Privatisation of a city
Leeds for sale!
OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS, Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes worth more than £200 million have been announced in just one city - Leeds.
As Leeds is in a similar position to most other areas of the country, the lessons of developments here are important for us all. Bob Wood looks at the details and the mounting local campaign against the proposals
The investment of private capital in education, health and housing is expanding at a surprisingly fast rate.
As far as education is concerned, Leeds city council has announced that a new school is to be built under PFI in the south of the city in Morley, and two high schools are to be either rebuilt or completely refurbished. An additional four primary schools will be replaced under the scheme.
Which construction firm will benefit from this £35 million programme will not finally be decided until the summer, but it will be either Leeds-based John Mowlem or London firm Laing Hyder.
An earlier scheme involving a new building for Cardinal Heenan High School, costed at £12 m, is due for completion by September. In this case the company benefiting from the development is Jarvis.
In the housing sector, the council is planning a £40-45 m PFI scheme involving the repair and improvement of the Swarcliffe estate in east Leeds.
These council-based schemes are dwarfed by proposals, unveiled in late March by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust for the city’s health services, amounting to a staggering £140 million.
Almost £100 million of this will be private finance. A new cancer centre at St James’s Hospital (£58 million), and a new children’s hospital at Leeds General Infirmary (£19 million) are proposed.
Other aspects of the scheme include the revamp of two wings at St James’s, and the updating of two hospitals in outlying areas as "locality hospitals".
Bed losses
Although new facilities would be welcome in the city this should not be at the cost of the inevitable bed losses that PFI entails.
It is the repercussions of the recent Ofsted report on Leeds Education Authority which has produced the biggest outcry. Following Ofsted’s highly critical, and almost certainly politically motivated report, an unusual alliance of councillors, Labour Party activists and trade unionists has united in opposing the possible hiving off of all or part of the LEA to the private sector.
The awful example of Islington, where from this April education support services will be supplied by a Cambridge-based private company for the next seven years, is uppermost in most people’s minds.
The campaign against privatisation in Leeds really got under way in early February at a well-attended public meeting called by an alliance of public sector trade unions, mainly UNISON local government and health branches.
Labour MP for Leeds North-west, Harold Best, spoke about his experiences as an apprentice electrician working for a private firm ripping off a public sector contract, and made clear his complete opposition to the government’s privatisation agenda.
He was joined on the platform by Bob Crowe of the RMT and Candy Udwin of UNISON. This successful meeting laid the groundwork for a strong campaign in the city.
The possibility of gaining significant support from local Labour Parties is real. At the March meeting of the normally supine Leeds District Labour Party, where any motions critical of new Labour have been monotonously ruled out of order, opposition to privatisation was strongly argued.
Resistance
One motion called for the city council to resist the privatisation of education services by all means possible while another opposed any reduction in bed numbers as a result of PFI in the health service.
These and other anti-privatisation motions were passed without dissent after a debate which made the link between the threat to the LEA and the incursion of private finance into schools, hospitals and even Air Traffic Control.
The deep unpopularity of the government’s drive to privatisation is evident from every opinion poll on the subject.
No respite
And yet the momentum is maintained without respite. Why are Blair and his team so determined to open up public services, especially health and education, to the private sector?
To those who like to divide the world up into tidy compartments - local, national and international, the answer must come as a bit of a surprise. For strangely enough, the beginnings of the answer can be found in Seattle.
The US agenda for the World Trade Organisation - and the United States is as usual backed to the hilt by its British fawn - is to open up across the world investment opportunities in services for American capital.
Potential markets in health and education are in the forefront of this drive to open up markets for profit across the globe.
The ultimate aim is to reduce our schools and hospitals to no more than local branches of Education UK plc or Health Inc, with headquarters in New York or Chicago.
In Leeds the next step in the campaign against this international project will be the annual May Day rally and march through the city centre on Saturday 29th April.
This year the Trades Council is organising the rally, together with the Leeds Campaign Against Privatisation, with the slogans – Free Education, Free Health and Free Welfare - No to Privatisation!
Perhaps it will be the beginning of a successful campaign to defend the welfare state.