×
This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
MOST voters want new legal rights that could stop the Tories selling off Britain’s family silver without public support, polling revealed yesterday.
A shocking £44 billion worth of public services have been handed to profiteers since David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010.
But results of a Survation poll, commissioned by the We Own It campaign, revealed his government had no mandate to privatise the East Coast Main Line and nor did the public support plans to sell Britain’s stake in Eurostar or the National Gallery.
Half of respondents said privatisation of public services was a negative trend, compared with just 22 per cent who support the sell-offs.
And two-thirds of people believe the government should now be forced to demonstrate public support before it can flog further services.
Sixty seven per cent backed a We Own It proposal to give the public a legal right to be consulted over future privatisations.
We Own It director Cat Hobbs said that such a right could prevent a repeat of this month’s unpopular reprivatisation of the East Coast Main Line, which has made £1 billion for the taxpayer since 2009.
She told the Star: “East Coast is a great example of why we need this.
“Why didn’t the public get any say about that being reprivatised?
“The public didn’t want it to be re-privatised but we didn’t even get a chance to be consulted.”
Support for public consultations over privatisation plans was highest among Labour and Ukip voters at 73 per cent.
But more than 60 per cent of Tory voters also believe that sell-offs should be subject to scrutiny.
The latest blow to the credibility of Tory privatisation logic follows a YouGov poll last week, testing the Tory claim that the public back a “whatever works” approach to running public services.
It found that most voters wanted the NHS, schools, the Royal Mail, utilities, prisons, roads and the railways to be run by the public sector.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said yesterday’s survey results revealed that “the only people who fly in the face of the overwhelming backing for public ownership are the political elite and their backers in big business and the media.
“Our job is to harness the clear views of the overwhelming majority of the British people and turn them into a political force that can drive back decades of pro-privatisation vandalism,” he added.
An early day motion calling for a Public Service Users Bill, which would give the public powers to object to sell-offs, has been tabled in Parliament.
Labour MP Geraint Davies hopes his party will make it law if it takes power in May.
He told the Star: “Under the coalition, more and more public services have been privatised and outsourced without giving the people affected a voice.
“Our Bill would put the public first, giving us a way to stop privatisation-by-default and promote transparency and accountability.”
Along with consultations, the Bill would give the public a legal right to see contracts which are currently agreed behind closed doors.
It would also force privateers to publish performance data and could include a “right to recall,” seeing services brought back in-house from failing private-sector operators.
by Luke James Parliamentary Reporter
