Member

The public interest should be the test, rather than ideology, habit, or an automatic knee-jerk assumption that private ownership is always the answer and public ownership must only be temporary. The test is simple. We need to ask: “What protects the national interest, the workforce, the community, and Britain’s long-term industrial capability?” If that is public ownership, we should have the confidence to say so, and if it is a long-term British industrial partner, we should consider it at the right time. But we should not hardwire into law an assumption that the end point must always be sale back into private hands. That is exactly the thinking that has left too many British assets vulnerable in the first place.