Competition not so light
The prime minister might have toned down the references to competition in launching the Open public services white paper but the direction of travel is clear Ian Mulheirn is worried that the government’s open public services white paper has backed off from introducing full competition. That’s not the way it looks if you have experience […]
How can services be half-privatised?
Reading Ian Mulheirn’s blog about the government’s hesitancy in privatising public services, I began to wonder who is being unrealistic here and whether the government really understands what it is now suggesting when it proposes a bigger role for the voluntary sector. When David Cameron said back in February that he wanted to open up […]
Charity cuts: who started them?
Eric Pickles’ announcement on 1st March that councils will be in trouble if their cuts target the voluntary sector started a debate about whether councils are guilty or not. This is presumably what the Secretary of State wanted when he accused local authorities of being ‘high-minded’, not listening to the sector and failing to give […]
Fact and fiction on markets
Ian Mulheirn, director of the Social Market Foundation,wrote on the PF Blog this week welcoming the prime minister’s article in the Daily Telegraph . This called for competition to be the norm in public services. The PM argued that what has prevented decentralisation is that Whitehall wants to hold the purse strings. It should now relinquish them and allow the market to […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on