It’s the final push before polling day, the time where the parties want to remind voters of their key promises and reinforce their core pitch.
For Labour this has meant a speech from shadow chancellor John McDonnell, promising among other things that the process of nationalising a number of key services in the UK will start within the first 100 days of their term in office.
The party has promised to bring rail, mail, water and energy and broadband back into public ownership – it has been a core pledge of the campaign.
Labour’s manifesto says that this move will be “fiscally neutral”, in other words that it won’t cost the public anything.
It goes on to clarify further saying, “when we invest in taking profitable utilities into democratic public ownership, the public balance sheet will record an increase in debt but an equal or greater increase in public sector assets.”
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But is this true?
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has looked into the numbers.
First, it estimates that buying these businesses out will cost at least £50bn – that’s the straightforward price of the assets, the price of compensating the current owners.
But these companies also have existing debts of around £150bn – this would have to be taken on and public sector debt would therefore increase by a total of at least £200bn once you add the two together.
But Labour argues that’s outweighed by the assets being added to the government’s balance sheet – in other words the value of the companies it is acquiring.
That is also estimated at more than £200 billion.
So theoretically Labour’s claim is true, but there are other potential consequences that are hard to predict and that these workings don’t take into account.
Mr McDonnell said that Labour wouldn’t “sign a blank cheque” to acquire the businesses, that parliament will decide how much is paid.
That matters because current shareholders may not think the £50bn of equity is enough.
That is because £50bn is what is called the book value (in other words the value of all its physical assets like buildings or infrastructure) and not the market value which takes into account things like future profit.
To demonstrate the difference in the two types of valuations, the book value of water company Severn Trent is £1.23bn, but its market value is almost five times that at £5.36bn.
Acquisitions of this scale at book value are very rare and appearing to pay too little could be costly.
Secondly, if Labour does try to pay less than market value, that could pave the way for legal action against it and, according to critics, deter foreign investment in the UK.
Any such legal action could cost dearly.
While it is impossible to prove if this would happen or to put a value on it, we do know some firms are preparing.
Both SSE and National Grid and have set up holding companies in jurisdictions like Switzerland and Luxembourg where international treaties mean they’ll have a better chance in any potential legal action.
The most critical question though is whether these businesses will be run better in the public sector than the private sector.
If they make big profits – they will be shared by all of us.
But if they make losses, then taxpayers will be on the hook.
Evidence from around the world is very mixed on whether utilities are more efficient in the public or private sector.
To take the rail industry as an example, Labour have already pledged to cut rail fares by 33%.
That will cost taxpayers £1.5bn, but its a cost that wasn’t in the Labour manifesto.
And while they say the money will be taken from a road-repair fund fed by vehicle excise duty, that will still mean either £1.5bn less gets spent on roads or it needs to be raised in taxes or borrowing
Labour does acknowledge in a footnote of the manifesto that timing issues could result in these acquisitions costing more.
While fiscally neutral nationalisation might be possible, it is by no means guaranteed and ownership of all these public utilities will expose taxpayers to potential risk as well as gain.
Campaign Check scrutinises election claims made by political parties, examining if they are true or false, and the context. Sky News is working with Full Fact – the leading independent fact-checking charity.
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