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Decades of research across the world shows privatisation of crucial public services like water, energy, and post doesn’t work, writes Professor David Hall.

It doesn’t work because private shareholders take as much money as possible out of the system, which we pay for on top of the service itself – which is why prices always go up.

They also avoid investing their own money into the system, so we get worse services.

And the rest of us have to pay because we can’t do without water and electricity and gas.

That’s why in many countries round the world still have public ownership of these sectors.

Americans are amazed that water in England is privatised, because in the USA nearly 90% of it is run by the public sector.

(Image: Jeff J Mitchell) (Image: Collect Unknown)

In most European countries the electricity and gas grids are publicly owned. In the Netherlands, it’s actually illegal for private investors to own a water company or an electricity distribution grid.

The government-owned post office in France not only provides postal services but also runs a bank with over 10 million customers.

Some of these public sector companies even own parts of our own privatised systems. Our biggest offshore wind farm is off the Welsh coast, but it’s 30% owned by the city of Munich’s municipal energy company.

(Image: DAILY RECORD)

That’s why bringing these sectors into public ownership in the UK is long overdue. We’ve calculated that nationalising the electricity and gas transmission and distribution grids would save us £3.7 billion pounds per year – yes, every year – because we wouldn’t have to pay for all those private dividends.

Taking the English water companies into public ownership would save us another £2.5billion, every year.

When the savings from nationalising Royal Mail are included, it adds up to £6.4 billion every year – that’s the equivalent of £5 per week for every household.

(Image: PA)

We need to pay some compensation to the private owners, but British law says parliament decides how much. That should be based on giving back to them what they actually put into the companies, which adds up to less than £50billion – not the wild claims of the CBI and others.

Under public ownership, we can cut bills. We can improve services, and deal with climate change by moving faster to renewable energy, and cut the wasteful leakage of water and the pollution by sewage which too many of us still experience.

And we can do it because the companies running the services will be owned by us, through our own elected representatives, with open public debate about how we want to do it.