Burnhamism and Manchesterism

 As it looks inevitable that Andy Burnham will be the next Prime Minister, we should consider what this might mean in policy terms.

But first, Sir Keir Starmer. He could not continue after the Mandelson saga, electoral wipeout, and the worst personal approval ratings in history. I voted for him in the leadership contest after Jeremy Corbyn resigned. I recognised he might not be a charismatic leader, but after Johnson and Truss, boring looked good. However, I didn’t reckon on him being such a poor politician as his early decisions in government highlighted. He also got sucked into internal factional infighting, which contributed to the loss of members and activists. Labour has to be a broad church.

The usual suspects claim we don’t know what Andy Burnham stands for. He may not have published a manifesto, but he hasn’t been shy at setting out his political philosophy – Burnhamism if you must label it. You might summarise it as devolution, preventative action and tackling social inequality. Matthew Flinders has a good go at articulating this today. And from a Scottish perspective, Marissa MacWhirter makes similar points based on her interview with him last year.

As someone who has argued that Scotland is too centralised, his support for local government is very welcome. As Matthew puts it “Burnhamism represents a complete rejection of the traditionally centralised, elitist, two-party, Whitehall-knows-best Westminster model. It seeks to shift towards a power-sharing model that can accommodate long-term strategic policy-making.” This must be more than devolution to regions and nations. It has to filter down to real communities of place.

The emphasis on preventative action reflects what we said in the Christie Commission many years ago. The government doesn’t need to keep spending more if it invests in tackling the root causes of inequality. There is a broad consensus that this is the right approach, although delivery has been patchy. It will be interesting to see if a true believer in this approach can achieve what governments in Scotland and the UK have failed to deliver.

He is also a supporter of proportional representation, although I regret that it may not be an immediate priority.

If you want a manifesto, then the Burnham supporting Mainstream has published ‘The Productive State: A Framework for Manchester’ – or in short ‘Manchesterism’. Matthew Lawrence and Alex Williams make the case against privatisation, another Burnham theme, arguing that “The retrenchment of public control has created an economy that extracts where it should invest, fragments where it should coordinate, and prices for profit where it should provide for use.” While the UK Government has made some modest changes in the right direction, the authors rightly argue that they have failed to make the necessary structural changes. 

In contrast, the Productive State does this with a toolkit that reasserts national economic sovereignty by directly engaging in public investment, provision, ownership, and coordination of and between essential sectors. This doesn’t ignore the strengths of markets in rewarding innovation and competition, but targets the specific domains where markets have demonstrably failed: where productivity is exhausted and profit is rent extraction; where prices are systemically significant and threaten macroeconomic stability; and where private capital chronically underinvests. Structurally, they argue we should use the public corporation model, operationally independent, commercially mandated, borrowing in its own name, and prioritising resilience over financial return. 

Andy Burnham has done some of this in Manchester with the Bee Network, expanded council housing, and the Good Growth Fund. This helps highlight what public control produces in practice. The challenge will be in scaling this up across the UK. While some of this can be achieved without a massive increase in public spending, more investment will be needed. 

This leads to potential issues with the bond markets. When the interest charged on UK bonds rises, for example, British banks face higher funding costs themselves. This in turn feeds into higher mortgage rates, more expensive business loans and tighter financial conditions. In the UK, total government debt now stands at about £2.9 trillion, with interest rates (yields) currently higher than those paid by the US, Italy, France, Canada, Germany and Japan. Burnham has indicated that he feels we are too much in hock to the bond markets and there are those, like Yanis Varoufakis, who go much further. Others argue for Modern Monetary Theory, but this is certainly a step too far for a new PM. Burnham is likely to bring in some economists with new ideas, such Andy Haldane, with his ideas on war bonds to finance defence investment.

Overall, even an old cynic like me is excited about what an Andy Burnham premiership could bring to our politics. Public sector delivery, preventative spending, tackling social inequality, and above all, localism, are all aligned with my policy perspective. Of course, he will have to face the carping from the usual suspects, the billionaire owned media and the difficult economic position. However, he understands that managerial tinkering around the edges just won't solve the UK's huge structural problems. A decisive change is needed, and we should give him the time and space to go for it.

Why trade agreements are bad for our health

Our understanding of trade deals is limited because they have largely been a matter for the EU. Post-Brexit, we should be concerned about what's happening in Europe, as well as what sort of trade deals are being negotiated by our government worldwide.

