Since 2010 Alone, Privatization Of UK Basic Services Has Meant $300+ In Added Costs, Every Year For Every Household [View all]

[hatrack]

The public has paid almost £200bn to the shareholders who own key British industries since they were privatised, research reveals. The transfer of tens of billions of pounds to the owners of the privatised water, rail, bus, energy and mail services comes as families face soaring bills, polluted rivers and seas, and expensive and unreliable trains and buses.

As a result, citizens have been paying a “privatisation premium” of £250 per household per year since 2010 alone, the analysis found. Recent focus has been on the privatised water industry, which has run up long-term debts of £73bn and paid out dividends of £88.4bn in the past 34 years at the same time as overseeing record sewage spills, according to the latest figures.

But for the first time the thinktank Common Wealth has drawn together the haemorrhaging of billions of pounds to shareholders across four key sectors, most of which were privatised from the 1980s and 1990s by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government – energy, transport, water and mail. The sell-off of these key industries has “led to a historic transfer of wealth” with at least £193bn having been paid out to shareholders, private equity funds and foreign holding companies since 1991, the report found.

The fallout from the privatisation has created today’s “rip-off Britain”, said Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, adding that the privatisation promise of “competition, cheap investment and lower bills” had instead delivered “corporate monopolies, inadequate investment and rising bills”.

EDIT

Ed. - And article lists the whole mess category by category, corporate bonus by corporate bonus and all the abandoned investment you can eat.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/16/uk-public-paid-200bn-to-shareholders-of-key-industries-since-privatisation-study