By Vivienne Russell | 23 April 2013
The state’s ‘monopoly’ on the provision of public services should be swept away in favour of a system of choice and competition, according to centre-Right think-tank Policy Exchange.
Its report, Better public services: a roadmap for revolution, also attacks trade unions’ hold on the public sector. One of its recommendations is that emergency workers should lose the right to strike.
Other proposals include legislation to give people the right to exercise choice in the public services they consume. Online comparison sites should also be developed to allow people to compare local hospital, GP and care home performance.
Sean Worth, the report’s author and a former Number 10 adviser, said: ‘As Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair showed, taking on reactionary elites requires concerted political effort. It’s time to put the public first. People should be able to compare, choose and switch services from an open field of providers. In turn, the machinery of government must shed outdate biases and embrace competition for the force of social good.’
He pointed to the widening income gap between rich and poor, which Worth said could be laid at the door of state-controlled and delivered public services.
‘A new approach is needed which allows business and charities to compete on a level playing field, driving up the standard of health care and education available to the British public.’
The research was backed by a YouGov poll, which Policy Exchange said ‘overwhelmingly’ showed members of the public wanted greater choice and competition in public services.
It found that one fifth of parents (and one third in cities) felt they could not access a good school in their area. More than half (60%) believed that if a school, GP surgery or NHS dentist was providing a poor service, it should be taken over by a business or a charity.
Trades Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady dismissed the report as ‘no more than a call for the wholesale privatisation of all public services’.
She added: ‘The British people do not want US-style profit-making introduced into services like the NHS.’
Commenting on the report’s proposed curbs on trade unions, O’Grady said: ‘The truth is that union members – particularly in the emergency services – are always reluctant to take strike action and only do so when no other way of resolving a dispute is available. Even then, it is only after a proper ballot and with emergency cover plans in place.’
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