How far will Cameron go to break the state monopolies?
Peter Hoskin 9:10am
Call it the Big Society, decentralisation, people power, whatever – but David
Cameron's vision for society just became a good deal more concrete. In an article for the
Telegraph this morning, the Prime Minister makes a quite momentous proposal: that there ought to be a new presumption towards diversity in public services, whereby the private, voluntary and
charitable sectors are as privileged as the state is now. Or as he puts it:
We shall have to wait for the government's Open Services White Paper, in two weeks, for details. Yet the potential significance of this one is already clear enough. It could take the kind of Burkean thinking that drives Michael Gove's schools agenda, and spread it across the fabric of state. Not even when Tony Blair was at his most evangelical about public service reform did he really ever suggest such a thing. The posibilities are such that they easily overshadow another sigificant point in Cameron's article: that personal budgets – which I discussed here – should be expanded outwards and onwards."We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. Of course there are some areas – such as national security or the judiciary – where this wouldn't make sense. But everywhere else should be open to diversity; open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. This is a transformation: instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in some public services – as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS – the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly."
All of this will, as Tim Montgomerie notes, be anathema to the union bosses. Any talk of breaking state monopolies will be taken, by them, as a challenge to their own monopolies of power. The same resistance that they have marshalled against academies will be marshalled elsewhere. But the PM's forthrightness in this article suggests that he is, at least, prepared for that. The question now is how much confidence he has in his own proposals. Until now, for instance, the coalition has refrained from allowing schools providers to make substantive profits, lest it upset the public sector apple cart. I wonder whether that might soon change, despite Nick Clegg's promises to the contrary.
Previous
Rhoda Klapp
February 21st, 2011 9:30am Report this commentEver wonder why the government needs to own all those forests?
RKing
February 21st, 2011 9:33am Report this commentNever been a great believer in all this "Big Society" thing myself but isn't all the unrest in the middle east an example of what the of a what "Small Society" brings.
Maybe you are on to a good thing Dave and the rest of us never saw it coming!!
Peter Smith 1
February 21st, 2011 9:54am Report this commentApart from the (very interesting ) policy implications, there will be some nitty-gritty practicalities that are quite capable of making or breaking the success of the idea. Do we have the procurement or contract management skills to make this work properly? How are the providers held to account? Will TUPE apply? I'm just a simple procurement person but actually this all becomes key if Cameron wants to make the public sector the commissioner of services rather than the provider. More here. http://spendmatters.co.uk/david-cameron-lots-procurement/
oldtimer
February 21st, 2011 10:15am Report this commentHe identified the idea of providing public services via social enterprises and charities in his speech about the Big Society the other day. This article is a step forward from that.
The idea is sound (businesses have been outsourcing specialist services for years and years) but, as you point out, the unions will be up in arms about challenges to their monopolies.
What will be revealing is how much the past government has succeeded in wrapping everything up in binding legislation that must be undone before anything can be achieved. Someone mentioned to me the other day that some local government occupations are enshrined in statute and impossible to remove without repeal of the law (though he didn`t give details). The devil will be in the detail.
TomTom
February 21st, 2011 10:25am Report this commentAll Talk ! He cannot deliver ! He is inviting a real battle without having done anything of substance. Only idiots fight multi-front wars
TomTom
February 21st, 2011 10:50am Report this comment"some local government occupations are enshrined in statute"
The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006
The main Directives are:
* the Acquired Rights Directive (77/187/EC)
* the Acquired Rights Directive (98/50/EC)
* the Acquired Rights Amendment Directive (2001/23/EC)
* The Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 1995 (SI 1995/2587)
* The Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/1925)
* Pensions Act 2004, especially sections 257 and 258
* The Transfer of Employment (Pensions Protection) Regulations 2005 (SI 2005/649).
Vulture
February 21st, 2011 10:59am Report this commentWhen will it sink in that Dave is a fraudulent conman?
Don't listen to what he says - watch what he does.
