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Trade and Industry

Chapters

  1. Salaries and Taxation
  2. Pensions
  3. Benefits
  4. Health and Care
  5. Education
  6. Housing
  7. Employment
  8. Trades Unions and Labour Laws
  9. Trade and Industry
  10. Transport
  11. Energy
  12. Environment
  13. Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Rural Life
  14. Crime
  15. Legal System
  16. Immigration and Asylum
  17. Local Government
  18. Devolution and Regional Government
  19. Parliament and Democracy
  20. Media
  21. Freedom of Information and Privacy
  22. Northern Ireland
  23. European Union
  24. Foreign Policy
  25. Defence and Disarmament
  26. Conclusions
 Preamble

Chapters

  1. Salaries and Taxation
  2. Pensions
  3. Benefits
  4. Health and Care
  5. Education
  6. Housing
  7. Employment
  8. Trades Unions and Labour Laws
  9. Trade and Industry
  10. Transport
  11. Energy
  12. Environment
  13. Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Rural Life
  14. Crime
  15. Legal System
  16. Immigration and Asylum
  17. Local Government
  18. Devolution and Regional Government
  19. Parliament and Democracy
  20. Media
  21. Freedom of Information and Privacy
  22. Northern Ireland
  23. European Union
  24. Foreign Policy
  25. Defence and Disarmament
  26. Conclusions
The Tories had great faith in private sector entrepreneurs as potential saviours of the nation. Large parts of the public sector were privatised and long-term leasing to private firms under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) had begun. The Post Office was threatened with the loss of its profitable operations, and large numbers of post offices closed. The mutual sector shrank as building societies floated on the stock exchange. Burdens on business, in tax and red-tape, were reduced, the Tories favouring light-touch regulation with the only obligation on company bosses being to maximise the return to shareholders. Despite this, Britain's trade with the rest of the world went heavily into deficit because the government kept interest rates, and so the pound, high. This also favoured the service sector over manufacturing and encouraged short-termism and asset-stripping.
Labour policy was:
1 To retain the commitment to public ownership and renationalise privatised services where this was affordable  
2 To end PFI  
3 To protect the mutuals and strengthen co-operatives  
4 To protect the Post Office's monopoly and stop post office closures  
5 To restore government regulation of industry where necessary for safety, ethical or environmental reasons  
6 To have accountancy work independently regulated  
7 To tackle the balance of payments deficit by lowering interest rates  
8 To ensure that mergers would not disadvantage consumers  
9 To reform company law so that the interests of stakeholders other than shareholders have to be considered  
10 To legislate against short-termism and other bad business practice  
11 A strengthened and democratised planning system, ending the bias in favour of the developer  
In fact under New Labour:
1 Many more services were privatised, with nationalisation only used as a temporary measure to rescue banks Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
2 PFI was instead "rescued", greatly expanded and joined by Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), building and running hospitals, schools, roads, prisons and the London Underground Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
3 Demutualisations continued, but legislation gave some help to mutuals and co-operatives Pledge partially carried out
4 The Post Office's monopoly was totally ended, and the Cabinet Office called for a further 3,000 post office closures Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
5  Regulation was usually "light-touch" and could be self-regulation or voluntary adoption of a code (as after the Enron scandal) Left as under the Conservatives
6 Independent regulation was dropped and accountants actually gained more protection against negligence claims Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
7 Control of interest rates was passed to a Bank of England committee which was told to consider only inflation; although they fell (world-wide) the pound remained high forcing the trade deficit to record levels Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
8 Ministers no longer made decisions on mergers, even when the new company had more than 25% market share Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
9 The impact of decisions on employees, the community and the environment now have to be considered
10 Directors were told to consider the long-term but government recognised that investors are "incentivised" for the short-term; private equity asset-stripped successful companies and changes to bankruptcy law risked allowing con-men to repeat their frauds Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
11 The planning system was actually weakened, with no local enquiry where the decision is considered of national importance. Policy shift to right of old Conservatives
In addition:
Bullet point A much-delayed corporate manslaughter law still has no sanction against individual directors  

 

 Bullet point 

Deregulation of the financial sector, here and abroad, led to the "credit crunch" and recession 

 

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