Contempt for unions

JamieSW — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:58:32 +0000

IT is no secret that Business Secretary John Hutton was a Tory when he was at university. The only question is whether he has ever changed his politics.

Everyone knows that government ministers don’t commission a report unless they can be reasonably sure what conclusions it is likely to draw.

Putting DeAnne Julius, a former Bank of England monetary policy committee member, an ex-director of vulture capitalist conglomerate Serco and current director of BP and Roche, in charge of the commission makes it a pretty safe bet that the principle of publicly owned and operated services is not likely to be high up on the list of recommendations.

Not that this was a surprise. The fact that Mr Hutton announced this commission at last December’s CBI public services forum spoke volumes for the intent behind it.

It was intended to signal further opportunities for big business to dine out at the public expense and the subsequent invitations to, among others, Cap Gemini Consulting, Logica, Spire Healthcare, Babcock, KPMG and Serco conjured up images of troughs and slavering pigs.

The Julius commission’s priority is corporate profit, so it is axiomatic that she urges the government to open up even more public services to privatisation.

It is not enough that 6 per cent of the economy that was previously in the public sector is now part of the profits mainline for these dividend junkies.

As long as there is the capacity for privateers to milk the public purse, this parasitic sector will expand to take it up.

Mr Hutton borrows the overused and threadbare line of Tony Blair that “what matters to the public is not who provides but how well a service is provided,” as though government actions are dictated by pragmatism rather than dogma.

But, in fact, there is no practical assessment taking place. The government opts for private as a matter of course.

And Ms Julius does the same, referring to “clear benefits” to taxpayers in hiving off public services to the privateers.

If cutting costs and enabling private profits are the sole criteria, privatisation obviously makes sense, but it omits the key questions of value for money and quality of services.

So confident are the trade unions of the superiority of public over private that, at TUC congress and Labour Party conferences, they have successfully proposed in-depth examination of private finance initiatives and their comparison with government-financed schemes.

New Labour has refused to proceed with these evaluations because, as with Ms Julius’s commission, it knows the answer already.

Most bizarrely, in light of the tidal wave of fury expressed by trade unions, Mr Hutton claims that “the ideological battle over using private and third-sector providers is over.”

By this he means among the circles in which he moves and to which he listens and that doesn’t include trade unionists.

No-one should imagine that Mr Hutton is a maverick out of step with Gordon Brown. They are in step with each other and they couldn’t give a toss about the unions.

The point at issue is what the unions are prepared to do about a party that holds them and their members in contempt.

John Hutton | ukwatch.net

Contempt for unions