, the economy and society. Once the 11+ had been binned, the vast majority of us would roll from the local infants to the local juniors to the local comprehensive. Choice was available but only for the very bright or those with monied parents, unwilling to trust the state system. Consequently, we stuck with the nearest neighbourhood institution and walked or caught the school bus. That’s all changed now that parents can choose where to send their kids. Witness the flotilla of cars criss-crossing our towns, delivering children, clogging up the roads and messing up the atmosphere. And when did it become acceptable for a strapping teenage youth to be dropped off at the school gate by his mum? It would have been the height of embarrassment akin to social suicide a couple of decades ago.
For sure the comprehensive system isn’t perfect but it’s not the theory that’s the problem; sensible streaming, encouragement and guidance can deliver an appropriate outcome for all pupils. The differences or shortcomings can usually be traced to issues around resources, application and management. So, rather than create an education premier league where the big boys get the best and the most of everything, whilst the also-rans scrabble about trying their hardest, sometimes swimming, sometimes sinking, surely we need to focus on pulling performance and quality up. Sadly though, our schools, academies and the like, have been forced to behave like isolated semi-businesses and, as support services are increasingly privatised, it’s difficult for education authorities to ensure across-the-board improvements. Just to add to the problem, at the middle and lower ends there have been other consequences of ‘austerity’ for a number of associated learning facilities. Take the libraries, those much-used, much-loved institutions that we regularly visited as kids with our little cardboard cards, and do now as adults with our new bar-coded plastic ones, a passport to knowledge and adventure, that have been squeezed dramatically, from 4200 in 2010 down to 3400 just a decade later. I don’t care what anyone says; it’s not quite the same reading a download on a Kindle and a parent can easily tell if a child’s nose is in a book rather than looking at anything on a tablet. Will the comprehensive approach to education survive as the traditionalists on the right continue to call for a return to the ‘golden age’ of grammar and secondary mods? One of the few upsides of the pandemic and cost of living crises is that the Government has been distracted from taking any substantive steps in this direction.
They have, however, got their teeth into further education. The system is now barely recognisable from how it looked at the end of the Seventies. In the ‘Time of Our Lives’ chapter there’s a more detailed look at the developments that have occurred since 1979 when Maggie (that name, that year again) swept to power. The requirement for universities to also behave like businesses, chasing the funding, chasing the students. The huge increase in student numbers, some justified, some spurious, promoted by both Tory and Labour, but all seen as cash-cows by the institutions, some of which couldn’t wait to rebrand themselves as universities and jump on the gravy train, not to mention the ongoing dilution of grades. And the biggest betrayal: the transfer in funding from the state to the customer. For some reason, the Government thinks that the American model for university funding is superior to that in Wales, Scotland and other European countries. Apparently students in England, by buying their tuition in a market-like environment and saddling themselves with decades of debt, will ensure that competition will drive up degree standards and they’ll be assured of a higher quality product. Where have I heard that before? It’s a funny ‘free market’ where every degree course now costs the same. The alternative view adopted by most nations is that it’s an investment that will deliver a payback to society in future years. So I count myself lucky to have had my tuition fees paid and a maintenance grant, sensibly means-tested, to survive on; one of a fortunate generation that experienced the education state system at its benevolent and far-sighted best. That more students now have the chance to access a wider range of courses and institutions is generally a positive; that many are being ripped-off and short-changed by some inferior courses, lazy lecturers, cosy professors, over-paid senior administrators, and over-priced accommodation with no real protection from a regulatory body with teeth, is the big negative.
Our House
On housing we’ve lost our way. The energy with which the nation tackled the rebuilding of homes and neighbourhoods after the war ensured that the mix of prefabs, council houses, housing estates and flats provided across the public, private and rental sectors provided just about enough dwellings year-on-year to keep up with the steadily rising population. House prices and rents rose, but broadly in line with inflation. Again I’ve been lucky to spend my critical ‘accommodation-searching’ years at a time when middle-earners could just about afford rents and mortgages and those who couldn’t had some options via the rental or social housing sections.
