Mutuals: A blueprint for the future?

According to a recent article in the Guardian the Government are very much in favour of 'mutuals' this is the process where public servants can club together and effectively opt-out of the public sector.

As a former public servant I must say I always felt that myself and my colleagues could do a better job than our senior managers who seemed to be handpicked for their ability to lurch from crisis to crisis whilst maintaining a veneer of optimism.

The idea of mutuals trouble me though. Much of my interest at university (in fact I'm currently in negotiations about a potential Phd on this very topic) is around how organisational characteristics impact on the public service ethos; in other words is the profit motive found in the private sector inconsistent with public service ethos of the voluntary and public sectors? The answer you may be surprised to hear is that it is not necessarily the case, in fact the opposite may be true; that is in some circumstances for-profit organisations may contribute the public good more effectively that the private or public sectors.

This view is against conventional wisdom, but a great example is provided by the Body Shop. Seen as left-field and pioneering when they were first set up the virtues they champion have been absorbed into the mainstream. All that within a for-profit model which would have been inconceivable in the voluntary or public sector. I am aware that I have defended the public service ethos of the public sector in the past and my views have not necessarily changes, I still beleive that the public sector possesses a particular strength in this aspect, but rather I am more pragmatic about which sectors should deliver services. the way I see it is very much a case of 'horses for courses'; in some instance the public sector is best, in others the qualities of the private or voluntary sectors can be better.

The problems however, centre around the pressures such 'mutuals' may find themselves under. It appears they will be a hybrid of all three sectors and will need to balance public service with profit making. The example given in the article of Cleveland Fire Brigade presents one example; on one hand the organisation has a public service committment committed to providing services to the public, but this will need to be balanced against profit making activities. This means decisions will need to be made in the future as to how best to allocate resources, should a fireman be on standby in case of a fire, or would it be better if he/she was off conducting a paid consultancy to bring in extra cash. This is not far fetched speculation, but a real issue as in the voluntary sector the issue of 'mission drift'; that is abandoning an organisations core mission to chase the funding on offer has become a real and recognised issue in the voluntary sector, first through a glut of funding opportunities and latterly through a scarcity of funding.

The answer to these dilemmas is that there should be a level of accountability, but accountability to who? Local councillors perhaps, but what if an organisations area of operation overlaps several authorities boundaries then who takes the lead and is local government really an effective tool for this? In addition the more mutuals there are, the harder it is to trace accountability. In the NHS and public services as they stand there is a clear chain of command. Numerous mutuals operating in different areas may well be hard to keep track of and their opaqueness could prevent accountability from the public and local media.

I do beleive that there is a case for challenging the monopoly of the public sector, but any moves need to be done with extreme caution and lessons learnt from the experience of transferring services from the public to voluntary sector.

Just how well thought through is Government policy?

Just how well is policy thought out. If the current Tuition fee debacle is anything to go by then the answer has to be very badly if at all.

Just take one paragraph from the guardian today which tellingly says:

The number of universities declaring that they wish to charge students the highest amount from next year has caught ministers by surprise, with the majority of institutions planning to charge more than £7,500 a year.

Now, I clearly remember government representatives on television stating that there would be a wide range in terms of fees charged by institutions and that students would be able to then make a choice from this range. Let me just say that the commodification of education is not something I condone at all, in fact it is something I vigourously oppose, but also worryingly it seems that if ministers have got it this wrong on what is comparitively a rather simple market to analyse then what does this say about the basis of policy in other areas such as around social care a much more complex entity.

And the reason why universities are charging high fees... It's because they know demand will still be there even if they charge students extortionate rates. Why? Because university still represents chasing the dream to most young people. It is still seen as virtually the only the route to a career, home-ownership and the middle class. Universities know, even if ministers don't that with few alternatives, people will be prepared to pay for this dream.

Gadaffi and the LSE

This may of course just be an isolated case, but am I alone in wondering whether the much vaunted and terminally embarrasing link between Gaddafi regime and the LSE rings alarm bells when it comes to the plans of exposing much more of the public sector to market imperitives and the influence of filthy lucre?

The Cameron Plan

If you want to know what Cameron's vision of the future for public services looks like you could do a lot worse than to read this BBC news piece

The plan isn't a particularly revolutionary one; it's more of a continuation down the path we started out on with the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. The legislation which instituted the purchaser provider split.

The state, under Cameron's plan becomes like a referee. Its role setting out and enforcing the rules which govern interactions between all the players. If you want to know how this will work the model is taken from the utility privitisations where the states continued interests are represented by industry regulators such as Ofgem

Putting such a system in place is no real practical challenge, but it is a philosophical one. The chief issue is what happens to the public service ethos, can it survive a run in with the profit motive?