Hysterical reactions about the Government selling UK infrastructure to debt-strapped Spanish companies rather miss the point - BAA was privatised a generation ago and the then government could not prevent the take-private by Ferrovial in 2006, even though it was indeed obvious at the time that the acquisition was 'extremely highly-leveraged' (ahem) and not neccessarily bringing any technical or operational added-value.
Privatisation itself certainly doesn't neccesarily result in worse performance of infrastructure (for the counter-factual think of massive public sector deficits world-wide inhibiting investment, traditionally woeful mis-management of public sector investment or appalling performance of publicly-owned utilities pre-privatisation in many cases). There are good and bad public and privately-owned airports across Europe. The more relevant point is that extreme failures of operational performance (and balance sheet structuring) could have formed part of regulatory licence conditions but unfortunately BAA's original privatisation effectively over-looked this point (NATS, privatised later, is in a different regulatory position).
And guess what - there is currently a review of airport regulation underway in the UK. It will be interesting to see how this plays out now... but the points earlier are well made as the government could well be caught between an incoherent policy on airport development (particularly runway construction) and demanding better operational performance of transport infrastructure.