It’s gone wrong since the eighties, especially for those increasing numbers of people who have little chance of getting on the housing ladder. Thanks to Maggie’s dubious ideological policy of allowing our stock of council houses to be sold off to their tenants at bargain basement prices, we have successfully managed to transfer a public asset that was there for the good of all to now reside in the hands of the ‘haves’ either as private homes or, more often than not, as part of a landlord’s rental portfolio. Maybe she didn’t like the idea that they didn’t generate any profit. Maybe she thought they smacked too much of socialism. Consequently, the subsequent asset value growth no longer benefits our local authorities who are still stuck with the problem of where to house people. And the value growth of a home has been spectacular, as we all know, thanks to the supply side not keeping up with demand. In 1979 when she came to power, more than 40% of people lived in council housing; the figure is now just 12% plus another 6% renting from housing associations. Worst of all, a third of all former council homes are now owned by buy-to-let landlords so the decent social housing bedrock for nearly half the population has been gifted to the more precarious rental sector with its associated vulnerabilities.
How difficult is it for the government to work out what’s required? To replace the social housing that was sold off for those who need it and create sufficient starter homes for those luckier ones who are able to jump on the first rung. Any A-Level student would calculate within minutes that if the current stock of homes is X and the expected household growth is Y then the number of new homes required, Z, will be Y-X and therefore create a plan to build Z. We could do this sort of thing in the forties, fifties and sixties. We haven’t suddenly lost the skills; we’ve just lost the commitment and willpower to overcome planning resistance, developer speculation and the foresight necessary to spend public money again on long-term investments. Just hoping that tax reductions, relaxing regulations, and market forces will generate the conditions to solve the problem is naive but this is where government policy has been stuck for the last twelve years. The inevitable consequence is soaring rents and property prices; a super-heated market unique in modern Europe where houses are assets for speculators rather than homes for families; good news for the ’haves,’ bad news for the increasing numbers of ‘have-nots.’ And just to rub it in, we keep telling the ‘have-nots’ that they should still try to aspire to that peculiarly British dream of owning their own home and refusing to acknowledge that more and more people will never be able to do so.
How do we reverse this trend? How do we encourage the election manifestos not just to promise to build more affordable homes to buy but to also commit to that post-war attitude that recognised the role of the state in providing decent, affordable social housing for life for those that cannot afford to buy? Manifesto might offer some suggestions to try and resolve the mess. At least we’ve managed to avoid hacking into some key pieces of the social care system, content merely to tinker with it, but largely failing to deal with the various crises looming ever-closer on the horizon. The ageing population, the growing, unhealthy population, and the growing number or people in poverty as wealth inequality increases are just a few of the major issues. And out there, on the widening margins of society where reside the refugees, the domestic violence victims, the abused children, those with mental health issues and the disabled, the impact of a decade of austerity continues to bite ever harder.
On the plus side though there’s still a reasonable state pension and an admirable DIY pension scheme introduced nearly a decade ago now to try and ensure that people also contribute something towards their own personal pension. The challenge is to not betray our children and fail to fund the pensions of future generations. We’ve also managed to hang onto the essentials of a social security safety-net. The latest incarnation, Universal Credit, isn’t perfect but it’s not a bad effort at trying to find the balance between protection and incentive to work. Like any bureaucratic system It sometimes lacks a human face or some common sense, especially when dealing with the sick, disabled or those temporarily out-of-sorts. And people still fall through gaps in the net: just look at the homeless numbers sleeping rough, dependent on charities to try and ease them back into the system. The fact that there are now more people living on the streets or turning to food banks is worrying and another black mark for the government. For sure there are a few who try to take advantage of benefit payments, happy to sit at home whilst most others aim to contribute, but even their cost to the system is doubtless significantly less than the cost of all the tax evasion practised by some mega-wealthy individuals and companies. Funny though; there are far more documentaries, articles in the media and pontifications by certain types of politicians, about ‘scroungers’ than there ever are about ‘dodgers’.
