Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700
- 719)
THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER 2001
CLLR SIR
JEREMY BEECHAM,
CLLR GORDON
KEYMER AND
CLLR SIR
HARRY JONES
700. That is very interesting. We have had some
witnesses tell us that the public service ethos involves going
the extra mile and you are telling us in Wales it is the extra
mile and a half, are you not?
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Absolutely.
701. Which is interesting. What I really want
to ask you about, it is the only question I have really got for
you, is this: I put it to you that there is no connection at all
between standards of service provided by local authorities and
whether they get rewarded or punished at the ballot box. Therefore
there is no meaningful accountability for performance at all.
If that is the case, is the Government not right to sort it out?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) I do not accept the premise
actually. My colleagues can speak for themselves. It is not my
experience that providing people are aware of shortcomings in
service that they do not punish their local representatives. Part
of the problem is that they may not be very well informed about
how a council is performing in the less obvious spheres. They
can see if bits are unkempt, if there is graffiti and abandoned
cars abound and so on, and they are very vocal about that. They
may be less well informed about what is going on in social services
or education and it is incumbent on government and local government
alike to make sure they have accessible and useful information
on which to make judgments. I do not think the public is acquiescent
to low standards of public service and increasingly, particularly
in an era where local government has moved quite significantly,
I think, into decentralising, into area committee processes, into
involving the public, whether it is strategic partnerships or
citizens bureaux or whatever, pressure is being brought to bear
on elected members. I do not accept the premise and in any event
I do not think, even if there was some truth in it, that would
be a justification for government substituting its judgment or
the actual or potential judgment of the local electorate because
they are too remote from the issue.
702. I find this to be the heart of it. You
would expect to find a correlation, would you, between what councils
are doing in terms of service performance and what happens to
them when they meet their maker? Can you demonstrate any kind
of correlation at all?
(Cllr Keymer) I certainly can. I come from an authority
which has elections three years out of four. We have been hung
for ten years. We are now under one party control but over that
time the issues which were fought over were very much service
issues. In fact, whenever the budget came up and people going
for a lower level council tax, the argument was what council services
would you cut and the whole question of preservation of services
and providing them more efficiently was fundamental. Indeed, we
had a famous occasion when we transferred refuse collection contracts
and over that period it was a total disaster and the party concerned
got very heavily punished at the ballot box. I think for local
people the provision of services is fundamental. The idea of the
highest quality services at lowest cost is something the public
do understand.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) There is a paradox as well.
The greater the extent to which the Government imposes its prescription
on local authority and retains very strong national control, the
easier it is for the local council to blame anything which goes
wrong on the Government. To a degree, therefore, the less Government
is involved the likelier it is that members and officers, for
that matter, alike, will be held more to account for what is happening
in an area than if there is something they can blame.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Could I suggest that one of
the problems—in fact I am really following on from a point
that Jeremy has made—that what we have is the utter confusion
in the mind of the electorate as to who any longer is responsible
for what. Certainly it has to be applicable in the case of Wales
with an Assembly and another tier, another dimension in terms
of the field of responsibility. One of the reasons that in actual
fact we have tried to separate the elections in Wales which are
coming up for local government in 2003 is to take it away from
being held on the same day as the Assembly election, precisely
for the reason that there is this combination of a lack of understanding
as to whom, one is going to vote in support of, and who one is
going to vote against as a consequence of. There is this lack
of clarification of where that responsibility lies. If you add
on top of that the new directions that the Government itself is
bringing in in terms of, for example, in our case, ELWA, which
is taking over post 16 education with a comparable situation in
England, I think again they have great difficulty in wrapping
their minds around any longer who is to be held responsible if
there is a failure in the sixth form education. They still see
the local education authority seemingly responsible for education
and yet they have been told on the other hand that there is now
a body that has now taken over responsibility to ensure that there
is this success that lies with those. I think for your average
person in the street, not those who necessarily are the ones who
perhaps delve in and have a better understanding of local government,
but for your average person who goes along to the ballot box to
make that cross, I think they have great difficulty in understanding,
indeed, where, as you say, the day you meet your maker takes place,
they really have some lack of understanding as to who comes under
the maker and who does not.
