In spite of all the global and UK evidence that outsourcing fails to deliver it has taken just a matter of hours for Jonathan Cridland to profess that to save money the public sector should look to competition to make savings. It is a thinly veiled call to return to the bad old days of CCT. http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=14466
If councils are to save money they need to do this from within. Outsourcing the supposed problem of inefficient services doesn't create savings it merely transfers the problem out of democratic control and locks the public sector purchaser into unwieldy and expensive contract failures.
To carry on delivering in house public services will mean though radical changes. Some of which will be unpalatable to public sector workers. Innovative solutions do not mean outsourced contracts but could mean councils providing services to police fire and health sectors. It might also mean more public partnerships and new funding solutions for capital investment.
What ever shape public services take to respond to 25% cuts outsourcing will not be an effective solution. There should be no return to the CCT days when the private sector vultures picked over the bones of public services for no other reasons than profit driven right wing ideology.
