Public services

Public services
European Court confirms cost not the only public procurement criterion

12th May 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Owen Tudor

The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that public bodes can take into account social and environmental concerns when deciding on who gets public procurement contracts. Cost is definitely not the only issue, as successive British Governments have claimed – most recently in the Bombardier case. Ignoring the social and environmental impacts of public procurement - issues like paying fair wages, providing training, and local sourcing of products - is therefore a political choice, not a requirement of European directives.

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Public services
Mutuals 0 Markets 1

2nd April 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Matt Dykes

The government used its Open Public Services update last week to reiterate its commitment to the roll out of public service mutuals. According to the government “this will empower millions of public sector staff to become their own boss – freeing up untapped entrepreneurial and innovative drive”

Those employees setting up their own public service mutuals will hopefully have entrepreneurial drive in buckets, as the track record of public service mutuals in the open market is looking decidedly patchy.

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Public services
Brick by brick, the state gets dismantled

30th March 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Matt Dykes

Yesterday David Cameron chose to remind us that public services remained open for business. In an alarmingly honest declaration of his government’s ideological agenda, the Prime Minister assured us that “brick by brick, edifice by edifice, we are slowly dismantling the big-state”.

Promoting the release of Open Public Services 2012, an update to the government’s white paper released last July, Cameron reiterated his “instinctive belief” that a combination of individual consumer choice and increased competition and diversity of provision was key to securing innovation and value for money in public services.

The TUC’s response to last year’s white paper provided ample evidence to show that opening up public service markets actually has the opposite effect, leading to a concentration of provision in the hands of unaccountable private providers. At the same time services became increasingly complex and fragmented, with the greatest impact on the most vulnerable.

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Public services
Procuring ‘social value’ – can we make it work?

22nd March 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Matt Dykes

With high stakes battles being fought over the Welfare Reform and Health and Social Care Bills in Westminster, it is not surprising that a private members bill on public procurement entered the statute books largely unnoticed earlier this month.

But the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 has some potentially far reaching implications for the commissioning of public services. Trade unions and community activists should take note.

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Labour market
Local pay in the Budget? A recipe for unfairness and inequality

20th March 2012 — Filed under: Labour market, Public services

Alice Hood

Over the last few days there have been reports that the Chancellor is considering introducing regional or local pay for some public sector workers in the Budget.

As colleagues have blogged before, public sector pay supports local and regional economies, ensures fairness and transparency and promotes equal pay. Moving away from this to a system that would entrench the North-South divide for generations is unfair, inefficient, makes no economic sense, will increase inequality and is simply not supported by the evidence. A move at this stage would also pull the rug from under the independent pay review bodies, who have already been asked to investigate the question and won’t report until July.

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Public services
Why aren’t ministers making more of an NHS success?

7th March 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Richard Exell

The Department of Health’s new figures for waiting times for diagnostic tests really make quite encouraging reading. These are the tests (like audiology or MRI scans) a consultant will book for you to help their diagnosis and it can be important that you don’t have to wait a long time for them. And the latest figures are good: nowadays, practically no-one has to wait a year for these tests and there are far fewer people waiting 6 or 13 weeks:

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Public services
Living on the Edge: A tale of local government workers

22nd February 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Heather Wakefield

Annual talks take place tomorrow between UNISON, GMB and Unite and the Local Government Employers over pay for 1.7 million local authority NJC employees. Today, UNISON releases ‘Living on the Edge’, a report on local government pay written for us by the New Policy Institute. Its findings are shocking and should make every elected member, Council Leader and Mayor think very carefully indeed about imposing a pay freeze on our members for a third year tomorrow.

The key findings of ‘Living on the Edge’ are as follows:

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Public services
Trust in the Tories in tatters over the NHS

20th February 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Frances O'Grady

Research by YouGov commissioned by Unite and released today has shown the damage that David Cameron and Andrew Lansley have done to their reputation over the NHS reforms. The British people love the NHS, patient satisfaction is at an all time high and it is becoming very clear that the government threatens this beloved institution at its peril.

Prior to the election David Cameron pledged no top down organisation to the NHS and on his billboards stated that he’d “cut the deficit, not the NHS”. Instead, borrowing is up, services are being cut and top-down reforms are being imposed on the NHS against the will of the general public and health professionals. This has not gone unnoticed by voters, those that think David Cameron hasn’t delivered on his pre-election assurances over the NHS outnumber those that believe he has by three to one.

So, as with many things in politics, it all boils down to a matter of trust. Cameron promised one thing on our National Health Service and then seems to do the complete opposite, so why would the general public believe his reassurances about his health reforms?

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Public services
Without information parents won’t take up their childcare places

1st February 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Kate Groucutt

Through our work with parents over 25 years, at Daycare Trust we know that access to affordable, flexible, accessible childcare is essential for working parents. The expansion of childcare places and increased financial support for childcare over the last 15 years has made a huge difference to millions of families, in particular to women. But these places will go unused if mothers and fathers don’t know about them.

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Public services
NHS: 49% cap is a threat to us all

16th January 2012 — Filed under: Public services

Frances O'Grady

Today the Commons is debating the Government’s plans to increase the cap on NHS hospitals ability to raise private income to 49%. It currently varies from hospital to hospital but is, on average, 1.1% so this represents a massive increase.

Now some commentators have said that this is better than the original proposal to remove the cap entirely and that, in any case, almost no hospitals will get anywhere near that as there is not a market for a wholesale increase in private health provision in the current economic climate.

That misses the point however. The government is not trying to meet a market demand, it is trying to create one.

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