House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Nov 1992

Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I should be grateful if you would assist us. You will have heard the Home Secretary make a statement to the House earlier today, on Sunday trading, in which he said that the Government would allow Conservative Members a free vote on the provisions of the Sunday trading legislation. Indeed, he emphasised that point several times and sought an assurance from me that there would be a free vote on the Opposition side. I gave that assurance, but subsequently--probably because of an error--notes for the Home Secretary to use in answering supplementary questions have been circulating among the press. Those notes include an answer to the theoretical question : "Will the Government whip through their employee protection provisions?"

Those provisions will be an important part of the legislation on Sunday trading. The answer provided for the Home Secretary to use was :

"It is too early to say."

In other words, the basis on which the statement was given to the House, and on which we questioned the Home Secretary--that there would be a free vote--has now been thrown into doubt by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's notes on answers to supplementary questions. I should be grateful if you, would tell us how we can ensure that the Home Secretary makes an accurate statement to the House, so that we may question him on it. The matters concerned will be at the very heart of the legislation.

Madam Speaker : The hon. Gentleman will understand that I can concern myself only with questions and answers

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across the Floor of the House, not with what happens outside the Chamber. Of course, it is for Members themselves to pursue with Ministers the way in which the House will finally divide on particular legislation. The way in which individual Members or parties vote in the House is certainly not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. There is another way of dealing with the matter. When my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) makes such comments, what he says will finish up in Hansard tomorrow, and the Home Secretary can read it. Even better, it has occasionally been known for Ministers to be brought back to the Dispatch Box to correct what they have said. Before today is out, the Home Secretary should be brought here and challenged by Opposition Members. We shall still be here tonight, and we shall demand a proper statement, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman has misled the House into believing that the Tories will have a free vote from the very beginning of Second Reading right through to the end. It is pretty obvious that that will not be the case.

Madam Speaker : The points of order raised by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) are often of great interest to the House. One reason why we shall have an Official Report tomorrow--indeed, one reason why we record all our proceedings--is so that we can all see what has been said the day before, and perhaps make some corrections if that proves necessary.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. With regard to your assertion of your intention to consider further the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), I understand that the release of any papers relating to a ministerial statement is in the hands of the Minister concerned, who may, if he wishes, instruct the Deliverer of the Vote to make such statements available before the Minister rises to speak, when he rises, or later. I beg you, Madam Speaker, to check on that matter, and to bear it in mind when considering any action which you may wish to take.

Madam Speaker : I shall certainly bear that matter in mind.

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Statutory Instruments, &c.

Madam Speaker : With permission, I shall put together motions relating to statutory instruments.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.),

Transport and Works

That the draft Transport and Works (Descriptions of Works Interfering with Navigation) Order 1992 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the draft Transport and Works (Guided Transport Modes) Order 1992 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Road Traffic

That the draft Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (Amendment) Order 1993 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Estate Agents

That the Estate Agents (Specified Offences) (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2833) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Consumer Protection

That the Child Resistant Packaging and Tactile Danger Warnings (Safety) (Revocation) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2620) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Social Security

That the Social Security (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2595) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the Income Support (General) Amendment (No. 3) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2804) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

National Health Service

That the National Health Service (Determination of Districts) (No. 4) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2751) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the National Health Service (District Health Authorities) (No. 4) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2752) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

County Courts

That the County Court (Amendment No. 2) Rules 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 1965) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

Question agreed to.

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Public Service

Motion made, and Question proposed, That his House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

5.45 pm

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave) : On Second Reading of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill earlier this month, the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) asked for a wider debate on the management of the public service, and I was happy to respond to that idea. I promised to consult my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on whether we could have an early debate, and I am glad to say that we have managed to find the time for it.

I am especially pleased that we are having this debate so quickly after the publication yesterday of the White Paper, "The Citizen's Charter First Report : 1992". This is a good moment for considering the Government's wider policies on privatisation, market testing and other issues related to the management of public services. It is true to say that fundamental change for the better has been under way in the management of the public service ever since 1979. It is worth recalling that on the day on which this process of change began--4 May 1979--the last of the debris, both literal and figurative, had only just been cleared away after the previous winter's near-anarchy, the bulk of it in the public sector. The inflationary consequences of the pay settlements with which the outgoing Labour Government attempted to buy off that chaos damaged the economy for years.

It was a squalid and disappointing, although in retrospect perhaps inevitable, end to what now appears an ill-controlled expansion of many public services without sufficient attention being paid to the forms in which they were to be managed. As Mr. Anthony Crosland had said not long before, the party was indeed over.

