ENDING privatisation must be done in the first year of the next Labour government, delegates heard yesterday.

Opening the debate on privatisation at Labour’s annual conference, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said that “an end to privatisation must be a year one priority for a Labour government, not an aspiration.”

Paying tribute to the struggle of his union members who have fought privatisation, including against New Labour governments, he attacked the marketisation of the British economy and denounced the logic of privatisation.

“Unison has always led the fight against privatisation — in the past all too frequently against the New Labour leadership,” he said.

“Year after year, I stood at this rostrum, and was heckled and hissed at by New Labour ministers for opposing their privatisation plans.

“Gullible ministers, who’d been seduced by the promises of vulture capitalism, sucked in by G4S, Capita and Carillion, and bedazzled by the chief executives of multinational companies who promised so much yet delivered so little.”

Mr Prentis congratulated Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell for bringing the “dark days” of Blairism to an end.

He said: “The country must never go back to the time when it was beholden to the profiteers, seduced by false promises, and by the mantra that private was good and public bad.”

The union leader also attacked fallen engineering giant Carillion for “abandoning” the Royal Liverpool Hospital, which has been left half-built following the company’s collapse.

His condemnation of Carillion came as research from Unite shows that redundancy payments to the firm’s unemployed workers will cost the taxpayer an estimated £65 million.

Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail told conference: “While the directors and senior executives of Carillion have largely slithered off into lucrative new roles, it is the taxpayers who have been left to pick up the pieces from their mess.

“These revelations further underline why the government must order a full public inquiry into Carillion's collapse to not only understand who was responsible for the greatest corporate failure in UK history, but also the total cost to the taxpayer.

“Additionally, the police need to undertake an immediate criminal investigation into those responsible for Carillion's collapse.

“If no laws were broken, then we need better stronger laws to prosecute the guilty.”