Localism Bill an excuse to outsource services‏

Eric Pickles is looking more and more comedic as the days go by. Yesterday’s announcement of a Decentralisation and Localism Bill was used by Pickles as an excuse to cut funding to councils under the supposed guise of giving councils and individual citizens more power over local services. But this is nonsense.

The Bill’s claim to bring forward a Power of General Competence for local councils is really nothing of the sort .It has already been made clear that councils will not have the power to raise funding so they remain stuck with Council Tax, for about 20% of their funds and with centrally controlled grant settlements for about 80% of their funds with both being viciously controlled by central government as the Treasury grip tightens.

A second major plank of the Bill is the ‘Right to Provide’ purportedly allowing the social enterprise sector and communities to flourish as they gain the right to run more services. This was always a none starter as such a ‘right’ would contradict European procurement rules.

The ‘right’ is to bid to provide services and councils must show how they have responded so at face value this is a damp squib. But it paves the way for the Secretary of State to use reserve powers to intervene in council business. This could signal a new era of CCT style statutory guidance.

At the moment the softly softly approach from government is ‘you know we want you to put services out to competitive tender’ under the guise of opening up services to the social enterprise sector but they will hold off dictating this as a course of action on the basis of councils should do this voluntarily.

In reality if councils don’t play ball with Government they could find the Secretary of State swings into gear CCT style requiring councils to put services out to tender. The Localism Bill is a tailor made opportunity to do this.

The scrapping of the cabinet office code of practice on workforce matters and the very likely demise of the local government ‘Best Value’ code of practice on workforce matters (because you don’t need a duty of best value if you have a power of general competence so that code will too be defunct) then it is likely we will see a return to compulsory competitive tendering is on its way. With less protection of the workforce to go with it.

There is nothing accidental about Maude’s announcement on the scrapping of the cabinet office code being swept out today amidst the whirl wind created by the delayed Localism Bill. This is right wing ideology driving forward a rebalancing of the economy not through job creation in the private sector but job transfer from public to private on worse terms and conditions.

It is now time for our supposed comrades in the Labour Party to stand up for their workforce. The May elections will soon enough be upon us and we must not support Labour or would-be-Labour councils come the May local elections who do not firmly commit to uphold in practice a two tier code and firmly commit to the maintenance of in-house service provision.

We should expose the fig-leaf for privatisation that is the ‘right to provide’ to the social enterprise sector. The real game has now been exposed and we shouldn’t let the ridiculous Pickles get away with it. Worse still we shouldn’t let the party we fund from our members subscriptions become a stick with which they are beaten in to privatisation and poverty pay.

Anna Rose