703. Politicians of course go around—we
are all politicians—saying "Vote for us, we will make
it better. Let us carry on doing it". The other lot says
"No, they are not, let us have a go". On the whole the
electorate does not know what is going on. We know that, is it
a fifth of local councils have one party controlling more than
80 per cent of the seats on the council so there is no real choice
going on there. When the Government comes in and says "Why
do we not tell people what is going on? Why do we not produce
a league tables of councils like the league of hospitals and schools",
does it not just help electoral choice if we can see where we
are on the league table and whether things are functioning properly
or not?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) I think it is very important
that people have meaningful information that will help them compare
what their council is doing or not doing with what other councils
are doing. I think we have to be a little cautious about the weight
that is put on the evidence which may be assembled because it
may not necessarily be all that robust, the judgments may not
be all that robust. If you look at, for example, the recent announcements
around other health or social services authorities, some of the
data on which those judgments were made was fairly suspect. Yes,
in principle, certainly we need people to be informed; yes, we
think it is possible to broadly categorise authorities but not
too much weight in terms of, for example, applying rewards and
penalties, at least from the Government, should be attached to
that process. It is probably also a question of raising expectations
amongst both the electorate and for that matter amongst elected
members. Here I am hopeful the new scrutiny process as it beds
in will encourage a more creative attitude on the part of elected
members, a more aspirational attitude than the previous system
which relied heavily on whipped decisions going through formal
structures where, frankly, the exercise of independent judgment
was not a matter which attracted much of a premium in terms of
local political approval. The new system does have the potential
of achieving the objective which must be a better informed electorate,
because in our view the right people to judge a council's performance
are the local electorate and not an external inspectorate, although
the inspectorate can help people form a balanced view.
MR
HEYES
704. It is probably best addressed to Sir Jeremy.
I cannot find a way of making this into a question, Chair, so
I am going to make a statement and invite your comments on it.
That is probably the best thing to do. I am a local authority
councillor still, I am a fairly new MP and I am trying to do both
jobs at the moment. My local authority has a fairly good record,
one I have been proud of over the years. We were a best value
pilot authority. We have had good reports on our best value inspections.
We passed our local authority Ofsted with flying colours, good
SSI reports, okay on all of the audit commission performance indicators.
We have attracted large sums of money to the town through competitive
bidding, all of which required us to demonstrate that we were
working well with our partners and had got rigorous systems to
ensure delivery in place and so on and so on. The kind of authority
which in the proposals under the Local Government White Paper
I would hope would be regarded as "high performance"
or at least "striving" in the categories which would
warrant more freedom from Government and possible extra resources.
The irony of that is that the local authority is Oldham which
just this week has been declared a prime example of public service
failure, where community leadership has not delivered for the
community and where amongst the recommendations made on what we
need to do is one that we should have mentors sent in to support
local authority officers and councillors in putting the house
in order. The Audit Commission advisers should come in (and tell
us how to do better. The Improvement and Development Agency) will
be a great source of assistance and so on. I see a massive contradiction
in all of that and that is the commentary I would welcome your
observations on.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) Clearly I shall have to
vote for your authority. Wonderful. You actually illustrated the
slight reservation I expressed about the robustness of some of
the material on which these judgments are based. We had a similar
example, actually, perhaps even more pointed, when the Secretary
of State for Health announced his list of goodies and baddies
in terms of social services provision, amongst the baddies were
two or three authorities which within days had received very warm
endorsements from the Social Services Inspectorate. I suppose
the judgments were made on a set of performance indicators which
were of doubtful relevance and even more doubtful weighting amongst
themselves, whereas a more qualitative assessment by the Inspectorate
can produce an entirely different result. I think one of the aspects
of this is that even a high performing authority is likely to
have some areas of activity where the performance is not as great
as it might be. I have not read the Oldham Report yet, but we
are having a meeting about this issue next week with the authorities
covered in this report. It may be there are some aspects around
ethnicity, community relations and so on, where it has not been
performing to the same high level it has been with perhaps its
basic provision of services. I think we would be arguing that
what we need to do is to help authorities achieve the highest
level of service delivery and for that matter of governance generally
and seek to incentivise that process but without invoking a penalties
or rewards approach which can be demoralising and counter-productive.