There had been much idealism in the early days, but the results, in practice, were all too often empire building, limited concern for efficiency, and above all excessive domination by the providers of services rather than by the interests of the users. The customers and consumers of the services were not seen, as they should have been, as the be-all and end -all of the whole operation. Complaints were always used as proof of the need for extra resources rather than as a spur to efficiency, flexibility and new ideas. The electorate was presented with a false choice--between higher taxes or poorer services. They emphatically rejected that choice in 1979, in 1983, in 1987 and in 1992. It is a lesson that, once learned, shows little sign of ever being forgotten.

The reality is that on the one hand the potential costs of the public service rise inexorably in the face of scientific and technical progress and rising expectation. On the other hand, taxpayers here and elsewhere around the world are no longer prepared to hand over 25 per cent. let alone 40 per cent., 50 per cent. or more of their income without clear evidence that the Government will make every effort to ensure that that money is spent efficiently, and to the greatest benefit of the user of the services that Governments provide.

Public services in this country are now in the process of changing fundamentally to meet that reality, and they will continue to do so. The change does not lie in the basic nature of those in the public services. As the White Paper makes clear, the Government recognise the obvious need

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for good public services on a continuing basis, and recognise the quality of this country's many excellent public servants. But we cannot expect a public service to work efficiently, however competent and industrious those in it, if it labours under local management which has been made powerless and unimaginative by distant and centralised control ; and which lives within a structure which ignores the whole worldwide revolution in ideas about management based on putting the customer's needs first.

Ever since 1979, the Government have sought to free up the latent ability and commitment in our public services through improvements in the way in which they are managed. Initially this was done on what was essentially a pragmatic individual basis, as each one--the civil service, local government, the nationalised industries and the NHS--seemed to require. A great deal was achieved. Government withdrew altogether from many areas-- especially the nationalised

industries--which could demonstrably be better run by the private sector. As far as the rest of the public service was concerned, efficiency measures resulted in enormous savings--for instance, over £2 billion from the result of the efficiency scrutiny programme alone. The delegation or scrapping of unnecessary budgetary controls gave local managers the powers they needed to run their operations more effectively ; and the incentive was provided to set and meet challenging targets in a wide range of areas.

The changes were essentially about getting modern management into public sector organisations. They now provide the means by which we can deliver the Prime Minister's citizens charter programme--the most far-reaching programme ever designed for driving up quality in public services. As I made clear yesterday when talking about the White Paper, for the first time since present-day concepts of public service began to emerge in the early decades of this century, we now have, through the charter, a commitment to improve and to maintain on a systematic and comprehensive basis standards of service and efficiency throughout the public sector, linked to mechanisms that can deliver them. I was grateful for the basic commitment of the hon. Member for Redcar to the programme and to the policy, although she has criticisms of the detail.

Mr. Michael Bates (Langbaurgh) : Would my right hon. Friend care to compare the constructive and helpful remarks made by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlem) in Committee yesterday when she welcomed the citizens charter, with those of the Leader of the Opposition who, when the charter was introduced, described it as banal and damaging?

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Member for Redcar, perhaps persuaded by my hon. Friend's eloquent argument and by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science, may have come to understand the programme better than her leader did. I am grateful for the bipartisan spirit in which she approaches the matter.

Ms. Marjorie Mowlam (Redcar) : Does the Minister agree that the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates) cannot decide whether he was in the House or in Committee yesterday? We did not discuss the citizens charter in Committee yesterday. In the House

yesterday--either the Minister or the hon. Member for Langbaurgh

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may like to check the record--I said that the citizens charter was a good idea in principle. I said that we invented the idea and that many Labour local authorities introduced such charters before the Minister even thought of the idea. I also said that it was the way in which the Government had introduced the charter that made it a sham.

Mr. Waldegrave : I would not expect the hon. Lady to argue that my party could carry out principles better than her party. There would be little point in her being here if she did not believe that she could do a better job of it. I welcome in the spirit in which it was offered the commitment that we share the principle of wanting to improve public service. The hon. Lady says, as is her right, that she would carry out the charter provisions better. The citizens charter contains sensible commitments and I welcome the hon. Lady's reaffirmation of that point.

Mr. Hugh Bayley (York) : Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster go one stage further in the bipartisan spirit displayed in the Chamber this afternoon? Will he pay tribute to the first public authority in Britain to introduce a citizens charter? York city council has now operated its charter for five years. Each year, it has done what the right hon. Gentleman did yesterday--produce an annual report on the progress of the charter. Will the right hon. Gentleman pay tribute to that Labour authority, which was the first to introduce a citizens charter?