Most people will be aware of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the USA and the EU, but less aware of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU. Initial votes on this are imminent and the deal has many similarities with TTIP. Boris Johnson is also record as saying that CETA is a good model for future trade deals.

Yesterday, I was speaking at an event looking at the health impact of trade deals.  While the risks to the NHS are recognised, the wider impact on health policy has not been given the attention it deserves.

Even with the inclusion of health on the 'negative list' in CETA, the definitions are likely to be narrow and this still leaves open a range of other public services that impact on health. The aim of trade deals is to create a globalised market in public services and the 'negative list' approach is too weak. There is also a 'ratchet clause' in CETA that locks in privatisation, even when democratically elected governments want to bring them into public ownership.

There is no protection for public services in the investment chapter that allows private corporations to by-pass governments and domestic courts in favour of tribunals (ISDS), run by private trade lawyers. This exposes a wide range of Scottish public services to challenge because they all have elements of private provision already. Examples include Scottish Water and procurement initiatives like the Scottish Living Wage.

Another aim of trade deals is to reduce the supposed ‘regulatory barriers’ to trade, through ‘mutual recognition’ of regulatory standards. In effect a race to the bottom that ignores the precautionary principle in favour of lower safeguards, commonly found in the USA. In practice, this requires little direct action because ISDS creates a ‘regulatory chill’ factor that stays hand of governments.

The specific health impact of CETA and other trade deals include broadening and extending intellectual property rights which could delay the availability of cheaper generic drugs. All public procurement is covered and this could curtail buy- local food purchasing programs in Scotland as promoted in UNISON Scotland's Food for Good Charter. There is a sustainable development chapter, but like the ILO clause, these are aspirational with no effective citizens right to challenge. Regulation restrictions include licensing procedures that are “as simple as possible”, which means as weak as possible! There is also inadequate protection for public water services and on the ILO Convention right to organise, there is only a weak call on Canada to ratify.

If, as seems increasingly likely, the UK government goes for hard Brexit, trade deals will have to be negotiated across the world. So we need to take the debate away from darkened rooms of international trade lawyers and into wider public debate. This means not just saying what we don't like about them, but also to debate what a progressive trade deal might look like.

There are few international models to copy. The possible exception is the South American APP agreement. However, that is based on a unique barter arrangement that it would be difficult to replicate in Europe.

A progressive trade deal would not build in a comparative advantage that locks in poor countries to a system that makes the global South produce goods that are paid for by speculation economy in the North. To illustrate this, the average EU cow is subsidised by $800, while the average annual income in Ethiopa is $100. Neither do we want the Singapore model, where the UK seeks to out-compete the EU through lower regulation and wages.

It ought to be possible to negotiate trade deals that include enforceable environmental and human rights commitments that control transnational corporations, with a citizen rights to challenge. Warm words in a trade deal are not enough - there has to be an effective remedy for everyone, not just the corporations. A progressive trade deal would encourage the  transfer of skills and technologies, not monopolise them. Trade should contribute to social goals, not limit them. From a health perspective they should include a health impact assessment as standard.

We need to do much more to flesh out these ideas, before the UK government goes away and negotiates in secret. The Trade Justice Movement's, Alternative Trade Mandate 10 Point Plan is a good starting point.

The secrecy and complexity of trade agreements has resulted in very little public debate over their contents. That has to change because they impinge on almost every aspect of public policy, particularly health. The very best public health strategies are useless if they are struck down by private corporations. Modern trade deals are almost an alternative constitution. We wouldn't leave that simply to the lawyers and neither should we with trade.

P.S.

You can join the campaign against CETA by emailing your MEP here. The Scottish campaign will be lobbying the SNP conference on Saturday.

Public water contract - ultimate in market madness

Paying a privatised English water company to provide Scottish public water to Scotland’s public services has to be the ultimate in market madness.

An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times reports that the Scottish Government is about to award a massive contract to provide water and waste water services for most of Scotland’s public bodies to Anglian Water, which is based in Huntingdon.

If you thought we had a public water service in Scotland, you might be a bit confused at this stage. Well we do, but it’s looking a bit frayed at the edges.

Scottish Water is a public corporation (even if it often wrongly calls itself a ‘company’) accountable to Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Water is responsible for the provision of water and waste water services to almost all domestic and non-domestic properties and for maintaining the public system. There are some small scale private water supplies, largely in rural areas.

