RICHARD Leonard will promise to roll back the privatisation of public services in his first major speech as Scottish Labour leader.
He will insist the collapse of Carillion – one of the UK’s biggest construction firms – shows that private provision of public services is no longer “delivering for the people”.
And he’s expected to add: “Let me be clear that our public services are there to serve the Scottish public not the balance sheets of financiers.”
Mr Leonard is due to address party activists in Dundee today, outlining the key challenges facing Scotland in 2018 – including wealth inequality and Brexit.
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He is expected to say: “The Carillion scandal highlights the failure of our creeping reliance on private contractors to deliver public services.
“For the Tories, PFI [private finance initiative] was the next stage of their privatisation journey. For Labour it became a means to build up our public realm after years of neglect – off balance sheet and with speed.
“For the SNP the Non-Profit Distributing model created the illusion of an alternative but has simply led to the same old corporations and the same old profit distribution to absentee shareholders but just through a different route.
“It is time to draw a line under this, and look at common sense ways of bringing these into public ownership.”
Mr Leonard will argue that Scotland “needs to be bold on extending public ownership”, highlighting the closure of Bield care homes across Scotland as part of the problem.
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He will continue: “Carillion and Bield are two names that are perhaps not well known among the Scottish public.
“Bield is a social care provider that plans to close up to 12 care homes. Threatening more than 200 jobs while 167 residents face a cloud of uncertainty and a stress and trauma that they should not have to suffer.
“Once again the Bield example, just like Southern Cross a few years ago, underlines the need for public provision of social care and the need to invest in this most fundamental of services, which guarantees good terms and conditions and sufficient pay for the workforce and the type of high level and secure services that provides dignity in retirement for our older people.
“This is another reason why Labour will initiate a review into health and social care integration.
“The lesson of the collapse of Carillion is that the model of the private provision of public services is no longer, in so much as it ever was, delivering for the people.
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“That is why I intend to initiate an urgent and comprehensive review of who runs our public services and how we fund our public projects and infrastructure so that it does not provide a cash bonanza to absentee shareholders.”
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