According to figures obtained by Labour from the House of Commons Library, since George Osborne has been Chancellor he has privatised at least £37.7bn of state assets, and intends to privatise another £20bn of public assets by the end of 2016.
The findings come from the ONS figures for net income to the government from the sale of company securities during the period that George Osborne has been Chancellor and last month’s OBR forecasts for the year ahead.
Sales of government securities in the whole of the financial year 2015/16 will total around £30 billion. Of these sales, around £10 billion are already factored into the Osborne £37.7bn total in the table below. Therefore, around £20 billion are yet to be realised.
This is more than under any other Chancellor in over 30 years. It is also more than Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
John McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, commenting on the figures, said:
“These damning figures show that George Osborne isn’t fixing the roof while the sun is shining, he’s trying to sell it and anything that’s not nailed down while he thinks no one’s looking.
“The Chancellor doesn’t have a real plan for recovery so he’s is simply selling off anything he can lay his hands on to massage the figures, and with the planned sale of the Land Registry he is even selling the ground from under our feet.
“This privatisation of public assets is being done, as in the case of the Royal Mail at a loss to the tax payer, and it’s being driven for ideological and personal ambitions of George Osborne.
“The problem is the Tories can only sell these assets once, and if there’s not a proper plan to lay the foundations for the economy of the future, then they’ll create a deficit with the future, that the next generation will have to pay down.”
Ends
Notes to Editors:
The Osborne figure in the table below shows sales from 2010 to Q3 2015 totalling £37.7 billion.
And according to the OBR forecasts, Osborne’s total for the whole of his time in office might rise to around £57 billion by the end of 2015/16 in March 2016.
See page 156 of the OBR’s November Economic and Fiscal Outlook (Para 4.136) for further information.
Over this period, this type of income has totalled £37 billion.
Note that this data excludes the value of land or building sales. And it is the closest approximation to revenue from privatisation that the official data shows.
The OBR expects this type of income to total around £30 billion in the whole of 2015/16. See page 156 of the November EFO.
The Osborne figure in the table below shows sales from 2010 to Q3 2015 totalling £37.7 billion.
And according to the OBR forecasts, Osborne’s total for the whole of his time in office might rise to around £57 billion by the end of 2015/16 in March 2016.
See page 156 of the OBR’s November Economic and Fiscal Outlook (Para 4.136) for further information.
Note that the amount the government eventually raises these sales may change, so the eventual figure for 2015/16 may be different.
Also note that the privatisations under Osborne include the sale of shares in banks which are not privatisations in any normal sense: the banks were taken into national ownership as a temporary and emergency measure, and the government was always committed to divesting its self of the shares asap. Also, the government has deliberately taken only a very limited role (if any role at all) in their management, unlike in other nationalised industries.