What makes it hard to get a head around the costs of all this is that the link between National Insurance, which originally isolated how much we needed to contribute towards pensions, health and social security, has now been broken; originally smudged by Nigel Lawson and now severed entirely by subsequent chancellors so that we’ve lost a feel for what it all costs. However, what’s not difficult for anyone to appreciate is that the welfare state I grew up with, and which took care of my parents and grandparents, is no longer the same. Our children and grandchildren cannot expect the same level of nannying by the nanny state unless we opt for a government that believes in it and are prepared to look for ways to fund it. It’s a shame we frittered away the North Sea treasure chest on tax cuts and welfare payments for the victims of the Eighties monetarist austerity experiment so it looks like we’ll need to find alternative methods. Maybe we need to take the blinkers off and look at Norway or half-a-dozen of our other neighbours. Manifesto again.
So…. We used to own that.
And something else has changed in the country over the second half of my life. I’m now poorer. The wealth I shared with all my neighbours, rich or poor, red or blue, has been diluted, given away at bargain prices to a nebulous collection of new owners. Who allowed this to happen? Why did they think it was a good idea? What were supposed to have been the benefits? What has actually been the cost? What conclusions would an outside observer on Beta Arietis reach?
Ticket to Ride
I’ve just skimmed through the latest monthly ‘Downend Voice’ free magazine, a creditable free local publication which tries its best to keep the residents of Bristol’s north-eastern suburbs up to date with local news, the latest campaigns and various events that are happening in the area. Invariably there’s a feature on the declining bus services but this month’s edition has really gone to town (or not as the case may be). The residents are up in arms and the paper is championing their cause, bemoaning the fact that the Metro Mayor for the region, whilst he might huff and puff, is largely toothless.
They’ve good cause to be upset. For example, it’s now impossible for the folks living in the Downend area to travel directly by bus the 8km to the main hospital in Southmead unless they’re able to walk 2km to catch a service. Or for the residents of NE Bristol and its suburbs to get to Yate, which at 10km distance is the nearest satellite town with a population of 30,000 and a growing host of retail, warehousing, leisure and industrial businesses. Actually that’s not strictly true but you’ve got to be prepared to walk almost 3km to nearby Hambrook and hop on the hourly ‘express bus’. For many years, the factory I helped manage gathered its workforce from a wide arc that that spread outwards from Yate and encompassed most of NE Bristol and we’d normally have at least fifty people relying on this bus route to travel in and out for our various shifts. What used to take a maximum of 25 minutes by bus (or bike) for the half-hourly Downend to Yate route now takes an hour and requires two buses, one of which only runs hourly. And it’s not cheap; at least £4 each way. The train’s not really an option; unless you’re living close to the mainline stations of Temple Meads or Parkway you’re still faced with a two-stage trip. The consequence is that most people from this side of town are now faced with travelling to Yate by car or looking elsewhere for work or leisure opportunities.
The contrast is that if you just want to commute between Yate and the centre of Bristol, the service is frequent and relatively quick, whether on train or bus. Both go via the high-tech hub neighbourhood that’s home to the large MOD offices and University of the West of England so there’s a high demand for the service from employees and students alike. And herein lies the crux. Bums on seats equals efficiency and profit; spare capacity on a route is potentially money lost.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ I hear you ask. ‘It’s not like we’re living somewhere in the middle of nowhere; we’re slap in the middle of suburbia for chrissakes! Anyway aren’t the buses supposed to be a public service?’
