When there were Labour councillors boycotting and withdrawing themselves from the council debating and moving on its constitution at the start of the meeting?!

When  there were Labour councillors making despicable, public allegations of councillors "accepting pieces of silver" and planning committee members "accpeting brown paper envelopes from their mates" etc.

When the council moved that one Labour councillor should be unheard for the rest of the council meeting for failing to withdraw such an allegation.

When a Labour councillor, in the process of withdrawing himself from the chamber,  was perceived to storm across the floor of the council cham,ber towards the Tory benches in a retaliatory and intimidatory manner?!

I am not so sure that I would have compared the last council meeting to a "pantomime"?!

Perhaps best described as an extremely unsavoury and ugly farce and/or a black comedy with scenes of  'political thuggery'.

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Am I missing something here? Many private companies outsource specific business functions mainly because the specialist firms provide a better service than can be done in-house for the same cost. Surely it is sensible for councils to seek to pool resources or even outsource back office functions if it delivers the same service for a cheaper cost. The money saved goes back to the taxpayer to buy goods and services they want or need and thereby creates new jobs in the private sector. Sound finances and efficiency savings are the bread and butter of Tory politics – it wins them votes.

And how are they selling off the family silver? What assets are they disposing off?

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Black flag - Yes, you are missing something. 'Specialist firms' can only charge less by significantly reducing costs. They have to cut costs enough to give a lower quote and still making a big enough profit for shareholders. The easiest way to cut costs is to sack staff. It may be possible to offer the same service with a depleted work-force, but if not, who cares? The council is there to serve its electorate, Arvato exists to serve its owners.

I have had experience of this first-hand. The council privatised school cleaning contracts to cut costs. The lowest bidder won, but could only make a profit by having fewer cleaners and paying the minimum wage. Result? We endured months of rapid staff turnover, cleaners failing to turn up to work or not getting the job done in the reduced hours they were allowed. After months of working in squallor, cleaning was taken in-house again, and has been of a high standard ever since.  Council-run services have an inbuilt advantage in that they do not function to siphon taxpayers money off into the pockets of foreign businessmen.

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I purposely put the comment “if it delivers the same service for a cheaper cost” in italics to acknowledge the fact that not all outsourcing has been a success whether in the public or private sector. I agree with Dave that successful outsourcing should not be achieved by pushing down wages – it should be achieved by economies of scale. Rather than councils providing for example IT infrastructure in-house they should collaborate with like minded councils to contract out to an external company which can provide the IT infrastructure for all of them at a cheaper cost. The sort of arrangement goes on in the private sector all the time.

As for accountability it is true that companies serve their shareholders, but if they don’t serve their customers first then they don’t have a business to invest in. In-house services however have no competition to drive down costs or promote efficiency.

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Privatisation of IT infrastructure is probably not a good example to use in the argument for more private sector involvement. The massive NHS it project is billions over budget (no-one knows quite how many) and at least 5 years behind schedule. A court / prison IT project has been abandoned. Even the BBC has taken its phone network back inhouse after an expensive privatisation failure.

To give another example, a school near Scunthorpe has banned teachers from putting displays on the walls after a piece of pupil work came unstuck in the night and triggered the burglar alarm. In the old days the school caretaker would have received a phone call from the police, and come in to turn the alarm off, receiving a reasonable call-out fee. However, some schools now have a private security firm to do the job. When the alarm goes off they turn up in a van, with dogs, and charge over £50, on top of the charge for monitoring the system. The school now pays more than it did, and education takes second place behind not being ripped off by the security firm.  

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Spot on Dave!

If Southern Cross go bust, where does that leave the people who have made their homes there? If the meals service went bust would they let the market rip and let people starve? Surely we are not that brutal as a society, surely we have some duty to the most vulnerable who, in many cases, have made huge sacrifices so we can live in relative comfort today. 

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