Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

1. What steps his Department is taking to support public bodies in contracting out public services. I announced last Wednesday that the Government are identifying a range of additional commercial models for public bodies wishing to contract out services, such as joint ventures and public sector worker mutuals, alongside traditional outsourcing options. A major barrier to this is the extremely cumbersome procurement process left behind by the previous Government. An average process here typically takes almost twice as long as it does in Germany. This makes tendering less competitive and effectively excludes many smaller suppliers and social and voluntary enterprises. We are taking steps to streamline the process.

[Stephen Phillips]

One of the problems with the delivery of public services in the past was the previous Government’s focus on delivery through either private contractors or existing local and central Government bodies. Many public sector workers were thus prevented from suggesting innovative ideas for the more efficient and cost-effective delivery of services. How will they now be encouraged to come forward with their ideas?

[Mr Maude]

We have already encouraged them to come forward with ideas. As part of the spending challenge that we launched in the summer, we invited public sector workers to come up with ideas to save money while protecting front-line services, and 65,000 of them did so, indicating a huge amount of pent-up frustration. We are now encouraging as many of them as possible who are interested not only in having ideas but in putting them into effect to form worker co-operatives to spin out of the public sector while continuing to deliver services.