Yesterday Andy Burnham addressed a packed gathering of the Labour faithful at North West UNISON’s office.
It was a timely speech as part of Labour's summer campaign offensive. Burnham is an articulate and engaging speaker who talks in language that actually speaks to ordinary voters. A rare quality in a shadow cabinet awash with southern policy wonks whose ideas seem to stem from glugging Rioja over an Islington vintage effect kitchen table, complete with Cath Kidston crockery and twins called Cornelius and Cosmo.
The former Government ‘Nudge Unit’ has been privatised into a joint venture with a small Government stake being retained and the remaining two thirds of the organisation going to employees and to NESTA. Ironic then that this ‘behaviour change’ unit is not changing its behaviour one iota from the vested interests in other privatised services with Maude refusing to disclose what, if any, payment the Government received for what is clearly a commercial sale of a former public service. Once services are floated off into these pseudo ‘mutuals’ they have a commercial value and taxpayers have an absolute right to hold Government to account on what these deals mean for the public purse.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26030205
As local authorities are now obliged to consider employee bids to run local services under the guise of coops or mutuals, and also obliged under the same provisions in the Localism Act to disclose senior pay levels, it is logical to assume that pay transparency reaches across all those delivering public services. It seems not.
UNISON
Active ran a link to the ‘We own it’ anti-privatisation campaign yesterday. Although the new campaign has laudable aims, it is notably disappointing that the arguments against privatisation are contaminated by statements under the ‘better-way’ header on their website (
http://weownit.org.uk/content/better-way) which state
‘they [cooperatives and mutuals] can also have a role to play in providing public services.’
Whilst Cameron and Maude talk the language of choice and localism their true intentions are revealed in draft statutory guidance issued by DCLG. The 'Community Right to Challenge', given to English charities, coops and mutuals under the Localism Act 2011 to bid to run council services has long been regarded as a Trojan horse to open up services to the private sector. The guidance issued by Eric Pickles, with a foreword from Andrew Stunell, confirms just that. The new guidance
which you can read in full here at paragraph 9.5 explicitly seeks to stop in-house services from tendering to continue to run services forced out to competition under the 'Community Right to Challenge':
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/righttochallengestatguidance
Just in case the hype is rubbing off that the privatisation of the administration of the civil service pension scheme is somehow a new ‘mutual’ look at the company chosen as the private sector ‘partner’ in this privatisation dressed as a mutual scheme:
http://www.equiniti.com/contactus/Pages/TheEquinitiGroup.aspx
Whilst the Cabinet Office desperately struggles to reinvent the failing ‘big society’ policy the LGA recently reported that less than 3% of councils responding to a survey have had any interest from staff in setting up employee led mutual arrangements and very few intend to encourage or push this route.
Despite these figures which would depress the most committed ‘big society’ proponent The Cabinet Office are intent on flogging a dead horse are now issuing guidance and changes to legislation to take forward coops and mutuals to make it easier to set them up to run public services:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/mutuals-get-go-ahead
#uNDC11 An attempt to substitute a slogan for a comprehensive union approach to public service reform was overwhelmingly rejected by Conference following NEC opposition to amendment 39.1.
The bandwagon rolls on doesn’t with every malcontent in local government wanting to jump on the mutual bandwagon. This latest report in the Guardian refers to plans for Cleveland Fire Brigade as well as the new Labour leadership in Rochdale jumping on mutual’s as some form of panacea.
My youngest daughter had a school holiday nightmare sleepover. You know the ones that start off as a couple of friends over for a movie and a sleep and then you end up with half the neighbours kids, with giggles and fights intermittently until four in the morning. This one was more horrendous than most as she insisted that we let off some Chinese lanterns.
