Fiasco in the skies

Selling public service monopolies is never simple, because there is no competing service to turn to if the new owner does a bad job. No doubt when Mr John Prescott sold 46% of the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) to a consortium of airlines last summer, he sincerely believed he was bringing better management and new investment to the infrastructure of the skies - not to mention raising £800m into the bargain.

It now seems evident that the partly-privatised NATS was not sold to the right buyer. Any attempt by Mr Prescott's successor, Mr Stephen Byers, to blame this outcome on the unforeseeable troubles of the airline industry after 11 September would be a travesty of the truth. Selling to a committee of competing airlines was never likely to deliver the strong leadership NATS needed. Nor were the airlines, afflicted by overcapacity and slowing economic growth, ever a cast iron source of investment, even before the terrorist attacks in Manhattan.

What is more, Mr Byers made the prospects for all these so-called public private partnerships, including the Tube, much worse by pulling the plug on Railtrack in October. That decision undermined any likelihood that the bankers backing the airlines might have supported the industry through its troubles without the requirement for government cash. For the same reason, the loans NATS will continue to need are likely to look riskier to banks and cost more than they otherwise would.

Rather than sell NATS again at a fire sale price, Mr Byers is pretty well constrained to follow this week's £30m with yet more taxpayers' money. It is time to stop pretending that these so-called privatisations really transfer financial responsibility to the private sector for good. The sale of NATS has hit turbulence partly because of the airline industry's particular problems, but also because City businessmen find that doing business with the Government, and especially Mr Byers, is nowadays dangerously unpredictable. The outlook for the Tube's planned public private partnership is grimmer than ever.

There is a judicial review in progress, but whereas farmers and country-dwellers are being questioned in open session, and a full transcript made of their comments, the Government is keeping its part in the proceedings under wraps. The secretariat of the inquiry is based in the Cabinet Office; its sessions are held in secret, its chairman Iain Anderson is a former adviser to Tony Blair, and no transcripts are being made of what ministers and officials say when questioned - only "minutes".

Why should the public repose the slightest confidence in this kind of inquiry? The Government argued, first, that a public inquiry would be too expensive, and then that privacy would make the investigation more speedy. Considering the crucial importance of the issues, as between slaughter and full-scale vaccination for instance, most people will probably conclude that the Government's secrecy is primarily aimed at covering up the ineptitude of its own bureaucrats. A group of farmers has now begun a legal action to challenge Downing Street's refusal to hold a public inquiry. We wish them well.

It would be pleasing to announce that this new egalitarianism on the part of the train companies will mean that every commuter would soon be a First Class passenger - rather than a steer of cattle, as so many are now.