Gordon Brown was delivered a rap on the knuckles by the House of Commons transport committee. As Chancellor he insisted the contract to upgrade London Underground be awarded to private consortium Metronet. Predictably, Metronet went belly up last year amid much scandal leaving us with a £2bn bill. The committee denounced Brown’s "spectacular failure, " for which of course us taxpayers will be picking up the bill. Committee chair, old-style right winger Gwyneth Dunwoody, commented on the debacle, "Any reasonable person, looking at the current situation, would find scant evidence to sustain a dogma that the private sector will always provide deliver greater efficiency, innovation and value for money then the public sector." Well, quite.
