What is privatisation?
Privatisation means the transfer of assets from the public (government) sector to the private sector. In the UK the process has led to a sizeable reduction in the size of the public sector of the economy. State-owned enterprises now contribute less than 2 per cent of GDP and less than 1.5% of total employment. Privatisation has become a common feature of microeconomic reforms throughout the world not least in the transition economies of Eastern Europe as they have made progress towards becoming fully-fledged market economies.

Major privatisations

The major privatisations in the UK over the last twenty five years have occurred with the following businesses (the year of privatisation is in parenthesis).

The early examples of privatisation such as the sale of British Telecom to the private sector in 1984 represented a simple transfer of ownership as shares were offered for sale via the stockmarket. More recently the privatisation process has become more complex. The focus has switched to breaking up existing statutory monopoly power through a process of deregulation and liberalisation of markets – basically designed to introduce competition where once monopoly power was well established.

Market forces have been introduced in social services, the NHS and in higher education.

What remains of the public sector?

Privatisation has radically reduced the size of the public or government sector of the economy although since the current Labour government came to power, there has been a huge rise in total public sector employment, in part the result of a large rise in government spending on the national health services. The following businesses remain part of the public sector:

• British Nuclear Fuels plc - an international company, owned by the British government, concerned with nuclear power. See this company profile.
• Network Rail - Network Rail is a "not for dividend" company that owns the fixed assets of the UK railway system that formerly belonged to British Rail, the now-defunct British state-owned railway operator. Network Rail owns the infrastructure itself, railway tracks, signals, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and most stations, but not the rolling stock. Network Rail took over ownership by buying Railtrack plc, which was in "Railway Administration", for £500 million from Railtrack Group plc.
• The Royal Mail - Royal Mail has been a state-owned company since 1969 and remains a public limited company wholly owned by the UK government. The Royal Maul is regulated by PostComm which has the power to grant licences to new competitors entering the deregulated market for household and business mail services. The market was opened up to full competition in January 2006. The Royal Mail retains a universal service commitment.

The main economic arguments for privatisation and deregulation

Supporters of privatisation believe that the private sector and the discipline of free market forces are a better incentive for businesses to be run efficiently and thereby achieve improvements in economic welfare.  The argument is that extra competition in markets will lead to reductions in price levels for consumers and improvements over time in dynamic efficiency.

Privatisation was also seen as a way of reducing trade union power and encouraging an increase in capital investment as businesses were now free to raise extra financial capital through the stock market.

The main economic arguments against privatisation

Opponents of privatisation argued that state owned enterprises had already faced competition when part of the public sector and that in several instances the transfer of ownership merely replaced a public sector monopoly with a private sector monopoly.

There were criticisms that state assets were sold off by the government at too low a price and that the consequences of privatisation has been a decrease in investment and large scale reductions in employment as privatised businesses have sought to cut their operating costs.

Deregulation of markets

Another important policy in industries where welfare and efficiency might be affected by the dominant market power of some suppliers is to open up markets and encourage the entry of new suppliers – a process called de-regulation of product markets. Examples of this in the UK include the opening up of markets for household energy supplies, the liberalisation of household mail services and financial deregulation affecting both banks and building societies.

The expansion of the European Single Market has accelerated the process of market liberalisation. The Single Market seeks to promote four freedoms – namely the free movement of goods, services, financial capital and labour. In the long term we can expect to see the microeconomic effects of the EU Single Market working their way through many British markets and the general expectation is that competitive pressures for all businesses working inside the European Union will continue to intensify. 

Product market liberalisation involves breaking down barriers to entry in industries and making them more contestable. The aim is to boost market supply, bring down prices for consumers, and encourage an increase in competition, investment and productivity leading to a rise in economic efficiency. In the long term, if product markets become more competitive and investment flows into these industries, there are macroeconomic implications for example an increase in an economy’s underlying trend rate of economic growth which might contribute to an improvement in average standards of living

Has rail privatisation been successful?

Utility regulators

Utility regulators oversee the activities of companies privatised over the last two decades. These former state-owned utilities are regulated to ensure that they do not exploit their monopoly position. The main aims of the regulators have been to create and simulating the disciplines that companies would experience inside a competitive market. In the long run, the thrust of regulation has been to encourage competition by easing the entry of new suppliers and making markets more contestable.

