Meanwhile New Labour is running into controversy about trying to manage massive non-capitalist corporations in a capitalist environment.
The NHS remains the largest state sector employer in the whole of western Europe, and Alan Milburn, who has just resigned as Secretary of State for Health, was desperate to make it more commercial and more customer friendly, without him having to be the director responsible for all the failings of a centralised monolith. The answer, performance targets, have just run into considerable controversy, with complaints of fiddling of the figures by chief executives of local "trusts". The outgoing head of the British Medical Association is denouncing it as a system for making honest people liars.
Meanwhile Network Rail, the not-for-profit company than took over the denationalised rail network after the Hatfield disaster and in a sense renationalised it, has just published its ten year plan. No doubt there are political tactics in the timing of this flagrant show of honesty about targets, but Network Rail manages to announce both substantial job losses and that delays will continue till the end of the decade [unless of course more capital is provided [for profit or not].
The company failed to meet a train punctuality target of 83% in 2002-3.
The government wants the current 20% of trains running late to be reduced to 10%. Network Rail says they do not expect this to be achieved until at least 2009.
- BBC this morning.
Chris Burford London
