IN SERVICE OF THE PUBLIC

The spoilsport strike decision of five and a half percent of the members of a public servants' Union triggering a national strike have prompted some heated debates about the relative efficiencies of public services being met by the state or the private sector, along with the more obvious debate around the merits or otherwise of this rather limited definition of a democratic decision.

Look at the awful things that have happened to state services since they have been privatised, say those whose preference is for state ownership, and look how much profit they are making.

Mathematically, of course, the argument for privatisation, is simple. If service levels can be maintained or improved at same or lesser cost to the user, then profit levels are irrelevant in anything other than a political sense.

Of course you can argue that the same service maintenance or improvement could have been got under state ownership at lesser cost, because the profit margin would be removed. Except that the very people who make this argument - an efficiency argument - are the leaders of the Unions currently threatening strikes on such highly suspect grounds. That does not give one great confidence in their relentless efficiency drive.

There is another smart little argument which applies. Even under a Labour government, there was a constant questioning of whether public services might better be outsourced to the private sector. I have never yet heard of a private sector organisation seriously examining whether a public body should deliver its essential services.