We do need, as far as we can, both objective measures of outputs
and qualitative assessment, including assessment by those who
actually use services of what is delivered on the ground. Even
then we are not going to get a completely objective picture of
what is happening in any given area. These matters are necessarily
somewhat subjective.
705. Is it not just the case that local authorities
are just whipping boys for society's ills?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) It is always possible for
that to happen and particularly with a local media that has decreasingly
covered local government I think thoroughly and effectively for
them to latch on to the sensational and to portray them as a source
of bad news and failure. Unfortunately, we have to live with that
I guess but then that is partly down to us to communicate better
with the people we represent.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) At the end of the day, is there
not an argument that there will always be this variation? It really
comes down to the question of local choice. I always find it illustrative
in terms of the measurement that is applied for, say, beacon councils
where you have authorities who can demonstrate excellence which
justifies a beacon status but it is very, very difficult when
they carry out the necessary examination in terms of their comparability
in terms of all services, it is very few authorities where you
cannot find that there are peaks and troughs in terms of what
is delivered. To some extent that might well be on the basis of
the perception at a local level, indeed of a local community,
of what is a priority for them. I think it is one of our arguments
that we have against the concept of ring fencing, the ring fencing
does not allow for that latitude of local choice, local direction
from the community itself and the authority to be able to respond
to it to bring about that type of change. Where you allow that
to happen then you will have this variability. It might well be
that the media has a different view in terms of what ought to
be the priorities that should reside within the locality.
706. Surely that is a myth, is it not? Undoubtedly
extra resources have gone into councils in recent years but they
have almost always been ring fenced or passported through to schools,
for example, and the scope for elected members to make the decisions
you suggest is not there?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) Not sufficiently there.
We are very concerned about the whole ring fencing argument. Even
this latest settlement, which was broadly a good settlement, now
raises the total of ring fencing and specific grants monies to
about 15 per cent of the total which is three and a half times
more than it was four years ago. There is a real concern about
the degree to which local choice can be effectively exercised
but there are still areas where that is possible, particularly
in the new process of local public service agreements. We think
there is a real opportunity and in the extension of it that we
proposed to Government, which is endorsed in the White Paper,
which we call Partnership for Ambition, a real opportunity to
experiment with local freedoms and flexibilities and widen that
capacity for innovation and choice at a local level involving
Government and the other partners.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Of course your statement is
not true for Wales, it is true for England but in Wales there
is no hypothecation. Interestingly, we saw an increase in the
amount of money that was being allocated to education on the basis
of the freedom to make that judgment at a local level as to whether
or not local authorities felt that it was a number one priority.
I think this year we are talking in terms of 9.4 per cent with
the freedom to make that judgment and that judgment has demonstrated
that it is considered a priority and local authorities are acting
in a very judgmental manner in terms of taking it forward. I think
our argument has always been that where you have high standards
as opposed to low standards there is a need to be pushing more
money in the areas that need to uplift, whereas you can actually
plateau it off in the areas which are retaining the standards
and the degree of excellence that one would seek in education
and can be moved perhaps into social services in those individual
authorities. I think it is with that type of local individual
balance that the whole question of ring fencing becomes just anathema.
707. That seems commendable. That supports Sir
Jeremy and is supported all the way through the White Paper, which
seems to work in the opposite way to the way you have decided
your aspirations in Wales. The rewards go to people who can demonstrate
high performance.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) The rewards are, I think,
fairly modest. The thrust of the White Paper is to extend freedoms
and deregulation across the piece because they really are to be
regarded as tools and not rewards. There are some additional goodies
for so-called high performing authorities but they are not of
a sufficiently radical character really to be divisive or to suggest
that we should be over-anxious about them. The freedom to absorb
fines for litter, for example, is not earth shaking in its application.
I think they lean towards incentivising rather than dividing.
I am not saying we are entirely comfortable with that but it could
be worse. In the health service, in some respects it is worse
because it is much more restricted and much more designed actually
to reward a relatively small number of authorities. One of the
good things about the White Paper is that it is very explicit
in that it does not propose to divide up local government into
four categories, quartiles and the rest. The aspiration is that
everybody should be encouraged to move through to be a high performing
authority. As I say, these fairly modest rewards or incentives
will be available then to them.