However, there is competition in the provision of customer-facing activities such as billing, charge collection, meter-reading and complaints handling for non-domestic customers in Scotland. This means that Scottish Water levies a wholesale charge on licensed retailers for non-domestic customers. Licensed retailers can agree their own charges with customers, subject to them being no higher than a default tariff set by the Water Industry Commission Scotland (WICS). Scottish Water is also a retailer, through its own retail arm Business Stream, which provides a service to the vast majority of non-domestic customers in Scotland.

As the public bodies are non-domestic customers they come under this system of retail competition and the Scottish Government, actually the then Infrastructure Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, put one big contract for public bodies out to tender last August.

The driving enthusiasm for non-domestic competition was the WICS CEO – a well known supporter of privatisation. So keen that he promoted the scheme’s extension to England and Wales.  UNISON has always argued that this arrangement is an expensive waste of effort. The WICS claims it has resulted in savings, but in practice these savings are all about water efficiency, not marginal differences in billing systems.

Non-domestic competition is not the only area of privatisation. Last year the insider web site ‘Utilities Scotland’ submitted FoI requests to ascertain the extent of privatisation in the delivery of the water and waste water capital programme. In the last four years, 92.5% of Scottish Water’s capital programme has been delivered by private contractors, 7.5% by Scottish Water staff. By any standard that is substantial privatisation. This is on top of PFI schemes run by a variety of privatised water companies.

We are also concerned about the impact the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could have for Scotland’s public service model. The greater the privatisation, the easier it will be for overseas corporate interests to challenge our public water system.

There is a certain historical irony in the Scottish Government exporting Scottish jobs to Huntingdon. The Earldom of Huntingdon was held by Scottish kings, most famously by David 1 in the 12^th century. He used the revenues to build several abbeys in Scotland and generally spruce up public buildings. On the other hand, Oliver Cromwell came from Huntingdon and he knocked down quite a few public buildings in Scotland. Also, a later Lord Huntingdon was a custodian of Mary, Queen of Scots – that didn’t end well either!

Scottish Water is a public sector success story, but we are only too aware that there is a powerful lobby for privatisation. As I said in yesterday’s Sunday Times, the gradual drip of privatisation will have reached a new high if this contract is awarded to Anglian Water. The privatisation sharks are still circling Scottish Water and we need to remain vigilant.

 

 

Why Scotland and the UK should oppose TTIP

Politicians can be so fixated by the benefits of free trade that they are missing the real dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

TTIP is a series of trade negotiations being carried out mostly in secret between the EU and US. In my view TTIP is primarily about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, things like food safety law, environmental legislation, banking and labour regulations. It is, as John Hilary, of War on Want, said: "An assault on European and US societies by transnational corporations."

I was giving oral evidence to the Scottish Parliament's European and External Relations Committee last week on TTIP. It's not often in parliament that I find myself on the same side as the NFU, but that just demonstrates how broad the coalition concerned about TTIP is.

There is an argument, put forward by an academic lawyer at the committee, that we are worrying too much. There can be no provisions in the treaty that are outside EU competences and the EU has no powers to direct how, for example, our health service is organised. With respect, this academic view of the law is simply naive.

There are plenty of examples of states signing up to similar treaties only to find corporations challenging their democratic decisions. Australia over tobacco control and Slovakia over health insurance, highlights just two in the health sector. There are over 500 of these cases being heard across the world at present. It's not just the actual legal action that matters. The threat of legal action can result in 'regulatory chill' with risk adverse law officers worrying about any radical action that might result in a legal challenge. Scotland's recent Procurement Act and the living wage was one recent example of this effect. That Act also has provisions to tackle aggressive tax avoidance. Just imagine the plane loads of US corporate lawyers flying in to Edinburgh if TTIP was in place!

Effective challenges to the EU also have to come from the member state and for Scotland that means the UK. In England they are creating a US style privatised health service, so would they really complain to the EU to save Scotland's very different approach?

Some MSPs pursued the idea of a 'good TTIP' with us. I'm afraid that I don't hold out much hope for that. There are already very few trade barriers between the U.S. and the UK, so it's deregulation and privatising public services that interests rapacious American corporations. From a UK perspective there is little economic evidence of the benefits. When officials claim gains in the range of £4bn to £10bn, you know they are just making the numbers up. Even these figures take no account of job displacement and a further shift from wages to capital.

