The Labour government 1997-2010
The government accepted before and after the election that they would not have the money to renationalise. They saw that in cases like telecoms and electricity the new private enterprise industries were delivering growth, new investment, better service and lower prices. The Labour movement was keen to renationalise rail, but John Prescott made speeches explaining that spending money on renationalising took money they needed for the NHS and other public services. Over the years that followed both Labour and Conservatives have allowed creeping rail renationalisation. Today the fully nationalised regions struggle to perform as well as the remaining private sector train companies elsewhere. All fail to deliver the better service , the more attractive timetables and ticket prices, and the big investment needed. A fully nationalised HS 2 has dominated budgets for rail and added substantially to state debt and rail subsidies. It has reminded the country of how badly nationalised projects can miscarry even when they are given huge sums of money and resource to try to succeed.
2010-2024 Drift to more regulation and government interference in privatised businesses
Under pressure of events, accelerated by covid lockdowns and the inflation of 2022-3, the big transport and energy businesses spun off from nationalised industries have fallen under more and more central control. The electricity industry now has highly managed prices instead of relying on markets supplying cheapest power, with subsidies and favoured access for renewables over gas generated power. Dialling down use of gas to be a back up system adds to costs as the gas stations can no longer run full out spreading the capital costs over more power. The gas industry is restricted by bans on new exploration and delays or objections to extracting more gas from known UK deposits. This forces more reliance on dearer imports of energy.
Labour renationalised Railtrack, placing the new signalling and extra track needed back into the queue for public spending approvals. Rail badly needs more customers, following a large decline in goods traffic and continuing attrition of passenger numbers after lockdowns. The government controlled timetables and complex partially controlled fares do not help in adjusting train supply to the potential demand. Shifting more freight from trucks to trains needs more sidings and branch lines into modern industrial parks and a better system for attracting waggon load traffic. Passenger demand is shifting from the reliable five day a week commuter needing peak time trains as more people work part of the week from home. The railway needs to do more with specials for events, holidays and family outings. Nationalised railway managers often find it easier to argue for more subsidy than to win more passengers.
Wider Ownership
Privatisation was part of the wider ownership movement. Some of the best privatisations were employee and manager buy outs including National Freight and Tower Colliery. Both of these businesses were transformed by trusting the drivers and miners. The Coal Board thought Tower had to close but it had more than a decade of successful mining ahead . when owned by those who worked there. The big privatisations encouraged some employee ownership with free and discounted shares. Allowing more employee participation and co ownership often helps deliver better results by creating a common interest in success.
Nationalisation or privatisation – the balance of advantage
The UK has conducted a long post war experiment. The 1945-50 Labour government set up a large nationalised economy which was struggling by the 1960s and 1970s. Rail decline led to the Beeching axe on rail lines and services. Failure to find enough steel customers led to the progressive closure of the new works nationalisation had brought. At the point BT was privatised UK telecoms were years behind the US technically, providing a limited and rationed service to an economy hat needed better to expand. Electricity relied too much on inefficient and dirty coal. Gas needed to speed its conversion to abundant cleaner gas from the North Sea. The US with a much larger private sector was richer and growing faster than the UK.
There was a wider experiment between the two systems across Europe. The Soviet bloc was mainly nationalised. It fell further and further behind in GDP per head and living standards. Western Europe made more progress recovering from war damage using US money and private sector finance funding competitive free enterprise companies. By the time the Berlin Wall came down it was quite clear which system had won. East Germans had long wanted to come west but were banned from doing so . There was no queue of people wanting to go east, and they were free to do so as far as the West was concerned anyway.
Some privatisations have been better than others. Telecoms took off once freed. Rail muddled on as some economic regulation and partial nationalisation got in the way. The issue of the pace of new investment for water was never resolved , with the absence of competition meaning it remained an industry where government set the price and controlled the cashflows. Electricity performed very well until government intervened to control prices, and to require much more renewable power before the technologies were cheap enough.
Privatisation for the future
The government is discovering that it can raise less in tax than it wants to spend. It should examine again how a major transfer of liabilities and costs from the public to the private sectors in the 1980s and 1990s greatly eased similar strains on public spending and borrowing. Last year the largely nationalised railways cost taxpayers £33 bn and Bank of England trading losses reached huge numbers. It is time to revisit the benefits of the private sector providing more of the goods and services people pay for. The public sector trading less could help ease the squeeze again.