Time to end the disastrous experiment in outsourcing
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Version 0 of 1. Polly Toynbee’s powerful description of outsourcing as “a dogma that’s run out of road” is very apt (Opinion, 26 March). As a long-serving council employee and former chair of several charities in a deprived community in the north-west, I am only too aware that it is not possible, nor is it ethical, to make a profit at the expense of families and communities if their real needs are to be addressed. The recent Carillion debacle is only the tip of the iceberg because other profit-driven providers are cutting corners in order to maximise profits: the quality and quantity of delivery of contracted-out services has declined and their employment of unqualified and inexperienced staff can be shown to have contributed towards this. The destruction of targeted youth services in favour of the universal National Citizenship Service and cuts to Sure Start and children’s centres have led to an escalation in child poverty, increased child mental health concerns and an increase in knife crime. The current lack of weekend and holiday time activities for children in deprived communities is exacerbated by food and heat deprivation, and outsourcing services has led to an underresourcing of provision. Charities can be shown to be less inclined to work collaboratively because they have to compete against each other for funding. The only winners from outsourcing are the wealthy investors, and the real losers are those who have little choice but to depend on these much-diminished services. Public servants do need to be taken back into the fold because the experiment in outsourcing can be shown to have failed abysmally.Norma HornbyWarrington • Polly Toynbee’s unpleasant experience of Carillion was all too typical of the company. Here in Nottingham, the local branch of Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) managed to persuade the Nottingham University Hospital Trust to sack the firm from its facilities contract, managing cleaning, catering, maintenance, etc, a few months before they were declared bankrupt. A long-running campaign, which included displaying a giant inflatable rat outside the front entrance to the tune of UB40 singing Rat in Mi Kitchen, to illustrate the actual sighting of a rat in one of the hospital kitchens, eventually bore fruit. A further campaign to get all the staff brought back in-house was also successful and the killer fact is that once this had been done, the trust had to employ 50 extra cleaners at its two hospitals to achieve a satisfactory level of cleanliness. As ever with privatisation, the company took the money and the patients took the risk.Mike ScottNottinghamshire KONP • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters Privatisation Economic policy NHS Health Carillion Nottingham letters Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Reuse this content |