(Cllr Keymer) Can I just take up the point about whipping
boys, which is an interesting one. The problem is, of course,
exacerbated by the Government. We had this recently with the statement
on the settlement when the impression given to the public was
that there would be no unreasonable—whatever unreasonable
is—increase in council tax. Yet we know particularly with
the problem of Social Services that the sort of figures involved
will be substantially higher than those being put forward by the
Government. This makes a very difficult background for local authorities
to work in. It would be good to see, perhaps, the close working
between Government and local government, including some sort of
agreement on the statement the Government is going to make about
the money it is paying out to local government and, of course,
what we see very much is greater freedom in raising local funding,
in particular the return of the business rate which, it is always
seems to me, is the most straight forward way of returning a great
deal of local autonomy to those people who are really interested
in the local area, including local businesses.
Kevin Brennan
708. As somebody who probably fulfils most of
the stereotypes of a Labour MP as a former teacher, former special
adviser and former councillor.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) Guardian reader?
709. Occasionally. Perhaps you will forgive
me if I play devil's advocate and probe around perhaps some of
these things. I would like to ask Harry, do you think that Welsh
local authorities after devolution are getting a soft ride compared
with the English ones?
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) No, I think I would absolutely
refute that. I suppose the area where that must now arise as a
question mark in the minds of perhaps the less understanding probably
is in the changes in terms of best value. I think that could be
a classic example where, as colleagues may or may not be aware
around the table, in keeping with the legislation in England,
where Stephen Byers is now having a review of best value, precisely
the same thing is now being done in Wales. The intention in Wales
in actual fact is to abandon the name "best value" because
we believe it has become so stigmatised, so unacceptable, that
to leave it in place even if you make changes is still going to
colour views to such an extent that basically you are never going
to achieve the changes we would like to achieve. So they have
done away with the name and introduced a new name for it in Wales,
invented by Edwina Hart.
Chairman
710. You had better tell us what it is, I think.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) The Wales Improvement Programme.
Mr Heyes
711. Whipping boy.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) It is the Wales Improvement
Programme and basically we believe that name is sending out the
type of message of what it is intended to be about as opposed
to the one previously. I must say that best value when it came
in had the total support of all authorities, everybody came behind
it as the alternative to CCT. I am moving away a little bit but
I just want to preface the reason why. I think best value was
destroyed by the over-regulation and the inspection regime that
has been put in place. The shift that we are now seeking under
the Welsh Improvement Programme from best value in the guise that
it was previously is to try and move away from the degree of regulation
and the inordinate amount of money which was being spent on that.
For example, in Wales I think we are spending £29 million
on regulation, that is inspection. We are actually spending in
terms of improvement three million. There is something totally
out of sync in terms of how that is being handled.
Kevin Brennan
712. The appropriate old Welsh saying, if I
can cut across you, is you do not make a goose any fatter by weighing
it all the time.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Absolutely right, and nothing
is ever improved by inspection either. It is really against that
background that we are looking at this change. Many people have
the impression, as you might be alluding to, that we are doing
away with best value and whatever is going to take its place is
not going to be as strong as the previous body. That is not the
case, because there is a great deal of work going on, a great
deal of collaboration, to ensure the outcomes are those that the
best value originally was intended to be about. What we are looking
for is to shift some of that money that is being used on regulation
and inspection into achieving improvement.
713. Would you say then as a consequence of
devolution that actually local government in Wales is now in a
better position, perhaps, than England to deliver public services?
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) I think in actual fact that
in many ways what is happening in Wales could well be the pilot
for England. Could I say that my belief, and Jeremy would bear
me out on this—I have been a passionate believer in regionalism
for England because I believe that the full benefits of devolution
going down to all areas is not going to happen until it occurs
in England in the same way that it has happened in Scotland and
in Wales. There are great benefits for local government and for
public services as a consequence of devolution.
