Privatizing the Public Sector

The most important is the principle of diversity. We will create a new presumption—backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication—that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. Of course there are some areas—such as national security or the judiciary—where this wouldn’t make sense. But everywhere else should be open to diversity; open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. Instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in some public services, the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly.