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As the Cabinet Office puts the finishing touches to its Open public services White Paper, due in a fortnight, ministers weigh up two routes for council services – privatisation or pluralism Cabinet ministers have two weeks to choose between contrasting visions for local public services provision, The MJ can reveal, after councils offered to pilot a radically-different blueprint to that outlined by PM David Cameron this week. With the coalition's White Paper on public services reform, Open public services, due in a fortnight, cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is considering a late offer from councils, and their partners, to develop an advanced form of mixed local service provision. It follows widespread concerns that the prime minister's public services vision, outlined in a Daily Telegraph column on 21 February, could become a blueprint for mass privatisation of local government, health and education. Local Government Leadership and the Centre for Public Service Partnerships last month delivered to Whitehall a joint vision for future local service provision. In a letter obtained by The MJ, dated 14 January, Mr Maude is urged to consider ‘critical means by which we could transform public services through a new shared endeavour between local authorities and private sector providers, in the context of the public's changing needs and expectations, and the fiscal and service challenges' facing the coalition. The letter is signed by senior council figures such as Oxfordshire CC's Conservative leader, Keith Mitchell, who oversees services in Mr Cameron's constituency, and Cllr Richard Kemp, leader of local government's Liberal Democrats. Crucially, it is also signed by senior private sector figures delivering public services, including executives from KPMG, CapGemini, BT, Mouchel, Citibank and Deloitte. It is also signed by executives from the social enterprises, such as employment body A4e, targeted by Mr Cameron's Big Society initiative. The letter considers the role the private sector could play in ‘modernising' public services, but recognises the important ‘role of the voluntary and community sectors as well as the wider public sector'. According to Mr Cameron's editorial, the forthcoming White Paper will break up the ‘state monopoly' on public service provision through a ‘presumption' that private, voluntary and charity bodies should be automatically handed opportunities to bid for most services. He placed the proposals firmly within the coalition's Big Society initiative and decentralisation agenda. But critics said the plan could bypass councils and intensify local authorities' role as mere commissioners, rather than providers, of fractured services which risked duplication and cost escalations. Other experts warned Mr Cameron's vision could disproportionately empower the private sector, because it offered greater economies of scale, and had the resources to bid successfully for major contracts, at the expense of other potential providers – such as the charitable sector. One local government expert warned: ‘Mr Cameron's vision is verbally pluralistic. But… it could lead to a hefty privatisation agenda, not genuinely mixed provision. The potential for such centralist edict to bypass councils means it could also conflict with what many people recognise as ‘localism'.' The LGL/CPSP letter instead warns a truly ‘joint endeavour' involving all sectors of the economy is required, with ‘each recognising that their [current] behaviour has to change'. It warns there are ‘cultural, regulatory, rule-based, political and financial impediments' to the creation of genuinely mixed service provision. To overcoming these impediments, the letter proposes a ‘number of council areas… offer themselves as developers for the new approach', which would be based on: local authorities re-focusing on customer outcomes an ‘embedded commerciality' in councils' approach to skills, commissioning finances and risk councils focusing on commissioning roles through which they become ‘blind' to the ‘sector background' of suppliers all suppliers, including private firms, demonstrating long-term commitment – beyond traditional supplier contracts – to the authority's ‘community leadership' and ‘wider public interest', including improved transparency. ‘This [blueprint] will transcend some of the debates of the past and, at local level, will have the effect of harnessing the contribution of all sectors of the economy in a manner which reflects local needs and aspirations, as expressed by local political leaderships working closely with partners,' the letter concludes. A Number 10 source said rather than contrast the prime minister's vision, the LGL/CPSP letter ‘dovetailed neatly' with Mr Cameron's plan for the Big Society.

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