Press Release on the Government's Plans to Part-Nationalise Britain's banks

DATE OF ISSUE: 8TH OCTOBER 2008

The Campaign for Public Ownership welcomes the decision of the government to part-nationalise Britain’s eight leading banks. The CPO strongly believes that not a penny of taxpayers money should be given to a privately-owned company without the taxpayer acquiring equity in the company and it is good to see the government uphold this important principle.

Now that the nationalisation taboo has been broken, the CPO calls on the government to extend public ownership still further. If banks can be nationalised, why not Britain’s profiteering utility companies? And now that the government has signed up to the principle that taxpayers money should not be given to a privately owned companies without the taxpayer acquiring equity in the companies concerned- why doesn’t the government renationalise the railways- seeing that the privately owned railway companies receive over four times more in public subsidy than British Rail did?