01 August 2008
The Labour Party has signalled encouragement for councils to build more homes and a central role for directly employed staff in public service delivery. But its national policy forum stopped short of backing tax changes and greater union rights.
The Warwick forum on July 26–27 followed Labour's catastrophic by-election performance in Glasgow East but did not produce sweeping changes in party policies.
Changes to industrial relations law to increase union rights were ruled out and demands for tax changes such as a windfall tax on energy companies were also rejected. The forum endorsed recent government policy on welfare reform, crime and the NHS, including the controversial polyclinics.
Union leaders welcomed an apparent shift in emphasis towards in-house delivery of public services, and moves to ensure more rights and pay equality for staff employed by contractors.
A policy document on public services said: 'We are committed to maintaining and developing a central role for public provision and a directly employed workforce.' But it made clear that there would still be a role for private and voluntary providers offering innovative services.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: 'Importantly for us, it affirms the central role of the public sector in delivering public services. It makes clear that direct provision should be the preferred option – and that privatisation is not the way ahead.'
But James Crabtree, an associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research, highlighted the emphasis on private sector provision in the welfare green paper and DeAnne Julius's report on the 'public services industry'.
'I'd be very surprised if [the policy forum decisions] represented a significant roll-back of that,' he said. 'My sense is that, almost surprisingly given the situation the government finds itself in, there doesn't seem to be much in terms of concessions [to the unions]. I'd be pretty sceptical that the government has reversed its direction of travel.'
A Local Government Association spokesman said: 'It needs to be councils' own decision as to whether services are provided in-house or contracted out.'
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