Euro-law is a good example of his tricks. To please an increasingly Eurosceptic public ( not to mention his own party) he issues furious blasts of hot air : the ECHR make him 'physically ill'; foreign judges should stop interfering and so on.
But what does he actually DO? Why, appoint the Cabinet's two leading Euro-grovellers Clarke and Clegg to oversee the commission mulling over a British Bill of Rights.
Well - we know what will happen, don't we? Cameron is a lying fraud and anyone who believes a word he says is a naive sucker.
mal
February 21st, 2011 11:01am Report this commentPeter Smith1 : 09:54
Is Cameron suggesting the public sector should commission services rather than provide them - or is he suggesting that there are areas where the public sector simply do not need to be involved at all?
normanc
February 21st, 2011 11:38am Report this commentI must say, the more I hear from Cameron on this the more I'm liking it. If Andy Coulson was the reason all this was kept in the dark then good riddance.
Let's hope this government can deliver on this.
Barry Bilge
February 21st, 2011 11:38am Report this comment"We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. "
If Dave truly believed in a plurality of service providers with the public as the customer (rather than the State as customer number 1 which we have at the moment) *all* he need to is reduce/eliminate the default supremacy of the State. Let the public spend much more of their money on the services they feel are appropriate from the suppliers they are comfortable with.
All that is needed is that the State retreat from some areas of authority and enforced confiscation of money. We do not need a raft of specious 'rights'.
Ian Walker
February 21st, 2011 11:55am Report this commentPeter Smith 1: I think the plan is (as Mr Hoskin mentions in the article) that the public themselves will commission services, through the use of personal budgets. The Public Sector's role, if any, will be the validate and certify service providers.
What will be interesting will be if people are allowed to keep a proportion of any saving they make on the state's behalf?
For instance, let's imagine that every household is given (in exchange for their council tax) a voucher for a year's bin collection, worth £250. Two companies decide to compete to service a particular town. One company offers weekly collections for the whole £250, and the other offers bi-weekly collections for £150. If the end-user has no incentive to make a saving, then they will always choose the superior service (and this is the main problem with the NHS and other insured services). If, however, you give a 50% rebate of any saving made, then people will have a genuine choice - put up with bi-weekly collections and have an extra £50 in their pocket, or get their bins cleared out every week.
Perhaps a third company could come along and offer a specialist service at a small premium to the elderly which would involve coming on to the property rather than requiring 90-year-olds to drag a 75-kilo wheelie bin through the snow to save a fit person in their mid-twenties.
Why use a voucher system, and not just let people buy rubbish-collection services? Well, bins need to be emptied, for the sake of public health, and this is a good and valid role for government. Making sure that any potential providers meet a good standard is a good and valid role for government. But the fat that can be trimmed is the actual provision of the best service at the best price. The closed-bid tender system has been comprehensively proved a failure at anything other than lining the pockets of those companies who are good at gaming the system.
strapworld
February 21st, 2011 11:58am Report this commentSometimes one reads aomething so stupid that one can only laugh.
What on earth does this Tom Tom think he is talking about? 'Only idiots fight multi-front wars' he writes.
Who is the enemy? Could it be the trades unions bosses caught in a time warp? Well I am damned sure the vast majority of the British people would gladly stamp on them.
So if this TomTom means them he has lost that war.
If he means Council bosses? I think, if there was a democratic vote tomorrow the government would be supported above council chiefs. So TomTom has lost that war.
Perhaps this navigational aid would like to take us in the direction he/she is thinking. Tell us where this 'war' is occuring and the multi-front's he writes about.
Unless, of course, TomTom is just an idiot?
TomTom
February 21st, 2011 12:03pm Report this comment"Unless, of course, TomTom is just an idiot?"
Of course he is Strapworld...there is only your blinkered dogmatism.
Wise people choose which generals they follow and Cameron isn't the right one !
dorothy wilson
February 21st, 2011 12:51pm Report this commentLast summer at a meeting I attended in Austria the delegates were the guests of the Fire Brigade and Red Cross for a day.
