Finishing off Thatcher’s privatisation agenda

By Darren Jones

In the week when the first images of the 2011 film on Thatchers premiership are released my thoughts focus on the reality of today. The reality of Camerons desire to finish off Thatcher’s privatisation of our nation and the reality that the impacts of such policies are likely to result in the same devastatingly unequal outcomes of the 1980′s.

I have the pleasure of working in two specific roles outside of my day-to-day work. The first is my role as Chair of Governors at my old primary school in Bristol. The second is my role working on a ‘consultancy’ basis for a GP partnership – something I have now done for many years for many different partnerships across the South West. Each week I spend hours working in two areas where ideologically driven policy is being imposed by the Tory-led government to the danger of children and patients alike.

The similarities are remarkable. In both education and health the Tories are driving forward policy where control is centralised and accountability decentralised, where funding is removed and private profit-driven providers are introduced, where the role of the state is drawn back and the power of the market brought forward.

The similarities continue. In both education and health the hard-working teachers and clinicians I work with every week appear anxious, unsure and concerned about the future. Their feeling of angst is without question justified. No-one is sure about the day-to-day implications of the policy debates in Westminster and no-one is able to explain to parents and patients what it means to them. Further, I fail to understand how anyone can see education and health as anything but core provision of the state and how others fail to see that, in these arenas, there is no room for shareholder profit and the harsh realities of the market.

At the GP surgery I work at, practice leaders are unsure what the implications of devolved central budgets mean. They are confused about why Primary Care Trust staff are being made redundant only for the accountancy and professional firms to take over the same role. They are confused about the impact on their patients.

At the primary school we are unsure about the impact of spending cuts on our pupils, having to take the heart-breaking decision of cutting academically vital interventions. We are unsure about the impact of forced academisation in our city and the cutting off of academic quality and outcomes support to our teachers from the local authority.

Policies providing forced marketisation are not welcome. Policies being rushed through without proper consultation and thought are disheartening and policies forcibly changing the focus from pupils and patients to the profits of private providers are disgraceful.

I may be wrong. Cameron, Lansley and Gove might be right. But every week, when I see vulnerable patients in the waiting room and pupils in the classroom relying on others to provide them with the start they deserve, I pray that it is they that are in the minds of people in Westminster. I pray that I am indeed wrong when it comes to the Tory-led reforms of education and health and I pray that in the years to come we don’t look back in disappointment at the sad regression of our country.