Well, they used to be. In the fifties, aged 16, Dad travelled to Leeds and back in a day from his home in West Bridgford for a life-defining interview by just joining up six of the regular bus services. A few years later, he and Mum would spend a year commuting by bus daily to Derby for work. I grew up in the sixties and seventies, taking for granted that, unless Dad was going, any trip anywhere would involve a bus ride. TrentBarton had provided the local county services since 1913 and we knew the times and numbers off by heart. The number 31 was the easiest route into town, with the shortest walk to the Thoresby Road stop, but the 4a or 5 along the Derby Road were quicker and more frequent. Once inside the town’s outskirts you were within the orbit of the numerous green buses of Nottingham City Transport; the number 21 out along Arkwright Street to Trent Bridge or the City Ground or, for nearly a year, the 12 to the leafy, well-heeled neighbourhood where Helen Lovett lived. You hardly had to think; the bus would be along sooner rather than later and the network could transport you pretty much anywhere. It was a similar set-up in Birmingham where as students, totally dependent on public transport unless prepared to risk life and limb in my flatmate Paul’s VW beetle, we travelled back and forth on the blue and cream double-deckers. We knew they belonged to us because you shared them with OAPs, mums with toddlers, commuting workers, and other school kids and students. Everyone knew what to expect: the smokey top-deck where you could dick around a bit; the conductor with his or her leather cash bag and silver aluminium ticket machine slung on straps over the shoulders; the red stop-bell and the little ticket stubs that were either squeezed into the gap between the seat padding and metal frame or folded up and flicked across the aisle at your mate.
But something changed at the end of the Eighties when the buses became the next target of the Maggie’s government’s free-market doctrine.
‘Let’s deregulate the buses and pass the running costs from the public purse onto any outfit that think they can run the services more efficiently. Competition and market forces will do the rest, driving up standards and keeping fares down. Oh and we’ll have to give these companies a subsidy to ensure they don’t abandon the less popular routes.’
Private enterprise jumped in and chaos ensued; the popular, profitable routes were over-subscribed and passengers were left confused by the number of operators. Predictably, it wasn’t too long before the so-called market had matured: the big boys muscled the smaller operators out the picture, often by just taking them over. Bristol is a typical example; it took a little over a decade for the market to become a virtual monopoly with the routes and prices now determined by the management team at First Bus, the self-proclaimed market leader for public transport across the UK within a turnover of £4.6 billion. Bus fares and local government subsidies now contribute, not just to investment but are also channelled to dividends and bonuses. It’s true that the Bristol bus fleet has been updated, that the stops are generally clean and feature the latest digital tech’ to keep passengers informed. But it’s the service that really matters and too many digital displays are showing ‘cancelled’, too many routes are being degraded or chopped, and too many customers who don’t happen to live near a main route have been sucked into a public transport black hole.
‘We need a subsidy increase,’ says First.
‘We haven’t got the money,’ says the Council. ‘Central Government has cut the grant.’
‘How about reducing the dividends?’ say those who pay the taxes and the fares.
‘Pardon?’ responds First.
And for anyone still wondering how it might work better without privatisation, take a look at London, Nottingham or pretty much any European city as examples of where the councils have hung onto control of the assets and the residents can now appreciate that the services are being provided in their interest and, whilst not always perfect, the quality of provision is recognisably higher.
It’s the same story but an even worse mess with the trains. Firstly underfund and poorly manage the national asset for a few years; then mount a subtle propaganda campaign via the media to convince us all that British Rail is a basket case (not true as is evident if anyone takes a detailed look at the before-and-after data) to then be able to justify the need for ‘market’ forces’ to ride to the rescue. Secondly, create a ridiculous, contrived break-up of the national network into regional franchises and sell off to all sorts of bidders at knock-down prices, not forgetting to agree that we’ll subsidise their operations and effectively be responsible for the track on which the trains run. Within a decade or two the little, or poorly managed operators, had sold out to the bigger boys, ensuring massive windfall gains to their already highly-paid management whilst in the background foreign investors steadily acquired bigger shares in the remaining franchises and it’s now almost impossible to trace through the corporate ownership maze who actually owns what.
