- lay into the Conservatives for their ideological obsession with privatisation
- support the aims and some of the methods of the coalition because you are (still, just about) a LibDem
- lay into public bodies because of your own experience
- suspect private bodies for the same reason
- lay into the Labour party for just carrying on Thatcher's work
... but (as I once delighted in reminding a Conservative MP twice my age) life isn't that simple.
One of the main strands of coalition thinking is to offer the opportunity to deliver public services to "any willing provider". As well as opening up the profit pot for the United Healths, Bupas, Capitas and Sercos of this world, much is made of the idea that people currently working in the public sector will set up cooperatives to do what they know so well, but do it better.
The health sector is perhaps the biggest and most symbolic example of this move, but there are also free schools (inspired by local groups of parents and teachers they say, but also an opportunity for faith groups to spread their influence, and in many cases managed by private companies - see the names above), and others.
Many arguments can be had here, but the thing that worries me tonight is - cruel cliche - the slippery slope. Once you open up a public service to competition (started a long time before the current government and promoted energetically by Labour), it is hard to imagine that change being reversed. When the market has its claws in, and European competition law is the regime, is there really more than one possible direction of travel?
What happens when the group of parents who started the free school breaks up - people move on, Toby Young's kids get their A-levels? What happens when one of the driving individuals who makes your health co-op sing leaves to look after a baby?
A new parent, with children of the right age, a new consultant may step up and everything may carry on beautifully. But if the recruit is not there the critical mass may be lost, and if the school or the service has worked well so far, somebody has to decide how to support and maintain it. A new set of parents has not come forward, a new co-operative is hardly likely to spring up in the same area and the same speciality, so who is left to do the job?
A big organisation, probably, which can easily reallocate resources to take on a new responsibility. The NHS, the Department for Education... why not? Because once these services are out in the free market world it is perhaps even illegal to bring them back in. Again, the names above, these organisations will suffer no such restrictions.
I put it no more strongly than to ask: is this really what we want?
A big organisation, probably, which can easily reallocate resources to take on a new responsibility. The NHS, the Department for Education... why not? Because once these services are out in the free market world it is perhaps even illegal to bring them back in. Again, the names above, these organisations will suffer no such restrictions.
I put it no more strongly than to ask: is this really what we want?
