Tuesday, July 20, 2021

How bus privatisation has failed Brtiain

Gwyn Topham, the Guardian's transport correspondent, writes:

Britain’s bus services outside London were so damaged by privatisation that people were unable to access basic needs such as work, education and healthcare, according to a scathing report by the former UN special rapporteur on human rights.

Many people in Britain had lost jobs and benefits, been forced to give up on education, or been cut off from communities and healthcare as bus services grew more expensive, unreliable, and dysfunctional after the 1985 reform, the inquiry found.

The report, Public Transport, Private Profit: The human cost of privatizing buses in the United Kingdom, is published by New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

It provides more evidence that the Thatcherite model of privatisation, which imagined powerful corporations being reined in by publicly appointed regulators, has been a failure.

This chart, which is included with the Center's press release for the report, by drawing on the findings included in the government's new bus strategy for England, shows how it has failed in the bus industry.

2 comments:

nigel hunter said...

The Conservative privatisation of everything is counter productive to run a country correctly .It implies CONSERVE(ative)to maintain the status quo of the haves at others expense

Andrew Kitching said...

Reading’s council run integrated bus service works very well. Very pleased we stuck to the old system.