The benefits of privatisation of the railways are lost on me. BR, on our behalf, operated 6,600 stations on 15,000 miles of track with a broadly affordable and straightforward ticketing. Aged 16, Ian Whitehead and I were able to hop on the train from Nottingham to St Pancras, catch the tube to Wembley, watch ELP in concert (Brain Salad Surgery tour) and reverse the journey later that night, knowing we’d make it to school the next day. A few years later, I could afford, using my student rail card, to catch the train from Birmingham New Street to Hull Paragon (change at Doncaster) to visit Naomi. Today I can get to London from Bristol pretty much every half-an-hour; great if I could afford it. Right now, an off-peak return would cost me £110. Ridiculous, especially considering that if I really wanted to I could cycle it for free in six hours! Tomorrow I’m due in Manchester for a Pensions Trustee meeting. Even if I pay the £105 fare, I still can’t get there until 10:30am so I’ll have to drive. And, if you wanted to cycle the Taff Trail in Wales from Brecon to Cardiff or walk the Cumbrian Way from Carlisle to Ulverston, forget it unless you can use a car to get to both ends. A government that talks up the benefits of outdoor exercise completely fails to make it practical; the bus or train services take all day and don’t take bikes.
It’s a natural monopoly so where’s the competition? Service-levels have declined, routes been chopped, fares are confusing and high, rolling stock hasn’t been updated and there’s no co-ordinated plan to make things better. We’re now down to 2,200 stations and 10,000 miles of track. There has been a 300% growth in the public subsidy since we flogged our railways to the highest bidder or to someone’s dodgy mate. BR invested our subsidies and yet today 90% of investment is still paid for via us, the taxpayers, or government-underwritten borrowing. By pocketing almost £3.5 billion of subsidies between 2010 and 2015, the top five franchises made profits of £554 million, 90% of which were distributed as dividends. Try complaining and the operators will probably blame Network Rail, the weather, or insufficient subsidy whilst they simultaneously ensure their bonuses and the dividend flow continues to leak out of the UK and into the coffers of other European or Chinese state-run transport organisations. We’re doing a great job helping Arriva and Abellio (East Anglia London) run the excellent German and Dutch networks.
I wonder if any recent Secretaries of State for Transport have ever travelled on public transport? Surely they’ve never done so in Europe or they’d realise just what is possible. Sadly, the likes of Chris Grayling, probably the worst minister of anything in the last 12 years, and Grant Shapp are too wedded to the illusion of privatisation to recognise that some things are just better off in public hands, either for strategic reasons or because the markets don’t work in monopoly conditions. The ports, railways, buses and roads need a different approach and I’m clueless as to how anyone thinks a market exists in the prison or probation service. Maybe some suggestions will lie in Manifesto.
It’s not that the market and privatisation are always wrong. They’re often the right answer to certain market conditions. Billy Bragg suggested a comparison with fire; used appropriately and with techniques to prevent it getting out of hand, it can bring many benefits; allowed to burn unchecked and it can soon rage out of control destroying much in its path. With thirty-plus years of experience in the domestic appliance business, I can assure you that competition will deliver lower real prices, better service and improved products. We were in a continual ebb-and-flow war with the likes of Bosch, Beko, Candy and Zanussi that prevented any of us getting an edge for very long, let alone ripping off customers. Factories and brands that couldn’t keep up would fall by the wayside. And we had other constraints to make sure we stayed within the rules such as competition policies, health and safety rules, and environmental legislation. Ultimately, it was the customer who had the final choice, just like down in Easton market when deciding at which stall to buy potatoes or apples.
So why, other than for ideological reasons and the opportunity to make a quick buck, does it make any sense to privatise those things where a true market doesn’t exist, where the conditions require that the public are protected, or where the product or service is strategic? And why have we been hoodwinked into handing large parts of our jointly owned assets to overseas owners?
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
Just consider the utilities. I had a moan about gas privatisation in another chapter so let’s take a look at what’s happened in the water industry that the government turned their attention to as soon as they’d been re-elected in 1987.
For the first half of my life, ‘water’ was something that was managed by public authorities on behalf of us all. By the time I started secondary school, we had created the ‘trailblazing’ concept of a single authority, based on a river basin or watershed, being responsible for water extraction, water supply, sewage treatment and environmental pollution prevention. This network of regional water boards (eg Severn Trent, Wessex Water) led to measurable efficiency gains from the previous arrangement where local authorities were responsible. Despite these gains, the RWAs were hampered by chronic underfunding and lack of investment from central government. This underinvestment in infrastructure combined with sustained water pollution by lightly regulated industry and increasingly intensive agriculture contributed to a continued decline of both river and tap water quality.
