Land Registry for sale.

Thrugelmir

HornetSaver wrote: »

With who?

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On a like for like basis the operation will be more expensive to run than a commercial organisation. Not least in terms of productivity and efficiency.

patman99

I can remember when Thatcher privatised all the utilities industries as they cost the Tax payer to run due to the greed of the workers who went on strike for more money nearly every year.

The result was that the now private companies responded to the Unions demands with job cuts and threats to bring in nom-union staff. As a result, they all make a huge profit today.
Now, imagine if Thatcher had, instead of selling-off these industries, turned them into PLCs fully-owned by the Govt. and then sorted-out the greedy unions.

The profits made by the combined water/gas/electricity and comms companies would, at today's prices, cover at least 25% of the UK's financial requirements.

arbtrader

if it brings in a net profit and is likely to continue doing so then surely the best course of action is to leave as-is? I'm genuinely interested to hear the other side of this, because apart from a one-time fee I don't see what's in it for the taxpayer here.

stator

arbtrader wrote: »

if it brings in a net profit and is likely to continue doing so then surely the best course of action is to leave as-is? I'm genuinely interested to hear the other side of this, because apart from a one-time fee I don't see what's in it for the taxpayer here.

Don't be ridiculous! The chancellor needs to plug short term holes in his budget, not plan for the long term future!
The profits from Royal Mail were about 10% of the sell-off revenue. So in 10 years time we will be looking pretty stupid.

Andy_L

arbtrader wrote: »

if it brings in a net profit and is likely to continue doing so then surely the best course of action is to leave as-is? I'm genuinely interested to hear the other side of this, because apart from a one-time fee I don't see what's in it for the taxpayer here.

Nothing, but the Torys have an idealogical and, IIRC, manifesto commitment to reduce the size of the Civil Service.

patman99

Taking Royal Mail as an example, it generated profits of £500m annually. If the Govt. took a 50% take of the profits, it would add £250m to the funds available to run the UK.

By selling RM for £591m, they will be down £200m a year from 2017 onwards.
This is false economy.

chewmylegoff

patman99 wrote: »

Taking Royal Mail as an example, it generated profits of £500m annually. If the Govt. took a 50% take of the profits, it would add £250m to the funds available to run the UK.

By selling RM for £591m, they will be down £200m a year from 2017 onwards.
This is false economy.

£591 was for 13% of Royal Mail, the total proceeds of sale received by the govt were about £3.3bn.

The profit after tax is the relevant stat to look at as the govt gets the corporation tax whether RM is publicly or privately owned. In 2015 RM made a profit of £328m after tax and of that approx £100m was a one-off item relating the sale of land&buildings and another £75m was income earned on pension scheme assets.

stator

What the government should have done with Royal Mail is transfer ownership into a pension trust fund. Currently the government is responsible for the entire black hole in the RM pension fund. By transfering ownership they could have wiped out that liability and forced the trustees to balance the complex issues of pension contributions vs payouts and retirement ages, paid for from the profits of the business.