714. Could I draw us back on to the public service
ethos, which is something we have been discussing. Could I put
it to you that it is still too common a case in local government
in England and Wales that actually what motivates essentially
not everybody but what motivates the activity of local government
is a public sector ethos rather than a public service ethos. Many
councils are dominated, partly because of the electoral system
they have, by a majority of councillors from a majority party
who are elected on a minority of votes, who meet in secret in
party groups and take all the decisions including, for example,
as Sir Harry mentioned earlier on, giving themselves an extra
year without an election in Wales, extending it from 2003 to 2004.
On those bodies there are representatives of the trade unions
who work for the council and who put political pressure on their
colleagues in the dominant group to make sure that their producer
interests are served above and over the interests of the public.
As a consequence a lot of the services—refuse collection
and other services—provided by the council are not up to
the standard they would be if the council actually was following
a public service ethos rather than a public sector ethos. What
would your response be to that charge?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) I think that is kind of
"all our yesterdays" stuff. It would be a fairly legitimate
accusation to make of perhaps part, maybe much, of local government
20 years ago. I think there has been a significant change and
best value, for all the reservations that Harry has correctly
expressed about it, has, to a degree, exemplified that, because
we have moved to a position where you have to look at the quality
of services, you have to involve your community in the design
of those services, you increasingly and rightly have to offer
choice to the user of services where that does not distort the
objectives of public policy. You have to operate in a more open
way. The scrutiny system, which I touched on before, I think will
facilitate that, although it will take time to bed in as a new
approach to local politics. I think the days when it would be
a reasonably fair accusation to make of past experience when there
was a producerist culture prevailing have declined very markedly
indeed. We are now in general terms in a mixed economy of provision
where to a degree the concern is now to ensure that we can secure
delivery, whether that is from within the public sector or the
private sector or very broadly, and sometimes missed in this,
the third set, the not for profit sector. The concern is to make
sure the provider of services does deliver and the contracts you
enter into are actually performing. We have seen examples of success
in that context and we have seen examples of failure, both within
the public and private sectors. You do not have to go very far
from this building to see total failure of private sector contractors,
for example with housing benefits in Lambeth or Hackney. Equally,
there are cases where they have been very successful. I think
local government now would subscribe to a mixed economy and would
subscribe to a principle of choice and would subscribe to openness.
Increasingly I think this process has been reinforced with changes
which have emerged in the last few years and which are foreshadowed
in the White Paper. Again, I refer to local public service agreements
because these are designed to provide stretching targets for delivery
of locally chosen priorities, locally agreed priorities, but again
involving not merely a council and Government but with other agencies
and partners.
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Can I just make a point, I
think there is a little bit of the Lord of the Rings about your
statement. There seems to be a great deal of the prevailing myth
about local authorities. Whilst one would not argue that there
are authorities in varying degrees of efficiencies, I would have
thought the vast majority of authorities would not recognise the
comments that you have just made, particularly this myth about
the advent of local authorities having to take on private services.
In the vast majority of many services it has always been a tradition
that local authorities go outside, on house building and on maintenance
programme. I can give chapter and verse where you live cheek by
jowl and the association and the partnership have always been
very successful. What changed that tenor of the relationship was
the advent of CCT which can be held responsible for a great deal
of damage in terms of what had previously been a very successful
and worthwhile relationships with the private and public sector.
What has happened has been of great concern to myself. I think,
if you accept they (private) are the best value for example in
the field of social services where it clearly was often easily
able to be demonstrated that the private care sector could produce
under the auspices of best value a cheaper option to the local
authority providing private care. What has happened is many authorities
have either totally gone out, they have got rid of all their homes
and have gone over totally to the private sector and in many other
cases they have halved it or done it in whatever degree. What
is happening at this present moment in time in Wales which you
should be aware of, is that as a consequences of the advent of
the basic fair wage at this present moment in time the private
sector is going out in droves, and suddenly you have people who
are not able to be released and who are stacking themselves up
in hospitals waiting to come out because the number of areas they
can move to, particularly the ones they so choose to move into,
are not available for them and you have this backlog in beds in
hospitals as a consequence of it. We have actually created this
situation on the basis of something I totally support, which is
the fair wage, but equally the fact is that we have to move out
because of whether or not the public ethos is the right one. Here
is an example that if CCT had not been in place we would not have
this incredible problem of people going into homes. In some instances
the standard is such, and I say that without reservation, I would
not put a member of my family into them, yet there is very little
alternative available as a consequence of the depletion in homes
and the depletion within local authorities in their ability to
provide an alternative source.