At a minimum TTIP a would have to unequivocally exclude public services, possibly using the positive list approach to avoid definitional problems over what a public service is. There should be no common regulatory standards, because the US ones are generally too low. Enforcement procedures that are in TTIP a should include all the ILO standards, particularly the ones that the U.S. hasn't signed up to, such a collective rights.

But the biggest issue is removing any Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). These mechanisms give judicial protection only to foreign corporations and allow their massive legal departments to tramp all over democratically elected governments. In this way they would be able to reduce our food safety rules, privatise the NHS, challenge the Scottish Living Wage and weaken environmental regulations on issues like fracking.

If a 'good TTIP' like this was on the table, I strongly suspect the US would just walk away. That's fine, because that is just what the EU should be doing now.

 

 

World Water Day. It's Scotland's Water and it's not for sale

Today is World Water Day. An opportunity to focus on this essential service that we take for granted, but many people worldwide still don't have access to. We should also remember that there are still those waiting for an opportunity to privatise Scotland's water.

Most of us take clean water for granted, but a sixth of the world’s population aren’t so lucky. Over a billion people worldwide cannot reach or afford clean water. Nearly two million children die every year because they do not have regular, safe water to drink, while the lives of many more people are blighted by the illness and preventable diseases that result from unsafe water and poor sanitation.

Water should be regarded as a human right. This week the European Commission (EC) published its official response to the first successful European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) that asks “to implement the human right to water and sanitation in European law. Water is not a commercial product”.

Sadly, the reaction of the EC falls short of what 1.9 million people across Europe asked for. In particular, there is no proposal for legislation recognising the human right to water. The Commission has also not committed to explicitly exclude these services from the trade negotiations such as on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in this Communication.

There are some positive aspects of the Commission response. For example the recognition that the provision of water services is generally the responsibility of local authorities that are closest to citizens. This confirms the trend towards remunicipalisation across Europe which according to the EC is the safest way for water to be kept out of the internal market rules. There is also a commitment to promote universal access to water and sanitation in development policies, including the promotion public-public partnerships.

Campaigns against water privatisation have had remarkable success across the globe. Major water multinationals such as French groups Suez and Veolia have retreated from much of their business in developing countries as a result of campaigns. They have also suffered the humiliation of losing their home city, Paris, to a new municipal service in 2010. Paris has inspired other towns and cities in France and elsewhere in Europe, including Berlin and Budapest, to terminate private water contracts. The Reclaiming Public Water Network estimates that more than 85 cities have switched from private to public in the past decade. Globally, more than 90% of water services are in public hands.

Private companies in England are now celebrating their 25th year of lucrative exploitation of their natural monopolies. Extracting profits of around £2 billion a year above the cost of a public service funded through low-cost public debt. This means renationalisation would save the average household £83 per year, cutting bills by more than 20%. The most recent poll on the issue found more than 70% of people favour renationalisation of the water sector – almost exactly the same as the proportion which opposed privatisation 25 years ago.

All of this should make us exceptional grateful that Scottish Water is still a public service.  That policy is supported by the SNP and Scottish Labour, while the Tories and LibDem's propose privatisation. Somewhat surprisingly given SNP policy, there is no mention of Scottish Water in the White Paper - Scotland's Future. No commitment to retain it as a public service should Scotland vote for independence later this year.

Scottish Water has been told it can raise its prices by 1.6% per year, well below inflation, while spending £3.5bn on improving infrastructure in the water and sewerage networks.

Customer Forum for Water in Scotland chairman Peter Peacock said this "is in stark contrast to what customers have seen from other utilities, and recognises the circumstances of many customers facing difficult economic pressures right now."

That's what a public service can achieve compared with privatised utilities. Yet there are still many who would privatise Scottish Water. On World Water Day we should remain vigilant to protect our public service. It's Scotland's water and it's not for sale.

Fiscal devolution as a route towards reducing inequality

Fiscal devolution is about more than just transferring powers from one parliament to another. It has to be part of a strategy to reduce inequality in Scotland.

That was the key message in my Sunday Times (£) column yesterday. I set out the options for fiscal devolution and my own preferred option as described in the Red Paper on Scotland and UNISON Scotland’s ‘Fairer Scotland – Devolution’ paper. This approach devolves all property-based and income taxes, including the power to vary the rate in each band. Business and consumption taxes are retained at UK level, because business tax competition simply leads to a race to the bottom.

