Bradford Public Services For People not For Profit

Bradford Council is proposing to hand over many public services to the private sector; this includes Housing, Education, Building Management, the City Centre and its Computer Services. This package is what the Chief Executive of Bradford Council calls the "Bradford Challenge". But the Council’s new policy on procurement means that every service is under threat of privatisation. It is clearly now the Council’s intention to privatise as many services as possible.

Consultants are being paid thousand of pounds of council taxpayers money to draw up the plans. Companies that win the contracts will be paid millions of pound in management fees. Money that should be going directly into public services.

Privatisation elsewhere has been a disaster costing tens of thousands of jobs and has led to worsening of the services. The railways are in the headlines because of the dramatic and tragic consequences of privatisation but the background is exactly the same as for Council services — decades of under-investment followed by a dogmatic rush to privatise.

Bradford Council taxpayers deserve properly funded public services and should not be used as an experiment with the private sector. The first concern of any private company will be profits for their shareholders and not the interests of the people of Bradford.

This meeting believes:

  1. Our children, our old people and the whole of the public of Bradford should not be subjected to an experiment that is likely to fail.
  2. Public services should stay public and the providers should remain directly accountable to the electorate through the ballot box.
  3. Public service providers should work with their staff to ensure the highest possible quality of services is available equally to all.
  4. The profit motive has no place in the provision of essential public services.

We call on Bradford Council to halt the current mad rush for privatisation and resolve to escalate the public campaign to achieve this.

Proposed by: The Bradford TUC Campaign Against Privatisation.

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