Mr Prentice
715. Are you saying that the government is not
ideologically neutral there, that the government has a clear preference
for private sector solutions? The examples you have just given
bears that out?
(Cllr Sir Harry Jones) Initially there was not any
question of where they were trying to drive local authority services.
You have had some movement away from that in recent years with
the Labour government but there is still that underlying tenor
and I think in terms of the review that is now taking place on
best value under Stephen Byers I think those are the areas that
will need to come into consideration. In fact, we had a meeting
earlier this morning, there is a greater discretion enabling you
now in terms of the utilisation of the private sector, in terms
of the expectations you can lay upon them in terms of the deliverability
and quality they give that has to be there before you would pass
it over to them.
716. There is not a level playing field. You
cannot get a home help from Lancashire County Council these days.
Is the Prime Minister a friend of local government?
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) Increasingly if you look
at the foreword to the White Paper you will see it is warmer in
tone than we are accustomed to. There is a redressing of the balance
in process. You touch on a level playing field, I have long argued,
the Association has long argued that the restrictions on what
local authorities can do in terms of providing direct services,
not merely for their own services but for other councils and other
agencies and the public at large, ought to be lifted. We ought
to be able to compete on a strictly level playing field with other
providers, private or not-for-profit sectors alike. That is envisaged
within the White Paper and it is clear that the government will
be moving on that. I very much welcome that. It is also expands
choice.
717. Have you read the small print? I flicked
through the White Paper, are you saying there will be residual
control on what local authorities might be able to do? I always
cite the example of the local authority that lays tarmac along
a road, the marginal cost of doing somebody's drive would be close
to zero but all of the little companies out there that do this
work they would be up in arms if they thought local authorities
were going to get this kind of advantage.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) There is a phrase in the
White Paper which talks about not distorting the market. I take
it, no doubt this will come out in further discussions, if it
is to be a level playing field clearly the council cannot subsidise
its competition with other providers, that would be entirely wrong.
Subject to that it does seem to me that the restrictions on the
Local Authority Goods and Services Act can, and will, be modified
and local authorities should, therefore, be able to compete fairly
with others. I repeat, I think there is a neglected sector here,
which is the third sector, which really needs to be brought more
into the debate, especially round some sensitive areas of public
policy, where I think many of us would have some ethical reservations
about whether it is right that certain services should be for
profit at all. That does not only refer to local government but
also, health, for example, and custodial services. Many, not all,
would feel these are not appropriate functions to be carried out
for profit, where a not-for-profit alternative might be perfectly
acceptable and offer something by way of choice or just difference
in diversity.
718. Is the government line that if the public
sector does not provide to and acceptable standard then there
is always the possibility of going out to an alternative provider,
with a gun to your head.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) The alternative provider
may be another public authority, that is envisaged in the local
White Paper, if a council is not delivering a particular service
then another council might be able to provide that service or
an another public agency might be able to provide that service,
I think that is not unreasonable, providing that objective is
still to ensure that there is improvement and there is, if it
is not there now, a built-in capacity for the local authority
to deliver its own services effectively.
719. I understand the partnerships, as you describe
them, may involve other public sector organisations, but what
about the private sector? We had the man from Capita here a couple
of weeks ago, and I think his organisation was responsible for
the council tax benefits in Lambeth, which nose-dived. If the
object of the exercise is to deliver a decent service to the voters
what is wrong with moving an operation or a service over to the
private sector if, like Capita, they tell us they can do a much
better job.
(Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham) The best value process should
throw up cases where that may be an appropriate solution. That
is one of the changes that we accept and embrace really, it is
as wrong to claim that the private sector is always better than
the public sector as it is the other way round. We have to provide
the highest level of service and in certain cases it may be that
the private sector is the better bet, that is what the best value
process will demonstrate. There is a slight paradox, many of the
private sector providers derive their skills and experience from
people who work in local government and they withdraw from the
public service a good deal of skill and experience. I do not think
there is any way we can combat that. As far as the consumer is
concerned it is important that the service should be responsive
and there should be redress for them if the service fails.
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