It appears that there the Red Cross charity runs the ambulance service, manages some old people's homes and provides the response service for the emergency buttons that the elderly have. They also provide training in safety issues for the schools and organise days along the lines of the sports days we once had here where the children compete in various challenges to test their safety awareness. And the winners are even awarded prizes!
Also, where I live, the care-in-the-homes service for the elderly is outsourced to a commercial organisation. It appears to be a very well run service and the ladies who provide that service are kind, caring and efficient.
In other words, there are already some successful examples of how public services can be provided without being micro-managed by the State.
Chris lancashire
February 21st, 2011 12:55pm Report this commentTomTom: I would suggest that after 10 months it is a little early to be judging Cameron. I mean, after 4 years of Blair a majority of voters still thought he was "the right general".
Occasional Ostrich
February 21st, 2011 12:57pm Report this commentEver wonder why the government needs to own all those forests?
Love it, Rhoda!!!
Hollando
February 21st, 2011 1:07pm Report this commentWill this apply to the BBC?
yank
February 21st, 2011 1:11pm Report this commentYeah right, gentle, lilting David Cameron is going to take on the union bosses.
Who are you kidding? He'll be rolling over purring, with their thick fingers scratching his belly fur.
No wait, he's a metro... he probably gets belly-waxed.
Better watch those union bosses, Dave. Sometimes, in all the purring and scratching, they can forget themselves, and... well... you know.
denis cooper
February 21st, 2011 1:46pm Report this commentRhoda Klapp asks - "Ever wonder why the government needs to own all those forests?"
Oddly enough I've been reading a 1974 book, Hunter Davies's "A Walk Along the Wall", and I've just got to the part where he writes about looking northwards to the Kielder Forest, and "you begin to feel that it's coming nearer, about to take over and swallow the Wall in one huge gulp".
He explains:
"It all began in 1919 when the Commission was formed to establish a reserve of timber for use in war. It wasn't until 1958 that it was decided that modern armies don't need wood, the way they used to, and they announced that from now on their main object in life was conservation - keeping woodland areas alive, especially in hill areas, for the economic and social benefit of all."
I wonder what approach we'd take nowadays if we decided that the country needed a greater reserve of timber.
Presumably not the simple and direct, and therefore comprehensible and transparent, 1919 method of setting up a public body to buy up land and plant and manage forests.
Instead, some complicated process of inviting tenders from private companies, with promises of subsidies so that they could be sure of making a profit from a business which has rather dubious inherent profitability.
(In 1932 the Duke of Northumberland sold forty-seven thousand acres of poor land to the Forestry Commission, and would he have done that if he could have been confident of making money from it by turning it into a forest? I don't know, maybe he was just short of the capital to invest in planting it.)
Then the government would award contracts to certain private companies, including foreign companies and not excluding companies which had made donations to whichever party was in office, sweeteners; and then later it might be found that some of those companies were doing a bad job, which apparently could only be remedied by paying them higher subsidies or by taking their forests into public ownership.
It's comparatively simple when the government wants something to start or to continue which is inherently profitable, and therefore attractive to private companies using private capital.
Private investors were willing enough to put up capital for a stake in the electricity supply business without the promise of perpetual subsidies - although they are now in fact getting subsidies for increasing output of "green" electricity.
Railways, though, are a different matter, because the private companies rely on continuing subsidies from the taxpayer to make their profits; maybe some of the forests are also a different matter.
Privatisation, liberalisation, out-sourcing, PFI, etc may work well in some cases but not in others, and mistakes may prove hugely expensive for the taxpayer, so I'd much prefer the government to be pragmatic about it rather than dogmatic.
Dimoto
February 22nd, 2011 12:04am Report this commentdorothy wilson: I must admit that I had the opposite thought when I read Cameron's article.
The "charity industry" is a huge, virtually unregulated, scam-ridden monstrosity, in which I have no faith at all.
Encouraging these types to also hunker down at the public expenditure trough, risks a scandal and misappropriation of PFI proportions.
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