Who Really Runs Britain?: The Private Companies Taking Control of Benefits, Prisons, Asylum, Deportation, Security, Social Care and the NHS

By Alan White

Who do you think is running our prisons, providing healthcare, transport, legal aid and child protection? You might think it has to be the government, but in reality £80 billion of public money is given every year to private companies to handle some of our most sensitive and important services. These organizations have been handed enormous amounts of power and yet for the most part they operate with no transparency or accountability.


Award-winning journalist Alan White exposes what goes wrong when the invisible hand of the market is introduced into public services. Informed by interviews with senior managers, campaigners and whistle-blowers, as well as with the companies in question, Who Really Runs Britain? is the first book to deal with government outsourcing, giving the full story behind scandals involving G4S, Serco and ATOS, and revealing system failure in areas such as social care, welfare and justice. The picture that develops is deeply troubling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Jul 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786072351

Alan White

Alan White’s brilliant war novels have the authenticity born of personal experience. As leader of a commando unit in World War II, he made more than a dozen operational jumps into Occupied Europe. He also fought in North Africa. After the war he joined the BBC and enjoyed a wide-ranging media career including the role of White House correspondent in the US. He has written over forty novels.