Open Public Services White Paper

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I thank the noble Lord for coming in and assisting me, but I will still follow it through with some letters.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council. There is much to commend in this White Paper in principle, insofar as it gives greater power and responsibility to groups of individuals and third sector providers. However, will my noble friend the Minister confirm that it is not just about sell-off to the private sector for profit and that the Government really mean that this is about groups of residents, individuals and third sector organisations? Secondly, will she comment on increasing choice? While theoretically a very good thing which I strongly support, there has to be spare capacity in a public service; otherwise, choice becomes a mirage. Having spare capacity is inherently more expensive when what people want is to have high-quality services available in their immediate neighbourhoods. At a time of declining public resource, ensuring high-quality services within neighbourhoods, close to home in order to minimise the need to travel, is more important than extending, at higher cost to the public purse, the choice in a wider area.

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend should feel reassured first and foremost that it is not about just a sell-off. It is about introducing a much wider and more diverse provision of service so that people are able to enjoy a much more flexible response to their needs rather than, as so often, a stringent delivery of services through local authorities. Often as not, my noble friend will find that within an independent delivery service there is always capacity built in. It is often a prerequisite required of those who deliver services when they buy from the public sector to deliver, because it has to be delivered in their service plans in the first place. So I do not have a worry about capacity.

It is important that we are able to ensure that people who are going to use these services will be able to have a greater say in how those services will be delivered, whether those services meet their needs and, if they do not, how we can have recourse to get those services made better in responding to those needs.