privatising public services

Updated 21 July 2009:

The Tories are decimating local services, even as David Cameron tells us he's a great fan of local power: here's more on local Tories who are using the public spending squeeze as a justification to keep flogging public services off to the voracious private sector:

Another windy night in the Tory borough of Barnet, and your reporter is snuggled in with the crowd at yet another Barnet council cabinet meeting, watching and listening as this council's rightist zealots pour forth another torrent of pro-privatisation, efficiencies horseshit.

As many good burghers of Barnet already know, Barnet Tories are working up a mad, massive and massively unpopular scheme (tweely dubbed Future Shape) for future public service delivery in lucky North London.

The council's aim is to turn itself into a focal point called a strategic commissioning hub. Heaps of councils have fantasised about turning themselves into strategic commissioning hubs over the years - setting themselves up as organisations (sometimes as joint ventures with private companies) that commission public services such as care services, housing maintenance, school dinners, building works, IT, etc) from private companies, rather than provide those services themselves. In the modern council management mind, hubs are, if you will, places where great local government brains meet and think from time to time, breaking occasionally to dole large cheques out to the likes of Capita, BT, BUPA and the rest.

Some, like Barnet, also fondly imagine that their hub might ultimately manage services across a range of public sector organisations - for example, run HR, finance and IT for the local council, police and PCT, etc.

The problem is that this concept has yielded thin results elsewhere in the country (and indeed the world), particularly when councils have tried to form service-providing companies with the private sector: in recent times, for instance, dreadful results saw Bedfordshire county council and West Berkshire pull out of shared services partnerships (at quite a cost, I gather), and Redcar and Cleveland council and Swansea city council reduced the scope of theirs. Perhaps aware of this dubious history, Barnet is shying away from the single joint venture company idea, but remains keen for private partners to either provide or help manage swathes of council work.*

Barnet also plans to stop providing some services altogether ('scaling down to a size which would mean delivering only what the local authority must deliver to achieve efficiencies' as the cabinet's originating Future Shape report has it) and to outsource whatever's left to external providers. It claims that the squeeze on public spending makes this approach necessary: 'a Times article noted that any public servant not preparing for smaller budgets is living in cloud cuckoo land,' one officer intones darkly at this evening's cabinet meeting. 'That's clearly a call to arms for public servants to readdress the nature of their provision...' No other options are presented: no there's talk of keeping services in house, or of working with councils that have successfully done so. There is only one show in town as far as the Tories are concerned, and it is thus that they plan to keep lining private sector pockets during the recession.

Barnet locals are extremely unhappy at apparent council plans to outsource and privatise most of the services the council provides.

It's getting harder and harder for local government to sell the argument that the market knows best - that your schools, nurseries, housing, roads, etc, would be better provided by the likes of HBOS, anyone lately of the Lehman Brothers, or Tescos.

I'm a capitalist at heart, but even I doubt the market's genius these days. I don't think the private sector is inclined to deliver good public services at reasonable cost. I think it is inclined to tender loss leaders when bidding for public sector contracts, and then to recoup losses by cutting staff salaries and service corners when contracts are won.

I am a capitalist, but I don't think the private sector is capable of providing public services in a way that will simultaneously save tax pounds and shore up communities with the all-important health, education and housing services that keep those communities functional.

People in Barnet aren't convinced either. Hundreds turned up for at a protest about the proposed outsourcing several weeks ago, and an even bigger crowd showed on Wednesday outside a council meeting - on a freezing cold night, too.

I'll be writing more about the Barnet proposals as time goes on.

For now, here are some photos from the event.

Not sure how Santa got into the mix - thought he'd be more of a capitalist...?