Firms' hands at the tiller

Morning Star readers wouldn't have been shocked to read a recent "revelation" in the Independent on Sunday - that Education Secretary Michael Gove wants schools to be privatised.

Or rather, he wants private firms to run state schools for profit.

This is all bound up with his scheme to drive schools out of local authority control and turn them into "academies."

A recent pamphlet from David Cameron's former special adviser James O'Shaughnessy explains the detail.

O'Shaughnessy notes that the vast expansion of "unsponsored" academies on Gove's watch poses a problem.

These have "escaped" from local authority control - but are actually completely reliant on the Department of Education (DoE) for support.

"Sponsored" academies can look to their "sponsors" for help - typically "charitable" groups like the bunch of bankers who run Absolute Return for Kids or other "academy chains."

But "unsponsored" academies - thanks to Gove the vast majority - have no-one to turn to for help other than the DoE itself.

Since the DoE is distant, is cutting staff and has no real experience of assisting individual schools, it can't help much.

The department's memo accepts this: "It is difficult to see how we could manage expansion of the academies and free schools programme much beyond 5,000 without increasing central resources."

So O'Shaughnessy recommends that the "academy chains," those charities like the aforementioned Absolute Return or United Learning, should be expanded.

But they're at the limit of their resources and can expand only by involving City investors.

So the answer to schools losing local authority support is for private firms to get permission to make a profit from such support.

They can do this either through "academy chains" or by directly running state schools themselves.

Gove is wilfully breaking up local education authorities by taking schools from them, well aware that this is bad for schools, because he thinks private firms may be able to make something from the wreckage.

The academies programme is designed to fail. That way it can be "rescued" by the private sector.

If Labour is against schools privatisation it must support schools being brought back into local education authority control.

Opposing Gove must mean dumping education spokesman Stephen Twigg, who opposes the rejuvenation of these authorities.

Another government department seeking to turn a public service into a cash-cow for the private sector is health.

Former health secretary and NHS-wrecker Andrew Lansley's special adviser is now a lobbyist for a firm representing drug companies, NHS privatisers and junk food manufacturers.

Bill Morgan works for MHP Communications. Morgan worked for Lansley until the minister was shuffled from health to a different brief last September.

Back in 2010 Cameron talked tough on lobbying. He described "the lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way."

Sounds like Morgan's career. An adviser to the health secretary who now works for MHP, a company formerly known as Mandate whose clients include major drug firms such as Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi.

Morgan's new employer even represents the drug industry's trade body, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

It represents Priory Group, which sells mental health services to the NHS, and Cerner, which sells computer systems to hospitals.

Morgan has actually been through the revolving door between government and lobbying twice.

He joined Lansley from the same lobbying firm in 2010. Last year, while still working for the minister, he invited lobbyists from Mandate for breakfast meetings at the Department of Health.

The department was persuaded to stick to voluntary agreements on unhealthy foods rather than stricter regulation. The food industry's influence on this decision is clear.

So it's no surprise to find that MHP represents several food firms, including Kraft.

Morgan went from lobbyists into government and back again. If Cameron was speaking from the heart in 2010 he ought to be enraged.

But since the PM's own special adviser on health, Sean Worth, also joined MHP last year without making any noticeable difference to the blood pressure in No 10 it seems Cameron has lost any concern he once had over the "next big scandal."

----

Big firms obviously have far too much lobbying power in Britain. But let's take a look at the US, where the Starbucks coffee chain is roping its shop staff into the role.

On Boxing Day last year Starbucks boss Howard Schultz ordered all staff in Washington outlets to join a corporate campaign to cut taxes and slash spending on social security and the already limited US public health system Medicare.

So the same Starbucks that avoids taxes in Britain is forcing its low-paid workers to campaign for tax-and-spending cuts in the US.

Schultz said he was getting baristas to hand-write "come together" on all cups of coffee sold in Washington that week.

It sounds like a bland slogan - but he made it clear that it was a rallying cry for cutting US government debt and an advert for the Fix the Debt campaign.

This campaign isn't in favour of "fixing" the US debt by increasing taxes on the likes of Starbucks.

It's a campaign for lower business tax rates. It calls for "pro-growth tax reform which broadens the base and lowers rates."

That means taxing the low-paid, such as the Starbucks employees being forced to spread the message, more while taxing businesses less.

The campaign also calls for cuts to Medicare and social security.

"Rather than be bystanders, we have an opportunity - and I believe a responsibility - to use our company's scale for good by sending a respectful and optimistic message to our elected officials," Schultz pontificated.

So he ordered his staff to send a message which included cuts to their benefits and his taxes.

In a bizarre aside Schultz even tried to link his campaign for tax cuts to a recent US gun tragedy.

He told staff backing the campaign was akin to "the outpouring of support in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary that claimed 26 innocent lives."

I see.