Opening up public services

The other day as part of our series of articles on winners from The MJ Awards 2011 I visited Wiltshire Council which won the best political team category. Virtually all the cabinet members as well as the leader Jane Scott was there to talk to me about progress as a new unitary since 2009 and it has been an impressive story.
What is interesting is their attitude to outsourcing. They may be Conservatives but they maintain they take a pragmatic view to who delivers services. They have even taken a previously outsourced service contract back in house because they felt the supplier was under-performing and say the service has since improved. They argue that had more services been outsourced it would have been difficult to make savings since they would have been tied into inflexible contracts.
David Cameron's recent White Paper on opening up public services seemed to miss this essential point namely that what matters is what works and that it is not always the case that transferring a service to an outside provider necessarily makes it always better. And the idea that a council has less potential to make savings if its services are all tied into externalised contracts adds another dimension.
The private good-public bad or public good-private bad argument is a stale debate that has long outlived reality. Local government has been dealing with mixed provision for decades and knows there is no right or wrong about delivery. The public doesn't care and pragmatic councillors, like those at Wiltshire, will make their own minds up about who is best placed to deliver the best services to their residents.
I'm away now for two weeks in Italy - which considering the economic circumstances coulld prove interesting!