COMMENT


Coalition reforms provide many opportunities for further corporate involvement. Health and community services are being opened to competition from ‘any qualified provider’. Many clinical commissioning groups are likely to become dependent on private health companies to discharge their responsibilities. The more autonomous institutions resulting from deconstruction of the school education service through academy and free school programmes will be tempted to turn to commercial education companies for managerial assistance. Entry of private institutions into the higher education market is being encouraged. Police management is under pressure to outsource functions to reduce costs, with probation services also coming into this frame, private security companies having already established a strong presence in the penal system.


Particularly alarming in this context are examples of private contractors exploiting unemployed people participating in work experience schemes; insufficient capacity to deliver on contracts; delay and disruption attributable to unreliable supply of vital support services; failure to meet legal requirements; and dubious financial engineering, or even ‘systematic fraud’. Close Protection UK, G4S, a Capita-owned company, Serco, Southern Cross and A4E have individually been linked with each of the above practices. The Care Quality Commission also recently found that independent providers of residential care for those with learning disabilities are less standard compliant than those run by the state (though low-price contracts provide a partial explanation).


As Michael Sandel, Harvard professor, argues in his book on What Money Can’t Buy, encroaching market values are reducing social relationships to calculative transactions. This applies even more if there is no obligation to take into account wider social (or public) value when awarding public service contracts, as opposed to a requirement only to consider it as in recent private members’ legislation. And perversely competitive public examination boards are being blamed in government circles for undermining (not raising) educational standards.


Rejoining-up scenario (RU)


In response to the earlier impact of competitive tendering and proliferation of special-purpose appointed agencies, ‘joined-up government’ became one of New Labour’s defining mantras. A future government will face similar challenges. One casualty of the Coalition Government’s policing reforms may well be local community safety partnerships between local authorities and police forces, established by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and instrumental in promoting holistic approaches to crime prevention.


Ostensibly about streamlining the NHS bureaucracy, the 2012


Health and Social


Care Act will, in fact, add to organisational complexity, with system management consequently becoming more problematic. There is increasing recognition, too, in a fragmenting market of autonomous academy and free schools, of the need for an intermediate tier below Whitehall to bring a semblance of coherence and apply local knowledge, whether it be reinvented local education authorities or local educational administrators in some shape or form. Regional outposts of Ofsted hardly seem an adequate response to the developing administrative vacuum at this level.


Elbowing out scenario (EO)


Enthusiastically embracing extension of individual choice, the Coalition set in motion a formal consultation on whether this should become a statutory right. In the 6th edition of Public Sector Management Norman Flynn questions the value of a right to choose per se, as did I in this magazine back in July/August 2011. The theory of public service choice often diverges from the practice. Outcomes in such markets are not immune to disposable income; hence premium property prices in the vicinity of good state schools. The increase in the ceiling on hospital trusts’ earnings from private patients will provide a more direct route to such advantage.


Choice is open to manipulation in other ways, with the most informed more likely to capitalise on increasing availability of comparative


Above: “‘Joined-up government’ became one of New Labour’s defining mantras.”


performance data, and the socially well- connected able to elbow their way to the front of the queue by mobilising networks of influence should all else fail. Such social gamesmanship is detrimental to another principle enshrined in the July 2011 white paper, that of fair access. It can only ultimately be counteracted by creating ‘redundant’ capacity at a time when resources to invest in public infrastructure are even scarcer – though this does ironically appear to be a (random) consequence of the education secretary’s free school policy!


Residualisation scenario (R)


In this final scenario, the cumulative effect of the planned resource squeeze, including stricter eligibility criteria for the welfare budget, will take its toll on the scope and quality of public services and on income maintenance programmes. The likelihood of this outcome will be further increased if reforms identified in the ID scenario are not addressed. Any benefit from measures taken by the Coalition to ease social mobility, such as the pupil premium for disadvantaged children, could thereby be more than cancelled out, leaving a residual safety-net for those who cannot make their own social protection arrangements. Social inclusiveness and cohesion will be an inevitable casualty. This assumes, of course, that the cuts themselves are sustainable. The cost to the Coalition’s political capital is already high with the austerity strategy only at an early stage.


Stakes involved


The stakes magnify as we descend through the above scenarios. In ID it is yet more dashed expectations; in C a marketised society; in RU impeding strategic decision-making capability; in EO less equitable access to public services; and in R a polarised and


fractured nation. There is consequently much riding on the optimism infusing the OPS scenario!


Chris Painter


TELL US WHAT YOU THINK opinion@publicsectorexecutive.com


public sector executive Sep/Oct 12 | 17


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76