Readers' letters: Privatisation isn’t working for public

The UK Government’s ideologically driven privatisation of public services has benefited corporations and shareholders and harmed citizens.
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary cost £184m to build under Private Finance InitiativeEdinburgh Royal Infirmary cost £184m to build under Private Finance Initiative
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary cost £184m to build under Private Finance Initiative

Resources and services everyone depends upon – health, water, energy, transport – are more expensive and less efficient in private hands.

Privatisation disasters abound. The UK Government paid Serco £37.5 billion for a useless contact tracing system, whereas the Scottish Health Service’s test and protect system worked.

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The increasingly privatised English NHS performs worse than Scotland’s health service. In transport, private bus services perform worse and cost more than public ones.

A National Audit Office study concluded private finance was more costly and less efficient in providing hospitals, schools and other public infrastructure than public financing. The costs of a privately financed hospital are 70 per cent higher than those of a public sector hospital.

Private English water companies routinely dump sewage into rivers and oceans, and don’t invest in reservoirs and fixing leaking pipes, preferring to reward shareholders. Scottish Water is publicly owned. As a result, 65.7 per cent of our rivers are healthy vs just 14 per cent in England.

The nation’s energy assets were privatised so companies are reaping grotesque profits while citizens go bankrupt. Countries retaining public ownership of energy such as France and Norway have kept prices far lower.

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In energy rich Scotland, Scots are penalised with the highest bills and Scottish renewables developers pay to connect to the private National Grid while their English counterparts are paid.

It’s not rocket science. Public assets should be publicly owned, another reason Scotland must take back control and restore its independence.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

Rent freeze may not be the answer

Nicola Sturgeon is to freeze private sector rents in Scotland. Is this really a sensible solution to our current problems?

Landlords - many of whom own a single property to supplement their pensions - face soaring mortgages and rapidly escalating maintenance costs.

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So what will be the medium-term consequence of Sturgeon's decision? Landlords sell up, the number of rental properties shrinks and rents quickly rise even further.

Sturgeon seems to regard every landlord as evil, modern day Rackman-types. A wee bit naive?

Might it have been better to wait 48 hours until Westminster (where, as Sturgeon constantly remind us, genuine power lies) has acted?

Martin Redfern, Melrose.

Reaching net zero will cost £3 trillion

An excellent letter from Steuart Campbell who, when writing about climate change, says "About which Scotland can do little since greenhouse gas emissions are relatively trivial" (Letters 6 September).

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If I may add a few pertinent comments. Scotland's emissions are a minuscule 0.15 per cent.

Net zero by 2050 will cost the UK public £3 trillion. There are 67 million people in the UK so net zero will cost each man, woman and child £45,000 or alternatively since there are 27.8 million households each household will have to contribute £108,000.

Do politicians never do their sums? This money would be better spent on reducing energy bills and putting food on the nation's tables.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow.

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