IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/annpce/v87y2016i1p5-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Privatization Of The Uk'S Public Utilities: The Birth Of The Policy 1979ð1984

Author

Listed:
  • David PARKER

Abstract

The Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s privatized large numbers of state industries. Yet the privatization of the public utilities was not on the political agenda at the time of the May 1979 General Election or during the early months of the first Thatcher government. Privatization of the public utilities was considered both economically unattractive and beyond practical politics. This study details how and why the sale of the public utilities became government policy by the mid-1980s. In explaining the change two particular developments are singled out. The first involved a commissioned study by the Central Policy Review Staff of the Cabinet Office on whether monopolies could be privatized and the public interest protected. The second was the financing needs of BT at a time of strict controls on public borrowing.

Suggested Citation

  • David PARKER, 2016. "Privatization Of The Uk'S Public Utilities: The Birth Of The Policy 1979ð1984," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(1), pages 5-22, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:87:y:2016:i:1:p:5-22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apce.2016.87.issue-1/issuetoc
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:annpce:v:87:y:2016:i:1:p:5-22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1370-4788 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.