By 1985, investment in the water sector was just one-third of what it had been in 1970 and the Conservative government elected in 1979, then curtailed the RWA’s ability to raise money for capital projects they deemed necessary by placing restrictions on their external borrowing. Inevitably, using the usual media communication tactic, the increasing problems were then attributed to the ineffectiveness of the public sector business model, rather than the failure to build new reservoirs, update sewage works, and replace the ageing pipe network, all of which had been seriously curtailed. When the EU introduced stricter legislation on river, bathing, coastal, and drinking water quality, the sector was in no position to meet the expenditure requirements and we were prosecuted for noncompliance. Estimates of the capital expenditure required to achieve EU standards and meet the existing backlog in infrastructure maintenance ranged from £24 to £30 billion. The answer according to the government was to privatise and in 1989, despite much scepticism from experts across industry and academia, the RWAs were sold off and any debts wiped out by the tax-payer.
Three decades later it should be possible to take a view on the results but it’s not that easy. In fact it’s quite tricky even digging out where the ownership now resides; an evolution of take-overs has left us with an industry in the hands of global private equity some of which are clearly part of legal, but controversial tax-avoidance strategies. Take Wessex Water, the company that covers my region; purchased by that highly ‘reputable’ American energy giant, Enron, for $2.4 billion, it was then sold to YTL Power Limited. Who? You mean you’ve never heard of them? Hardly surprising as they’re Malaysian so if you want to moan about anything from Directors salaries to the number of leaks, you might need to fly to Kuala Lumpur to attend the AGM. And Bristol Water who, amongst other things, have a responsibility for the sewers in my street, are apparently now back in British ownership with Investec (Who? Well at least they’re registered on the UK stock exchange) after the previous Spanish and Japanese owners cashed in their stakes. It’s the same across the rest of the country and it begs a question.
Who actually owns the rain that falls on our hills, the water that flows in our rivers, the lakes and underground aquifers? It used to be us. Now it’s just as likely to be the good citizens of France or our friends, the Chinese government.
Well there are exceptions. Hardly surprising as England is the only country in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the water and sewage services remained in public ownership and Welsh Water, the company which supplies drinking water and wastewater services to most of Wales and parts of western England, has operated as a single-purpose, not-for-profit company with no shareholders, 'run solely for the benefit of customers.'
Okay, so how have these privatised water utility companies performed? It’s another tricky question that’s difficult to get to the bottom of. Reports and analysis by various environmental groups such as Surfers Against Sewage are damning but not necessarily balanced. If you research the web pages of the regulator Ofwat, it’s possible to find data on leaks, investment, pollution incidents and so on. The problem is that these results are compared to targets and dates agreed by Government with the industry and it’s hard not to suspect that a substantial degree of lobbying has taken place. Even against these targets, the performance of most of these companies has been patchy at best, awful at worst. The best performer is, thank goodness for small mercies, Wessex Water, who in 2021 reported:
• 72 actual incidents
• 21 sewerage pollution incidents per 10,000km of sewer over 35,000km of sewer.
• Overall ‘green’ status based on the government targets.
I’m glad I don’t live in areas covered by Thames or Southern Water who seem to be in a perpetual state of ‘amber’ or ‘red’ and have regularly received fines from Ofwat or the Environment Agency. Now that begs a follow-up question. Who pays the fine? Shareholders by receiving lower dividends or customers by paying increased charges? In 2021 research by the University of Greenwich suggested that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion more every year for their water and sewerage bills than they would if the water companies had remained under state ownership.
