New Scottish Labour leader to call for more public ownership
Richard Leonard is making his first big speech since being elected
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is to commit to extending public ownership in an effort to end the "cash bonanza to absentee shareholders''.
It comes after Jeremy Corbyn said on Thursday he would rewrite the rules "to give the public back control of their services'' and stop "middlemen creaming off the profits''.
Mr Leonard is expected to make the pledge in his first major speech on Friday in Dundee.
He will say: "The Carillion scandal highlights the failure of our creeping reliance on private contractors to deliver public services.
"For the Tories Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was the next stage of their privatisation journey.
"For Labour it became a means to build up our public realm after years of neglect - off balance sheet and with speed.
"For the SNP the Non-Profit Distributing model created the illusion of an alternative but has simply led to the same old corporations and the same old profit distribution to absentee shareholders but just through a different route.
"It is time to draw a line under this, and look at common sense ways of bringing these into public ownership.''
As part of the ambition, Scottish Labour is to begin a review into who is running public services and how projects are funded.
The plans follow the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion and a National Audit Office report showing UK taxpayers face a #199 billion bill for schemes under the controversial PFI.
Mr Leonard will say: "The lesson of the collapse of Carillion is that the model of the private provision of public services is no longer, in so much as it ever was, delivering for the people.
"That is why I intend to initiate an urgent and comprehensive review of who runs our public services and how we fund our public projects and infrastructure so that it does not provide a cash bonanza to absentee shareholders.
"Let me be clear that our public services are there to serve the Scottish public not the balance sheets of financiers. ''
SNP MSP James Dornan said: "It's good to see Labour coming round to our plan to allow a public sector bid to run Scotland's railways - conveniently forgetting they blocked these efforts in the past.
"What's welcome in this speech is the hint of an acknowledgement of Labour's disastrous failings on PFI and their toxic legacy that has left taxpayers continuing to pay through the nose."