Jul 28 2007
We need better infrastructure
In??the 1980s the Conservatives inherited a country with very run down infrastructure. We set about releasing the energies, ideas and money of the private sector to give the country better phones, cheaper electricity, more gas, improved air transport and road freight.
In crucial areas like telecommunications the transformation was breathtaking. In the early 1980s there were long waits to get a new phone installed. There was insufficient line capacity between main business cities at peak times. It was difficult getting phone lines that could handle data, and the range of equipment you were allowed to attach to Post Office telephone lines was very limited.
Within ten years the UK had gone from being a telecoms laggard to being a leader. A huge mobile phone industry sprung up thanks to deregulation. The phone became almost universal amongst British families. The revolution in the City and its huge growth needed the big leap forward in telecoms and data handling that the changes permitted. Large numbers of new devices and types of phone were added to the networks.
No-one asks any more how will we pay for all the telecoms investment we need. They had to in the 1970s, when every extra penny of spending by the Post Office for telephony had to be approved by the Treasury.
Today we have a new Prime Minister. Over the next few days I will set out how private capital, choice and competition could start to transform other parts of our run down infrastructure, in the way liberalisation so changed telecoms for the better.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I’ll be very interested to hear your ideas on this. I’ve worked on the ground level of our new competitive telecoms, gas and electricity industries in about half a dozen large firms, including for three ex-public sector outfits.
Telecoms has improved dramatically, without any shadow of a doubt, there is still a lot of inefficency and waste, but it is this that creates a lot of employment. Privatisation of gas and electricity I would argue has not actually improved anything for the end user in terms of what they get, but has helped the economy, created employment and helped keep taxes down but left the consumer vulnerable to price fluxuations and being ripped off by dodgy sales practices. I’ve never worked in water, so can’t really comment.
I’d be very interested to know what else you think should be handed over to private competition, because there are no more direct consumer interests at stake except who you pay your water bill to surely? Then again maybe I’m wrong.
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Steven L: “I’d be very interested to know what else you think should be handed over to private competition,”
Looking at it from the other perspective, what shouldn’t be handed over to private competition? Or, why do you think that Government is better at buisness than buisness folk?
Cast an eye over the organs of government, and we see DEFRA, and the Rural Payments authority. Run on corrupt and incompetant lines, wholly unable to perform the task they were assigned. Supporting the farming industry. Apart from the fact that DEFRA is now a sort of fifth column instrument of the European Union.
Then look at the Home office, a monument to monumental incompetance. Even its own Minister admitted it was unfit for purpose. Just about everything the Home office is charged with - Police, Prisons, Immigration, is in utter Chaos.
I simply do not understand why people still stubbonly think the Government does things better?
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I never said anything about government being better at spending our money. I just said I would be interested in JR’s ideas, that’s all.
There is inefficiency and waste in the private sector too. Many companies I’ve worked at have bloated structures of junior and middle-management. ‘Productivity’ measurements can just be bizarre instruments used by management accountants to justify why they deserve to keep their jobs. I work in sales, yet although my bonus is paid solely on sales figures, there is a team of people where I work that monitor me like a battery-hen, in order to keep them happy and let their bosses count their beans the wat they want to I have to operate in a manner by which I sell less, losing income for my employer and myself.
Reply: Yes there are inefficient companies in the private sector. Where they operate in a competitive market, their customers can go elsewhere if the price becomes too high or the quality too low. The public sector is usually supplying a monopoloy service, so the inefficiencies become much greater. You can also change companies if it is that bad!
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