I also took the opportunity to rebut some of the recent criticisms of fiscal devolution, including the impact on the Barnett formula and the risk that further devolution will lead to independence. Both in my view miss the point completely.

However, the main thrust of my column was that powers, including fiscal devolution, have to be for a purpose. That purpose is a fairer and more equal Scotland because more equal societies perform better on every measure.

The Yes campaign and the White Paper makes much of the OECD 2011 paper that appears to show the UK as the fourth most unequal society in the developed world. However, this selective use of the paper only deals with income inequality. The OECD paper actually emphasises the role of public services in reducing inequality. The paper says:

“But public services improved their impact on reducing inequality. Social spending in the UK relies more on public services (such as education, health etc.) than on cash transfers: spending on services amounts to over 15.4% of GDP while spending on cash transfers is some 10%. These services reduce inequality more than almost anywhere else, and this impact has increased over the 2000s.”

This is why the strongest argument for fiscal devolution is that Scotland is suffering from the financial consequences of English public service reform as the Tories shrink the state. Having the power to develop our own public service model is weakened if the financial rug is pulled from under it. University privatisation and NHS cuts are two recent examples. The IPPR ‘Devo More’ paper makes a similar point.

The OECD key policy recommendations are also noting:

·       Employment is the most promising way of tackling inequality. The biggest challenge is creating more and better jobs that offer good career prospects and a real chance to people to escape poverty.

·       Investing in human capital is key. This must begin from early childhood and be sustained through compulsory education. Once the transition from school to work has been accomplished, there must be sufficient incentives for workers and employers to invest in skills throughout the working life.

·       Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects. Large and persistent losses in low-income groups following recessions underline the importance of government transfers and well-conceived income-support policies.

·       The growing share of income going to top earners means that this group now has a greater capacity to pay taxes. In this context governments may re-examine the redistributive role of taxation to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden.

·       The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important.

The Yes campaign would of course argue that we could do all of this with independence. There is a certain irony that the SNP’s currency union could actually result in greater financial control from ‘London’ than fiscal devolution. The SNP (Stewart Hosie’s line in the last BBC debate) would still have us believe that Scandinavian levels of public services are possible on current tax rates. Scandamerica is simply not a credible proposition for anyone who is serious about tackling inequality.

All the polls make it clear that the majority of Scots want to see greater devolution short of outright independence. Scottish Labour has to go with that majority by arguing for the fiscal powers that can help deliver a vision of the fairer and more equal society. Anything short of that really would encourage a drift to independence.

Water is a public service - not a commodity

Water is a public good, not a commodity. Today there will be a hearing in the European Parliament on the European Citizens Initiative – Right to Water. You can watch the debate live online.

Nearly two million people signed this initiative across Europe. It invites the European Commission to propose legislation implementing the human right to water and sanitation as recognised by the United Nations, and promoting the provision of water and sanitation as essential public services for all. The EU legislation should require governments to ensure and to provide all citizens with sufficient and clean drinking water and sanitation. In particular, it wants water supply and management of water resources not be subject to ‘internal market rules’ and that water services are excluded from liberalisation.

This is particularly important in Scotland because we escaped the privatisation of water and sewerage services that happened in England and Wales. However, that doesn’t mean that the threat to our public service isn’t very real. Powerful commercial interests continue to lobby for privatisation, or the Trojan horse of mutualisation in Scotland. EU rules will be used as another excuse to pursue their agenda.

The private sector already has a foothold in Scotland through PPP/PFI schemes and contractor partnerships. Scottish Water has recently unveiled a six-year £700million infrastructure partnership with four major companies, two of them US-based, to deliver its £500m-a-year capital programme. Further privatisation through the backdoor.

Scottish Water is also regulated in Scotland as if it was a private utility. This not only ignores the public service function, but also adds extra costs onto the consumer. This is clearly set out in the latest paper by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert, published by the Jimmy Reid Foundation. Current cost pricing results in excess profits and overcharging across the water industry and parts of the energy sector as well.

Campaigning against the privatisation of Scottish Water doesn’t mean clinging to the status quo. In UNISON Scotland’s paper 'It's Scotland's Water' we highlight other public service models that demonstrate that a more democratic structure can deliver a more efficient, socially responsible and more accountable public water service. We can develop more democratic forms of ownership that ensure there is a focus on the issues that matter to the public like leaks, repairs and water quality. Not creating an artificial market that concentrates on profit rather than service. 

