Research is showing, unsurprisingly, that alternatives to standard public service provision do not magically make services better. There doesn't seem to be any surprise there, but the point about accountability is worth expanding.
The whole "Big Society" idea is based on handing over public assets and money to a private organisation unfettered by the various safeguards that public sector organisations have. If such organisations do have the same safeguards, it is supposed to limit their potential to innovate, and therefore their ability to come up with cheaper ways of doing things.
I don't see how this squares with the government's argument that public organisations need to to be as transparent as possible over spending money. With the enthusiastic support of Eric Pickles, local Councils now have to make invoices on quite minor spending items available online. If that is supposed to be beneficial for for taxpayers money spent by public servants, then why not also for taxpayers money being spent by the private sector? I suspect that if the government were to impose similar scrutiny on the private sector, it would soon be attacked as imposing an unacceptable degree of regulation.
The second issue that seems fundamental to me is what happens when things go wrong? Who is accountable? The private organisation charged with running the service or the elected politicians who gave them the money?
No comments:
Post a Comment