ABSTRACT
The Conservative government elected in 1979 established a new political consensus based on the belief that the free market is more efficient and responsive than the public sector. This led to the privatization of major public enterprises like British Petroleum (1979), British Airways (1987) and British Steel (1988), of public utilities including telecommunications (1984), gas (1986), water (1989) and electricity (1990), and of leading public institutions like British Rail (1994) and the Royal Mail (2014). 1 It also gave rise to the outsourcing of public services to external contractors. This developed in earnest with local government services in the 1990s, and was extended to education and health in the 2000s. External contracting was greatly expanded in the 2010s to include more schools, a larger section of the National Health Service (NHS) and areas like probation and police support services.