And what about investment? Not a single privatised company has kept up with their investment commitments, arguing that issues such as planning permission or the 2008 financial crisis have caused unavoidable delays whilst simultaneously committing themselves to revised targets sufficiently far out in the future. Just a couple of examples demonstrate how cynically we should view these statements, particularly as the population of England has increased by 10% since 1989. In the past the public authorities recognised the pressure such growth this would put on the whole water network and attempted to provide the facilities; dams and sewage works sprang up across the country. How many new reservoirs have been built since 1989? How many new sewage works? The answer to both is zero. What about replacing old and leaking pipes? Who knows, it’ll take longer than the afternoon I’ve already spent trawling the web to work it out but I’m willing to bet it’s nowhere near the level it should be. Private equity and long-term capital projects just don’t mix well, so the effect going forward will be more sewage on the beaches, more polluted rivers, more rivers drained as the reservoirs run dry, and more flooding as old sewers struggle to cope with climate change and the consequences of increased tarmac.
Just as an example:
Thames Water – owned by a consortium of mainly foreign investors from Australia, China, and the Middle East.
2021 profits of £475m on a turnover of £2177m. Reinvested £1114m and the rest went on tax, dividends and ‘financing’ the original debt.
17th out of 17th of all the privatised water companies on a suite of consumer and performance measures.
So it’s hard to argue with the conclusion that privatising a public utility that exists in a monopolistic environment just like water and sewage does has been a failure. Unless of course you happen to be a shareholder living elsewhere in the world and enjoying having a profitable stake in the natural resource that drains into our lakes and flows down our rivers.
Sadly, the same problems can be seen in the privatised power generation and supply industry. Long-term investment lags behind what is obviously needed, short-cuts to profits by selling off gas storage facilities, reluctance to embrace and invest in renewables whilst carbon-based fuels are still cheaper. At least there was a semblance of artificial competition at the consumer end of the pipeline for those prepared to shop around for a deal, but this whole contrived market proved to be on shaky, borrowed foundations that collapsed as soon as energy-producer prices kicked upwards. Across Europe such swings are managed by the state who have a controlling stake in the industry and can mitigate the damage; not so in the UK where the current government views the generators as largely untouchable and will limit the effect of energy spikes on consumers by borrowing, kicking the can down the road so that we’ll have to foot the bill in years to come.
Maybe in another decade, the renewables and nuclear options will bring some long-term stability but even that comes with another question. Who now owns the wind that turns the blades on the wind turbines scattered across our hills or standing in ranks just off our shores? Who owns the power of the waves and tides that flow daily back and forth around our coast? Not you or me anymore; we’ve sold our rights to France, Germany and China. Next time you’re on a rain-swept, blustery cliff top looking out to a storm-flecked sea, just ask yourself, how did we allow this to happen?
Actually, I’ve just about run out of energy myself after all this grumbling about the direction we’ve been steered. Right now I can’t even bring myself to make a futile, despairing case for windfall tax against the global giants such as Shell and BP; apparently such a tax will stifle investment, damage the move towards renewables and threaten the decommissioning of old North Sea oil platforms.
Looking at the way the perils of privatisation and the withering of the welfare state have swept up on us, the real question now is how do we recover the situation? Manifesto is just going to have to take a stab at it.
By sixty years into our future the Arietis Research Council had all the data it needed. Analysis of the sample individual’s six decades of experience had painted a sufficient picture; sadly they were dismayed at the direction the UK had allowed itself to drift. Not that they could do anything about it from so far away in time and space other than continue to monitor, hoping that common sense would prevail and those ideals that had seemed so radical and fair just a human lifetime ago would eventually reassert themselves in both the nation’s psyche and the objectives of their elected governments. They’d look again in another ten years but didn’t hold out much hope for the tide to have turned that quickly. It might even be another six decades before the UK was back on track.
But who knows? They hadn’t yet heard of Manifesto.
Images removed: Thatcher and Heath (National Portrait Gallery) Rupert Murdoch (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Keith Joseph (Centre for Policy Studies) Ted Heath 'Last of the Tory ‘good guys’ surrounded by three of the architects of his (and our society’s) demise
Image removed : Carry on Nurse (Pinewood Studios) Image removed: Brexit Bus promising NHS funding (City AM) Images removed: British rail and Virgin East Coast logos
Image removed: Thames Water logo