Labour Policy Watch: Trade and Industry

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	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	No service has been renationalised and many more have been privatised
	2	PFI has instead been "rescued", greatly expanded and joined by Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), building and running hospitals, schools, roads, prisons and the London Underground
	3	Private members bills have given some help to mutuals and co-operatives
	4	The Post Office's monopoly is to be totally ended, and the Cabinet Office has called for a further 3,000 post office closures
	5	Industry is often allowed to self-regulate or regulation is "light-touch"
	6	Independent regulation was dropped and accountants actually have more protection against negligence claims
	7	Control of interest rates was passed to a Bank of England committee which was told to consider only inflation and so kept rates and the pound relatively high forcing the trade deficit to record levels
	8	Ministers no longer make decisions on mergers, even when the new company has more than 25% market share
	9	Directors just have to minute that other interests have been considered,[?]
	10	Changes to bankruptcy law risk allowing con-men to repeat their frauds
	11	The government actually proposes weakening planning controls, with no local enquiry where the decision is considered of national importance.[UPDATE]
	In addition:
		A promised corporate manslaughter law is still awaited (?)
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