Mr. Waldegrave : I certainly agree that what has been done in York is interesting. We would argue that the York charter should contain more measurable performance indicators. I make no apology. I warn the Labour party that, if it produces good ideas, we shall pinch them. There is nothing wrong with that. I shall give arguments later to show that some Labour party supporters and centre-left opinion--I shall not offend centre- left Labour Members who sit below the Gangway, as they have temporarily left the Chamber--share our approach to these matters, and I welcome that.

We saw one significant result of this radical programme of reform only last week--

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington) : Where's the beef ?

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman had a large amount of beef last week when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education published for the first time full tables of examination results as the parents charter had promised would be done. The Labour party's reaction to that example of openness earned it some noteworthy press coverage. The Sunday Times concluded :

"Labour is a lost cause on education."

That is hardly surprising. As more than 50 per cent. of Labour Members are sponsored by trade unions, the Labour party is pretty much a lost cause in any area in which a consumer voice is struggling to be heard. Among others, The Guardian concluded :

"the information will allow parents to make a more informed choice. No democrat should regard this as a reverse."

On this occasion, I wholeheartedly agree with The Guardian . The White Paper is a substantial milestone in demonstrating how we are moving towards public services with high-quality outputs and with service to the citizen as an overriding concern. However, as the White Paper

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states, better-quality services do not happen by accident. They are being brought about by a series of policies each of which is designed to serve a key objective in improving public service management. First, we must ensure that those working in the public services are not employed at taxpayers' expense on activities that, viewed realistically, do not need to exist at all. It is the most difficult thing in the world to abolish a function once a bureaucracy has made it its own, but it should be done sometimes.

Secondly, we believe that public services should be engaged only in activities that really need to be in the public sector. That requires regular programmes of review to discover whether all activities need to remain in the public sector. Many do not.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : Can the Minister explain how I should respond to a group of people whom I have just met in the Central Lobby? They tell me that they work for the Inland Revenue and that they deal with the most private aspects of people's tax affairs. They told me that their work as typists is to be put out to a private company. The most intimate details of people's tax affairs will be dealt with by people who work for a private company in the north of England.

I heard that some Inland Revenue officers are so worried about that prospect--there has been a pilot project somewhere--that tax inspectors are now sending hand-written letters to ensure that correspondence is not typed by private firms. Is not that an absolute disgrace? Are not the Government abdicating their responsibilities by handing over that important work to private contractors whom the public will not trust on matters of privacy?

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman is wrong at two levels. First, at the lesser, but none the less powerful, level, the criminal law covers confidentiality in these matters. Secondly, the contractual arrangements that would be made in such a case would have to cover the question of confidentiality.

More broadly, the hon. Gentleman is falling into the mirror image of the mistake that some on the right have made in the past. It is just as foolish a mistake that way round. The hon. Gentleman says, "Private sector bad, cannot be trusted", just as some Conservatives used to say that nothing in the public sector was good. Both attitudes are wrong and the hon. Gentleman is out of date in his attitude.

On reflection, Opposition Members who are sponsored by trade unions that have a mostly private sector membership will not agree with the hon. Gentleman that people in the private sector cannot be trusted with confidential matters. That is an unusually foolish argument from the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : There is real concern, as I am sure the Minister accepts, about confidentiality and the Inland Revenue. It is commonly accepted that, if something is not broken, it should be mended. In this case, I am not aware of any problem about confidentiality. However, as revealed on the front pages of The Sun and the Evening Standard today, there are problems of confidentiality in the private sector with Access. I am sure that Access does all that it can to maintain confidentiality.

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I think it is disgraceful that information has come out. The Inland Revenue has kept confidentiality. If it is not broken, why mend it?

Mr. Waldegrave : I share the hon. Gentleman's sense of disgust about the leak from Access. It is not wholly unknown for the public sector more broadly--I am not talking about the Inland

Revenue--occasionally to leak things. Nobody is criticising the standard of confidentiality in the Inland Revenue. None the less, it is right to look at public services and to see whether the same quality can be achieved at better value for money for the taxpayer. That is the right thing to do in that area as in others-- [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington, who continues to mutter from a sedentary position, knows a little about the nuclear industry. He knows perfectly well that, over the years, many highly confidential matters in that industry, as in the public sector, have been handled by private sector companies.

I repeat that we believe that public services should be engaged only in activities that should really be in the public sector. So far, 46 major activities and many smaller ones have been privatised ; they range from huge industries such as steel and telecommunications, to the National Freight Corporation--at the time of its privatisation a declining business, now an internationally quoted company--and from the 17 electricity companies in Great Britain to the British Technology Group.

