Britain's "National Wealth Fund"

Labour Government's Anti-Worker Pay-the-Rich Economic Program

– Hilary LeBlanc –

A central pillar of the program the British Labour Party is putting forward, as announced in the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament on July 17 and since then, is the National Wealth Fund Bill.[1] An initiative of the Labour Government's new Chancellor Rachel Reeves and former Governor of the Banks of Canada and England Mark Carney, the National Wealth Fund Taskforce is comprised of Carney along with the CEOs of Barclays Bank and insurance company Aviva.[2]

This is a multi-billion-pound pay-the-rich scheme to provide public funds to private interests. The fund will use the existing UK Infrastructure Bank and British Business Bank to generate public-private financing arrangements for industry, ports, and what is called renewable energy. The Fund is presented as crucial to solving environmental, infrastructure, and investment problems, but it is the latest iteration of public-private partnership schemes which have become the main neo-liberal economic arrangement and a key factor in the politicization of private interests. The financial institution is being established to organize new public-private partnerships, continuing the anti-social offensive and giving it new impetus by further changing the state's arrangements directly around private interests.

The Chancellor uses the well-worn slogan of "investment with reform." In the past, this was used to declare that social programs would only receive investment to the extent that they were opened up to capital and market forces. Now it is being used to declare that state investment in general -- in particular for infrastructure -- will only come with restructuring the state itself. The new Fund is to be used to enforce this.

"Growth is now our national mission," Reeves declared in a speech in London on July 8 after she was made Chancellor by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the new Labour government. Meanwhile, a massive budget shortfall has been announced, leading to the prospect of cuts in, for example, road and rail projects. Pensions will be targeted, for which the Pension Schemes Bill, facilitating the consolidation of pension funds, called "pots," is part of preparing the ground. The plan is to use pension money to invest in unlisted companies, while changes which will increase the tax on pensions are being floated.

Infrastructure Projects

A key function of the fund will be to support infrastructure projects and building of houses which provides the owners of capital a safe place to invest with profits guaranteed. The government's shift from ostensibly small to overtly big government investment is evident in the announced Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The aim of this bill is to increase the number of homes built each year and simplify the process for approving key infrastructure projects by speeding up the time it takes to get planning permission. The government has indicated the planning bill would restrict the ability of local people to block new developments. It disingenuously tried to cover up the concentration of power to eliminate the role of the people by suggesting it is the people who block local development. There would be "democratic engagement with how, not if, homes and infrastructure are built," the government said in the King's Speech. The government aims to grant new powers to public bodies to use compulsory purchase orders to acquire land without ministerial authorization.

Control Over Energy

Alongside house building, the main infrastructure project is the other central pillar of the economic program: "clean" energy, principally in the form of wind turbines and nuclear power.

The Great British Energy Bill will establish Great British Energy (GB Energy), a state-run company to be headquartered in Scotland that will operate various large-scale power projects. The Crown Estate, the public estate of the monarch, with its 16-billion pound portfolio of land and property held by "hereditary right," along with financial connections, will collaborate with the new company to bring in an aimed 60 billion pounds of private investment. The Crown Estates Bill has been introduced for this purpose.

The Crown Estate says its purpose is "to create lasting and shared prosperity for the nation." It derives its funds "from Crown lands, feudal rights (commuted for the hereditary excise duties in 1660), profits of the post office, with licences, etc. the temporary revenues derived from taxes granted to the king for a term of years or for life."

Information about the Crown Estate says that each year, its net revenue profit will be paid into the UK Consolidated Fund, where it is added to the funds arising from general taxation "and is available to the Treasury to use for the benefit of the nation." What benefits the nation is of course decided by the ruling elites who use their positions of power and privilege to benefit the narrow private interests presented as the interests of the nation. The people who comprise the nation have no say in the matter whatsoever.

In the words of the Labour government, "investing in energy projects alongside the private sector ... will see the public sector taking on a new role undertaking additional early development work for offshore wind projects. This will ensure that future offshore wind development has lower risk for developers..."

The government dreams that Britain will become a "clean energy superpower" by making Britain a key hub in the global energy corridors, with wind power controlled from Britain. Building supply chains across the country is thereby listed as a key function of GB Energy. Similarly, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill introduces a new pay-the-rich scheme dressed as decarbonizing air travel but likewise aimed at "energy independence" and making Britain an energy superpower.

Workers' Weekly, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) calls this scheme the latest rehash of "making Britain great again." It is "part of Britain's pro-war program; there is nothing green about it," the Party points out.

"Indeed, the previous Sunak government earlier this year proudly declared that Britain will be the first European country to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), in a direct challenge to Russia's dominance of the nuclear fuel market. The U.S. is also investing in this new fuel. The Starmer government is in no way abandoning this program, a competition for 70 million pounds of funding currently underway. This despite warnings that this type of uranium has weapons potential."

While these bills are passed in the Parliament, the Employment Rights Bill is also put forth in the name of protecting workers under the slogan "Make Work Pay." It is a real piece of work to introduce flexible work and force workers to comply with all kinds of rules in the name of upholding their rights. One of the provisions reads as follows:

"We are also bringing in a new statutory probation period for companies' new hires. This will allow for a proper assessment of an employee's suitability for a role as well as reassuring employees that they have rights from day one. We will consult on the length of the period; the government's preference is nine months."

Workers' Weekly points out: "The way the government poses the problem is that what is holding back growth is a lack of investment, and investment requires pay-the-rich schemes and making sure the people are powerless to interfere. For their part, the workers do not see paying the rich as the key to investment in what society needs. Instead, they have been fighting for their individual, collective, and social claims, developing a movement under the banner of Enough is Enough! Their independent program is to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programs."

Notes

1. The King's Speech, July 17, 2024
2. Aviva plc is a British multinational insurance company headquartered in London, England. It has about 19 million customers across its core markets of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada.

(Workers' Weekly August 11, 2024)


This article was published in
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Volume 54 Number 50 - October 14, 2024

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS545014.HTM


    

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