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This Govt is intent on privatising as much as they can....

Posted by Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, at 11:04, Fri 15 March 2013:

Two important debates in parliament this week have made me really alarmed about the government’s intention to privatise as much as they can of our public services.

The first debate was about the probation service. Ministers want all but the most high-risk offenders currently supervised by probation to be supervised by private companies, like G4S and Serco, instead.

These companies would be paid by results – in other words, they would get paid more if reoffending comes down.

But there’s no evidence whatsoever that payment by results works to reduce offending. Pilots have been running in a few parts of the country to assess the idea, but now Ministers have decided to scrap them without waiting for the outcome, and rush ahead into a privatisation programme.

Nice money for their cronies in big business, but bringing huge risks to the safety of the public.

Ministers say the introduction of the private sector will lead to more innovation. I am hugely offended by the suggestion that our probation service isn’t innovative.

In Greater Manchester, we have led the way with programmes like Choose Change, which prepared those serving short custodial services for release, and supported them afterwards, organising jobs, housing, and sorting out their finances.

Ministers want to roll out this kind of support nationally for all prisoners on short term sentences, and that’s good – but why on earth get the private sector to do it, rather than learn from programmes like Choose Change?

Greater Manchester probation trust has also developed Achieve, which helps offenders get into work. There’s an enormous amount of evidence that getting a job significantly reduces the chances of someone reoffending.

Achieve works with organisations like Procure Plus, based in Old Trafford, to find offenders jobs such as working to carry out repairs and maintenance for housing associations. Over 13.5% of those on the Achieve programme got into work.

That’s much better than the rate achieved by the government’s Work Programme – which is coasting along getting only around 3% of people into work.

And who runs the Work programme for the government? The very same companies as are likely to bid for probation work.

Why would you abandon a successful probation-led programme, and hand the business to companies that are already performing so much worse?

I’m particularly worried about how payment by results will work for women offenders.

The proportion of women in the criminal justice system is relatively small. But they have very specific, and often high-level needs.

Many are mothers, so their childcare needs to be factored into sentencing.

Many have themselves been long-term victims of violence and abuse.

Many have significant mental health problems.

Dealing with these issues means that supporting women offenders is very costly. I’m worried that private companies, out to maximise profits, won’t want to incur the extra costs needed properly to support women offenders.

That could mean they’d end up being shoehorned into standard provision – and be more likely to reoffend.

In Manchester, we’ve addressed the special needs of women offenders, with the excellent Women MATTA programme. Voluntary sector organisations Women in Prison and the Pankhurst centre run the programme. By dealing with women’s underlying issues, cost to the public purse is reduced.

But will private companies be willing to work with Women MATTA to maintain this specialist provision? Or will they just want to cut their own costs?

It’s a real irony that the so-called “Conservative” party wants to break up a service that’s served us well for over 100 years. I’ll be continuing to challenge the government’s plans in parliament. Meantime, you can read the debate at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2013-03-13a.105.1&s=speaker%3A24896#g125.1

The second debate that alarmed me this week was on the NHS. The impetus for the debate was the report on the shocking events which took place at Mid Staffordshire hospital. The transcript of the debate is at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130314/debtext/130314-0002.htm#13031445000003

Everyone is horrified at the history of neglect and appalling ill-treatment of patients at Mid-Staffs over many years.

But the Tories took the opportunity to use the debate to undermine the NHS. They accused Labour of setting targets that meant that patients didn’t get the care they need, and claimed we took no action when things went wrong.

As Andy Burnham pointed out, this is far from the truth. No one should avoid taking responsibility for what went wrong at Mid Staffs. But Labour is proud of introducing targets that brought down waiting times – in the past, you could wait literally years for an operation, and for hours on trolleys at A+E.

In 1997, Labour came into power to inherit the Shipman inquiry and Bristol babies scandal. Terrible events, involving huge systems failures, which we set about putting right.

Prior to 1997, there was no system of independent regulation of the NHS. That’s why we established, first the Commission for Health Improvement, and after a series of mergers, the Care Quality Commission in 2009.

And we passed the Public Interest Disclosure Act to enable whistleblowers to raise concerns when things go wrong.

But the board of the hospital trust in Mid-Staffs failed to listen to concerns from staff and patients. There was a culture that wasn’t open to criticism, and the regulators and other agencies involved failed to communicate effectively.

Now it’s up to the present government to take on the recommendations from the Francis report into what went wrong at Mid-Staffs. But so far, all they’ve done is set up yet another review by another expert.

I met the chief executive of Central Manchester foundation trust last week, and asked for regular meetings with his performance team so that I can be fully informed about performance at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Trafford General.

In 2011-12, Trafford General had among the highest mortality rates in the country. I demanded to know why, and what was being done about it.

The chief executive told me that senior doctors now do ward rounds every day (unbelievably, that wasn’t always the case before). Lack of weekend cover has been addressed. And procedures have been changed so that clinicians wait for full results from tests before determining patient diagnoses. That means the hospital gets paid less quickly by the commissioners, but obviously it’s much better for patients.

And performance is kept under constant review.

That’s the kind of NHS response I want to see when things go wrong. I don’t want private companies to be swept in to “put things right”. And I do want to know when commissioners have financial or other interests in the private organisations that are getting contracts from the NHS. I’ve no reason to believe that is happening in Trafford. But we simply have no way to be sure.

This will become more and more important as care is increasingly - and rightly – provided into the community, not in hospital. And it’s very worrying that the government is insisting that services go out to competition (despite saying it would look again at the section 75 regulations on this, the position is barely changed), yet private companies are protected from freedom of information and data protection requirements.

So we won’t know who’s profiting when contracts are let.

I’m sure that ministers’ ulterior motive is to weaken and undermine the NHS as much as possible to give it the excuse for more not less privatisation. But I’m also dead sure that’s not what the public wants – and we will oppose it every step of the way.