• Ofwat – (water services regulation authority) – Ofwat is the body responsible for economic regulation of the privatised water and sewerage industry in England and Wales. Key issues for Ofwat at the moment include the threats of water shortages, the problems of leaks and rising water bills.
• Ofcom - The Office of Communications is the UK's communications regulator
• Ofgem - The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets is the government regulator for the electricity and downstream natural gas markets in Great Britain. Its primary duty is to “promote choice and value for all gas and electricity customers".
• Office of the Rail Regulator – ORR is the UK government's agency for regulation of the country's railway network.

Price Capping for the Utilities

Price capping has been a dominant feature of regulation in recent years – although this is now being phased out as most utility markets become more competitive. Inn reality, setting a price cap, the industry regulator usually has in mind a “satisfactory rate of return on capital employed” for each business.

Price capping has meant in most cases that average prices for consumers have fallen in real terms although this has not been the case for all privatised industries. The assumption is that productivity growth will help to accommodate the price caps. Profits for utilities can rise providing that efficiency levels improve (i.e. firms are able to bring down their unit labour costs)

Arguments for and against price-capping for the utilities

Advantages

• Capping is an appropriate way to curtail the monopoly power of “natural monopolies”.
• Cuts in the real price levels are good for household and industrial consumers (leading to an increase in consumer surplus and higher real living standards in the long run).
• Price capping helps to stimulate improvements in productive efficiency because lower costs are needed to increase a producer’s total profits.

• The price capping system is a useful tool for controlling consumer price inflation in the UK.

Disadvantages

• Price caps have led to large numbers of job losses in the utility industries.
• Setting different price capping regimes for each industry distorts the working of the price mechanism.

The rail industry was privatized between 1994 and 1997 and since then the average price of a rail fare has risen faster than inflation. Fare changes are announced by the Association of Train Operating Companies. Despite continuing high levels of government subsidy, the train operating businesses have increased those fares that are unregulated by more than inflation, partly because they have to high fees to Network Rail for access to the track and infrastructure and because they have been making a contribution towards improvements to rail safety.

Changing Role of the Utility Regulators

Gradually the main utility regulators have withdrawn from price regulation because of the increased degree of competition in the market. The main focus of the regulatory authorities is now to provide improved price information for consumers to make prices of different suppliers more transparent to improve the flow of information in the market.

The authorities also want to encourage free transfer for consumers between suppliers (by monitoring and enforcing the nature of supply contracts) and keeping a close eye on anti-competitive behaviour.

In telecommunications, one key decision made eventually by Ofcom was to enforce unbundling of the local loop. Local loop unbundling is the process of allowing telecommunications operators to use the telephone connections from the telephone exchange's central office or exchange to the customer premises be it a household or a business location. In the UK this has meant opening up the telephone exchanges owned by British Telecom and allowing broadband businesses such as AOL-UK and Tiscali to put in their own equipment and then supply broadband services in direct competition with BT to households. The vast majority of households are within one mile of their local telephone exchange.

Although local look unbundling has taken time to become widespread, it has been one factor behind the rapid expansion of market supply in broadband which is revolutionising the UK telecommunications market.

One of the consequences of the greater level of competition in the telecommunications industry in the UK is that in July 2006, Ofcom withdrew all price capping controls on British Telecom. After 22 years of having its prices controlled directly by an industry regulator, this marked an important milestone in the privatisation and market liberalisation process.

Summary comments on privatisation

Privatisation has changed the face of the British economy over the last twenty five years. Over twenty businesses have been transferred from the public sector to the private sector and many remaining state sector enterprises are now subject to the disciplines of the market. The transfer of ownership from one part of the economy to another has been, in many cases, rather a superficial change. The more fundamental changes have occurred when monopoly powers have been broken down either because of regulators legislating to open up the market, or because of the effects of wider international changes such as the process of globalisation.

The performance of the privatised companies has been patchy. Most of them have seen their monopoly powers eroded as their markets have become more contestable. Some privatisations have not worked, the most obvious example being the failure of rail privatization and the eventual collapse of Railtrack when it went into administration.

There remain controversial issues about the size of the profits that some of the privatised utilities are making, the water industry is a good example of this. In most utility markets there is now genuinely more choice for consumers. And real price levels have come down over the longer term