To handouts and corporate welfare. Whether through incompetence, design or outright corruption, it doesn't matter. State has been and continues to be cut, with

To handouts and corporate welfare. Whether through incompetence, design or outright corruption, it doesn't matter. State has been and continues to be cut, with functions moved over to (read: bought from) private providers. But because there is no real competition among them, the privatisation drive does not push for any gains in productivity. Instead of a public entity doing something, that something is now bought from a private provider with elevated profit margins. UK governments don't encourage competition. They grant charters. In the US you would probably call these "cost plus" contracts. But because these are essential services, a more accurate description would be: this is tax farming.