Public ownership is back in fashion

Public ownership is back in fashion after the market failures of rip off Britain. The left needs to tap into this trend to offer diverse delivery models suitable for the 21st century.

I was speaking at conference yesterday on public ownership. Fairly esoteric for a Sunday you might think, but actually much more mainstream politically these days. A UK public opinion poll for YouGov showed 61% in favour of common ownership of energy and only 26% against. There has been similar support for bringing the railways back into public ownership and against the privatisation of Royal Mail. This shows the public are way ahead of the policy makers, at least in part because they are fed up with the way many formerly nationalised industries are ripping us off.

A range of speakers identified the impact of privatisation in their own fields. Some themes included:

The need for a debate about ownership in the Scottish economy.

The workforce impact including pay, pensions and safety.

Contractors cutting corners with safety and service.

The failure of regulation with fines simply increasing charges to customers.

Promised investment not being delivered as in the rail and energy industry.

The environmental impact including the loss of freight to rail.

Looking forward speakers and workshop participants focused on what type of renationalisation we should support. This should include new forms of public ownership that doesn't simply create new managerial elites and involves new forms of cooperative and democratic community ownership.

I was asked to focus on water and energy. 

Water is the easy one as it remains a public service in Scotland, despite well funded privatisation campaigns supported by the multi-national water companies, the Water Industry Commission and more recently the Scottish Futures Trust. When they didn't work other mechanisms were suggested including mutualisation and public interest companies. In the capital intensive water industry these would all lead to privatisation by the back door. I would recommend Tommy Kane's chapter in the 'Red Paper on Scotland 2014' if you want to understand more about the efforts to privatise Scotland's greatest asset.

Scottish Water also offers some lessons about public ownership. Managers constantly talk about the 'company' and the regulatory framework apes the English privatised structure. Instead we should be democratising Scottish Water as set out in the STUC publication, 'It's  Scotland's Water'.

The recent row over Ed Milband's price freeze highlights the importance of moving the main political parties away from failed market mechanisms. Fergus Ewing was also very quick to parrot the energy company briefing in last week's Holyrood exchanges. 

Scotland’s energy trade unions have long argued for a planned energy policy that provides safe, secure and sustainable generation, which contributes to the economic future of Scotland and eliminates fuel poverty. While supporting the development of renewable energy, trade unions argue for a more balanced energy policy that will ensure that Scotland is not reliant on a few energy sources.

A different ownership strategy might also follow aspects of the Danish approach, most notably a more diverse generation ownership model. In Scotland, renewables are dominated by big business, whereas in Denmark small scale operators play a much bigger role. I set out some key features we might adopt in the energy chapter of the Red Paper including:

• A strong political vision over the long term, with commensurate policy and planning provisions.

• Favourable feed-in tariffs to create the incentive for new generation using different business models.

• A state owned grid that will usually connect up communities. The cost is repaid through a public service obligation payment in energy bills.

• A clear focus on energy efficiency with measures to tackle hard-to-heat homes.

• Strengthening the ability and willingness of local government to get involved - a utilities culture largely lost in the UK. Smaller local authorities to support real communities of place might also help.

The Reid Foundation energy paper published over the weekend picks up on some similar themes. I might disagree with their conclusions about what you might do with a different Scottish energy policy, but the focus on moving away from the failed faux market mechanisms and introducing new forms of public ownership, is clearly right.

A new focus on public ownership is the right response to the failure of privatisation. We now need to develop the practical delivery solutions that taps into renewed public support.

Scots say no to privatisation

A bit of good news this week from Ipsos MORI for those of us holding the thin red line against the privatisation lobby in Scotland. As their Scotland Director puts it:

"Put simply, Scots view public services as hugely important, are increasingly satisfied with their delivery and are wedded to the current model of these services being delivered by public bodies."

He draws attention to the Scottish Household Survey that shows 88% of adults in Scotland are satisfied with local health services, up from 81% in 2007. Levels of satisfaction with local schools rose by 6-points over the same period, from 79% in 2007 to 85% in 2011.

There has been a lot of debate about different attitudes in Scotland to England. Professor John Curtice arguing that the differences are not that great. I covered similar territory in my chapter in 'Scotland's Road to Socialism', while concluding that the data justified a more optimistic view. I would also argue that this is reinforced by actual voting patterns.

