The plan has been developed because, according to the Left Party, Stockholm must be "deprivatized in the broadest sense."
- We want the money to go to the children in preschool, the students in school and the elderly in care for the elderly. We cannot afford the leakage that the for-profit companies involve.
The plan is divided into short-term and long-term goals. The goal is for the municipality to have reduced spending on for-profit welfare companies by 50 percent next term. By 2034, expenses must be zero.
She highlights the abolition of LOV, the Law of Freedom of Choice System, in the city as an important early measure in this.
- Privatization has led to certain districts not even being able to offer certain assistance-rated initiatives under their own auspices. The city of Stockholm did not have a single HVB home for young people before we took office.
According to the city's own annual report, elderly people with a private contractor are generally more satisfied compared to those who have a contractor run by the municipality. According to Alexandra Mattsson, V has no goal of preventing all private companies from operating in the municipality. The people of Stockholm should still be able to choose actors with ideas, where all profits go directly back into the business.
- We want to protect that you should be able to make choices but that you should be guaranteed that what you get is of high quality and that money does not go to private shareholders who own various welfare companies.
Idea-driven actors run only 3 percent of tax-financed welfare nationally, according to Famna, the national organization for idea-driven welfare in Sweden.
How does a greatly reduced supply combine with protecting the elderly's freedom of choice?
- Today, the freedom of choice too often results in one being forced to choose between hundreds of different companies that offer exactly the same care. We want to turn that around and be able to offer different orientations and focuses on care, but do it within the non-profit actors, says Mattsson.
The party nationally wants to dismantle the establishment right for independent schools. If it does not become reality, V in Stockholm wants to use "creative approaches" to limit the for-profit schools.
What exactly do you mean by that?
- That we will continue as we are doing now, by challenging the free right of establishment and winning in court. Then we also work creatively. For example, we have stopped giving land instructions to private independent school companies.
Is it reasonable that the municipality is allowed to operate under different conditions than private companies?
- We follow the legislation on equal conditions in the school system today. After all, we have control over, for example, our land, who will be allowed to build in Stockholm, so we see absolutely no problem with that, she says and continues:
- It is a sick system that I, as a municipal politician and most responsible for preschool operations, cannot decide which actors we want to have running preschools in Stockholm today.
According to the city's annual report, more than half of the city's budget for elderly care goes to private actors. Nevertheless, Alexandra Mattsson says that it does not have to be expensive for the city to take over the operations of the profit-making companies.
- However, we set higher demands in our own operations. We want the staff to have a good time and so on. It is clear that it may cost more money, but at the same time we are wasting billions on profits and a very large bureaucracy.
When asked what amount it would take for the city to build up the activities under its own auspices, she did not give a concrete answer.
- But it is also a bit of a misconception to think that private welfare companies build private homes for the elderly completely free of charge for the city. It doesn't really look like that, because it is a tax-financed activity after all.