As a result, 920,000 jobs have passed from the public to the private sector. Even leaving aside all the benefits to the taxpayer of more efficient services, the annual charge that nationalised industries' financing makes on the Exchequer was £3.5 billion per annum less in 1991-92 than in 1979. That achievement has already largely ended the historically short and aberrant detour into nationalisation, which helped discredit the state by casting it in the role of the incompetent owner and manager of huge, inefficient and often out-of-date industries, and as the protector of powerful producer interests rather than the champion of the individual citizen.

I quote from the excellent speech on Monday to the Centre for Policy Studies by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whom we welcome to our proceedings :

"in 1979 Government was an oil producer, a car maker and a steel maker".

We are not any more, and we were not very good at it when we were. It seems a long time ago.

Novertheless, we have not yet finished. The White Paper lists 11 further substantial potential candidates for privatisation, ranging from British Rail to Companies House, and my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has recently opened discussions with colleagues to identify the scope for further developing the successful privatisation programme of the past decade, as he said earlier this week in the speech from which I have just quoted.

Thirdly, we believe in encouraging a productive partnership wherever possible--

Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) : The right hon. Gentleman refers to activities that it was appropriate to move out of the state sector. I am sure that he will agree that there are some activities for which privatisation is quite inappropriate and which should not be moved out of the public sector. When the present Secretary of State for

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Northern Ireland was the Attorney-General, he said that among the things that should not be moved out of core governmental work was work relating to national security or with other specially sensitive implications.

In that context, will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the recent decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to approve market testing of security work carried out for members of the public in Northern Ireland who are regarded as being under a particular terrorist threat? Does the right hon. Gentleman regard it as appropriate that that activity, which is especially sensitive and which relates to national security, should now be moved out of the core of Government?

Mr. Waldegrave : Doubtless my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will observe closely the conditions that the hon. Gentleman has quoted back at him. It is impossible for me to assess a particular case, but such considerations must certainly be high on the list that it would be proper for the Secretary of State to have before him when considering contracting any such activities out. It must be right to emphasise that.

Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, Govan) : The Minister said that he wanted to clarify the activities that needed to be undertaken in the public sector and the activities that could be moved to the private sector : some activities could be moved while others could not. Does he agree that he is assuming that things should automatically go out to the private sector unless they have to be kept in the public sector? He is not saying, "Let us consider whether activities can better be undertaken in the public or the private sector." He is starting from the assumption that it is better for them to be out of the public sector. That does not give those providing services in the public sector a fair chance of competing. The right hon. Gentleman is weighing the balance ideologically.

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He has not quite understood my position, and it is helpful that he has given me an opportunity to clarify it. Where a policy decision is taken that the state is involved in an activity in which it need not be involved, that is a proper activity for privatisation, but where the policy decision is that responsibility should remain with the state and accountability should remain with Ministers, it is right to market-test, but there must be, and must be seen to be, a level playing field between in-house potential bidders and any out-of-house contractors. I shall come to some assurances on that in a moment. There are matters in which public and private sectors can co-operate. Obvious potential candidates are transport and construction, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in his autumn statement measures to stimulate such partnerships. At the same time, there are other opportunities for a constructive and efficient partnership. Some activities may still clearly need to be the ultimate responsibility of the public sector, as I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson), but can be contracted out none the less. The process of deciding whether contracting out will be the most efficient way of carrying out a function is called market testing. It works by putting the function in question out to competitive tender, with internal and external bids assessed against the same criteria. That is another key approach in our reforms of public service management. In some respects, local government is ahead

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of central Government in applying it ; yet, like privatisation, it has relevance to a wide range of Government activities.

Results so far are encouraging, as the benefits of the process are twofold : first, it is axiomatic that where an activity is market-tested and an external bid succeeds, it will be because we can get the quality of service we need at better value for money than under the current method of provision ; secondly, where an in-house bid succeeds, the process of opening up that public sector activity to competition in itself often creates opportunities for greater effectiveness. Consequently, in central Government, savings arising from market testing, at any rate in its initial stages, have typically been around 25 per cent. of the original cost even where the activity has remained in-house.

Elsewhere in the public service, much has been going on ; in the NHS, market testing has been mandatory in some support areas since 1983. In 1990 -91, that produced savings of over £120 million, as well as other benefits through improved management and service standards. In the services provided by local government, compulsory competitive tendering to stimulate greater efficiency and to secure better value through competition between in-house organisations and private contractors has been going on for many years, and, as studies by the Audit Commission and INLOGOV have shown, has produced savings of, for instance, up to 15 per cent. in building cleaning and 10 per cent. in refuse collection, with improvements in the clarity and objectiveness of contract standards.

