Cameron's Big Society Equals Privatisation Of Everything

With the announcement this week by Cameron writing in the Daily Telegraph that all public services, including the NHS and Education will all be open to private companies and charity organisations (again private); Cameron has finally proven that the Big Society is simply the complete privatisation of the UK. Health and safety regulations will be drastically reduced and government departments dealing with health and safety law enforcement will be put out to private companies.

Whilst that view may seem too far fetched, we need only to remind ourselves that public health has already been placed into the hands of local government. Given the massive cuts they are facing it is clear that public safety enforcement will end up being slashed. We simply need only to look at the USA to see the future of health and safety in the UK, as it is clear that the majority of Tory policy is aimed at duplicating American society.

Cameron announced that the changes required to all public services are to be set out in a White Paper within the next fortnight.

Justifying the privatisation of everything, Cameron said in the Daily Telegraph article that "complete change" was needed in the public sector to improve standards for users.

Cameron wrote: "We will create a new presumption - backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication - that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. Of course, there are some areas - like national security services or the judiciary - where this wouldn't make sense. But everywhere else should be open to real diversity."

Responding, the Trade Unions have criticised him for wanting to simply privatise everything in sight.

General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress Brendan Barber accused Mr Cameron of pursuing a "naked right-wing agenda" that would take the country back to the most divisive years of the 1980s.

"The prime minister has been telling us that the cuts are sadly necessary, not a secret political project to destroy public services. Yet today's proposal to privatise everything that moves is exactly the kind of proposal that voters would reject if put at an election.

"What is particularly laughable is the idea that this will reduce bureaucracy. Privatisation replaces democratic oversight and accountability with a contract culture that is a job creation scheme for lawyers.

"Voters and service users lose their say in what will be a get even richer quicker scheme for the companies that win contracts."

And Rail, Maritime and Transport union leader Bob Crow said the government would "privatise the air that we breathe if they thought they could away with it".

But Cameron denied public services would suffer, saying, "This is not about destabilising the public services that people rely on; it is about ensuring they are as good as they can be.”

Unison, the country's largest public sector union, warned that the proposals would result in a "postcode lottery" of services and a mountain of bureaucracy generated by a welter of private sector contracts.

The Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants, said the plans would signal the "biggest sell-off in living memory".

The Unison leader, Dave Prentis, said the government wanted to "turn the clock back" to a time when private companies ran schools, hospitals and other council services.

"The state was forced to step in when the market failed to give people equal access to decent services," he said.

"Taking vital services out of the public sector will see a postcode lottery develop. Huge transaction costs and a tsunami of bureaucracy will waste billions. As private companies seek to eke out profits, they will strip our services to their bare bones.

"This is not about modernisation – it is about privatisation, creating an open market for the Tories' friends in big business to make billions out of our public services."

Source: Guardian / Daily Telegraph / Independent / TUC

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