There are also different attitudes as to how public services should be delivered and funded. For example, while support for raising taxes to pay for services has declined across the UK, it is still more popular in Scotland (40%) than England (30%).

But the key difference between Scotland and England is over who is best placed to deliver public services. On a series of performance criteria Scots are clear that public authorities are best placed to provide public services. MORI again said:

"When asked which sector would be best at providing public services that best understand what service users need, over half of Scots (54%) believe public authorities do the best job while just 11% believe that the private sector would do a better job, compared to figures of 30% for public authorities and 16% in favour of the private sector among adults in England and Wales. Similarly, 58% of Scots believe that public bodies would provide the most professional and reliable public services, compared to 19% who would favour the private sector in that regard. This contrasts with figures of 30% for public bodies and 29% for the private sector among adults in England and Wales. Even when asked to consider which sector would provide the best quality service for the money, a measure where one might expect public bodies to do less well, 50% of Scots believe the public sector would provide the best public services, compared to 17% in favour of the private sector. Again, this contrasts significantly with England and Wales, where 27% believe the private sector would perform best on this measure, while 25% preferred public bodies."

This is also not a one off view. BBC election polls regularly put the delivery of public services high on the list of voters concerns. Outright privatisation or even the use of private finance gets a big thumbs down. The Scottish Government has one of the the biggest private finance programmes in Europe, but it is very careful to give it the title Non-Profit Distributing. It's nothing of the sort of course, but the political message is clear. Even the proponents of privatising Scottish Water dress up their plans as 'mutualisation' or 'Public Interest Companies'.

So campaigns like UNISON Scotland's 'Public Works' can take some comfort from the survey data. Particularly when you consider the massive resources available to the opposition. However, the Neo-Liberal monster never sleeps and we must never become complacent. In particular, it mustn't be seen as simply a campaign for the status quo. We can be radical in our solutions for improving public services without the need for privatisation.

Regulatory cuts and the meat scandal

Sunday newspapers doing what they do best today, giving us some in depth analysis and breaking new ground with the week's news stories.

The standout story comes from Rob Edwards in the Sunday Herald. Three key regulatory statistics form the basis for the story:

• The number of meat inspectors in Scotland has fallen by more than 50%, from 170 in 2003 to 75 today.
• The number of samples taken by Scottish local authorities to test for food safety has fallen from more than 16,000 in 2008-09 to 10,200 in 2011-12
• Over the last four years there has been a 21% drop in the number of specialist food safety officers employed by local authorities and an 11% fall in the number of environmental health officers.

Then an expert to give us an overiew in this case Professor Andrew Watterson, head of the occupational and environmental health research group at the University of Stirling He argued that the horsemeat fiasco was a "sentinel event" with widespread implications. "We need to protect public health better. Declines in meat inspector numbers and local authority food safety officers, along with reduced food sampling, must contribute to a weakening of public health standards and the possibility of criminal abuses in the food system." He also criticised Government ministers for trying to heap the blame on food processors when it was their responsibility to safeguard public health, saying: "We need to revive, not marginalise, environmental health and food safety and raise standards of protection for consumers."

And my own contribution. "Unison's Scottish organiser, Dave Watson, accused governments of forgetting the lessons learned from the BSE crisis in the 1990s about controlling the meat industry. He said: "Only strong, independent inspection can properly protect the public from industry malpractice. The current scandal follows cuts in meat inspection and environmental health services, proving that 'light touch' regulation has been a disaster for consumers."

On a UK basis, the Observer today gives us an update on the latest developments and an excellent piece by Will Hutton pointing to how the meat scandal shows all that is rotten about the free marketeers.

"As an effective regulator, it (FSA) was disliked by "wealth-generating" supermarkets and food companies. Its 1,700 inspectors were agents of the state terrifying honest-to-God entrepreneurs with unannounced spot checks and enforced "gold-plated" food labelling. Regulation should be "light touch".

This is a point we made last year and again at the outset of the scandal. The meat industry has been lobbying for self-regulation for years. Now it has come back to bite them they are falling over themselves to reassure us. As Hutton puts it:

"Paterson, beneath the ideological bluster, is as innocent about business as Bambi. He finds himself with no answer to the charge that his hollowed-out department, a gutted FSA with 800 fewer inspectors and eviscerated local government were and are incapable of ensuring public health."

I could not have put it better myself.