If not addressed, this gulf poses an existential threat to the existing and future private sector ownership and delivery of infrastructure, to the detriment of both the private and public sectors.
Given this context, recent Labour Party pledges that envisage the nationalisation of large parts of the industry, the end of rail franchising and the early termination of PPPs, are not unrepresentative of a general mood of antipathy towards private sector delivery.
The gulf between these two views of the universe could not be greater and presents a growing existential risk for private sector delivery of infrastructure; both for existing PFIs, franchises and utilities and for the probability that future infrastructure will be procured through the private sector.
It is true that the private sector as a whole could benefit from better data, presentation and the public getting a better understanding of what they have achieved. But to think that this would bridge the gulf in views described above would be to fail to understand the distance between the two universes. Even if data 'proved' the efficiency of private sector delivery, this would not address some fundamental issues the public and public sector have around inflexibility, service levels, high windfall gains on public assets, reduced employee loyalty and incidences of the private sector performance being poor, unresponsive and short termist.
Despite what the private sector believes it has delivered in the decades since privatisation and with the use of PPPs, it has lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the public; ultimately the taxpayers that underpin most infrastructure investment.
Given the apparent public antipathy to private ownership, it is perhaps not surprising that there is no longer an obvious strong advocate of private sector ownership in government. This should be surprising given privatisation was a cornerstone of Tory policy and Labour embraced the use of PFI in the Blair-Brown years, but this shows there is a growing unease with current models; something needs to change.
This paper argues that a fundamental change in governance, purpose, and structure of private sector companies delivering public infrastructure is necessary if there is to be a hope of upholding the legitimacy of private ownership and garner support for future private sector delivery, where government clearly sees the benefits of private ownership. This in turn will need government to think about how it procures from, works with, and regulates the private sector in a fundamentally different way.