That is a valuable start, but, as I said, market testing, particularly in central Government, is still at an early stage. The White Paper makes it clear that the targets agreed for market testing for central Government activities in the period until September 1993 are enormously more ambitious than anything undertaken so far. Targets have been set for more than 20 Government Departments covering activities valued at about £1.5 billion--a more than fiftyfold increase over last year's targets.

Those activities, which the White Paper lists, range from building and estate management to internal audit, from typing services and pensions administration to information technology and training. The list clearly shows that the scope for contracting out has moved beyond the longer- established examples of support services such as catering and cleaning to activities that have traditionally been somewhat more protected from comparison with the outside world.

Mr. Trimble : The Minister is talking about contracting out--or the possibility of contracting out--to the private sector a whole range of activities in addition to those that he mentioned earlier. Has he considered the implications of bids coming from the private sector outside the United Kingdom? With the single market and modern communications, and given that back office work can be located some distance away, a significant amount of that work--particularly that of a more general clerical nature--could be contracted out to people outside the United Kingdom. Are the Government aware of the problem, and are they likely to introduce safeguards to protect against it?

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Mr. Waldegrave : I think that I am right in saying that we would breach European Community single market rules if we did not advertise such contracts in the European Community journal. There is nothing new about that. When I first arrived in the Environment Department as a junior Minister, all the rate support grant work of the sort that the House debated after the Secretary of State's statement earlier this afternoon was done on American computers and bounced back over the Atlantic off satellites, because there were no computers in Britain which were big enough to handle it, which seems rather extraordinary. So there is nothing new about this.

The possibility raised by the hon. Member for Govan is conceivably real, although I doubt that it will be real in terms of the sort of work that he has specified. It is more likely that foreign-owned companies might win part of the work, but I do not think that there is any objection to that.

Mr. Davidson rose--

Mr. Trimble rose--

Mr. Waldegrave : I must get on. Perhaps the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) wants to intervene once more.

Mr. Trimble : The Minister says that he does not think the problem will be serious. I assure him that it may be a serious problem for Northern Ireland, which has the only land frontier in the United Kingdom. I do not think that he should discount the extent of the problem in the south of England. The continent is not that far away.

Mr. Waldegrave : The benefit of the single market is that we are part of the continent, according to my political perception. The single market works both ways. It is possible for private sector companies to get work from other countries. I have no doubt that some of them get work from the United Kingdom or from other Governments in Europe.

Mr. Davidson : Does the Minister agree that there is a genuine danger that data processing work could end up going to other parts of the world? Is he aware that a company in the Philippines has bid for data processing work for the Metropolitan police? As I understand it, the company meets all the criteria. That puts a different slant on the Government's dispersal policy. The Government have a view on dispersing civil service and Government work from the south-east of England. I am in favour of that because I should like to see work dispersed to areas such as mine, not to areas such as the Philippines. Does the Minister agree that there is a genuine danger under his policy that work will go to all the airts and pairts, not to areas to which the Government would want it to go?

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman is scaring himself unnecessarily. I believe that he is a sensible man. He, like hon. Members on this side, has argued passionately for the ratification of a GATT agreement to free international trade. One of the results of freeing international trade is that such trade takes place, and that must be welcomed. It is unlikely that there would be international trade in software, because the British software industry is extremely strong. However, if we have international trade in software, we must judge the benefit of such trade to the consumer and to citizens against other considerations.

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We should not frighten ourselves too much. After all, local government, which has undertaken competitive tendering for years, has not yet managed to transfer all its work to the Philippines, as far as I know.

I know that public service employees, the unions, Opposition Members and, indeed, those on the left in politics often express opposition to market testing. The view is not unanimous. Among those who have paid tribute to the opportunities and results of market testing are contributors to the Institute for Public Policy Research/Trades Union Congress publication "Meeting Needs in the 1990s" who acknowledge :

"There have been gains from Government legislation the councillors had organised services but they had never specified what those services had to achieve. Now they have had to make the governmental decision--they have had to choose what standards of service they want".

Two years later we find the general secretary of the Federated Union of Managerial and Professional Officers in local government writing in The Times :

"there is no doubt that it"--

compulsory competitive tendering--

"sharpens up the way that we manage services".

Nevertheless, people continue to be concerned. Some of that concern comes from defence of the existing status quo and an unwillingness to see whether services can be better provided--indeed, from traditional producer vested interests. I cannot deal with that concern, but some concern comes from misunderstanding and can be addressed.

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