There's a wonderfully mischievous suggestion in British politics today. Why don't we privatise the fire services and more parts of the National Health Service? We could wrap them up and sell them off, open the market to other private sector providers perhaps, possibly set them up as worker cooperatives and the like. The reason it's so mischievous is that we'll get all of the usual complaints trotted out. Along the lines of, "What? Sell the fire or ambulance services to
Well, yes, why not? Here's the punt of the general idea:
Hospitals and fire services will be run “outside the public sector” as the Conservatives dramatically shrink the state and cut costs, a senior minister has disclosed.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, told The Telegraph that services could be handed over to mutual companies owned by employers and other non-state bodies.
This idea will of course produce frothing outrage in the usual suspects. The NHS is the Holy Grail of left wing British politics although it has always relied upon such outsiders and mutual companies. The entirety of the general practitioner service is supplied by independent contractors for example and always has been. That's how it was originally set up. But where this gets really mischievous is that mention of fire services. At which point we'll get chuntering about Serco, G4S, Securicor and all the rest. It's entirely true that they've not done all that well at some of the services they are contracting upon. However, fire services is something that other countries have successfully had contracted out for generations. Take the example of Falck:
In Denmark, Falck is currently in charge of 65 percent of municipality fire brigades and 85 percent of ambulance services. In 1926, the Danish government allowed municipal governments to contract with private companies to provide emergency services.
What's good enough for the famously socially democratic Danes should probably be OK for the mire right wing Brits, no? But what makes it really delicious is that Falck was, until quite recently, owned by G4S, that very company that everyone will claim shouldn't be let anywhere near any of Britain's public services. That is, the company that everyone will use as proof that this shouldn't happen used to own the leading global exponent of how to service this exact market. Fire services are obviously something that can be suitably and sustainably contracted out as Denmark has shown for nearly a century.
So why not do it?
