I'll be interested to learn more about how the company got in to this position. Of course it'll take a while for all the political rhetoric guff to wash through, by which time no one will probably be interested in the detail or the truth, just snippets that support their view, eg, directors salaries, private enterprise involved in public service work etc.
At least in relation to its publicly funded contracts, Carillion as I understand it adopted the same approach as all of the others.. Capita etc. their MO is. 'Get the contract.. then work out how to deliver'. Delivery is usually via sub contracts, because the primary contractor simply doesn't have the expertise and in some areas wouldn't recognise the required expertise if it got up and bit them on the arse. The sole purpose of the company is to make a surplus after subbing the work so that the bosses and the shareholders get a nice slice.
My argument is that there is no advantage to the taxpayer in this approach. It simply puts another layer of top slicing greedy bastards between the taxpayer and the service provider, not to mention massive opportunities for corruption. It is a fundamentally flawed concept which could only arise out of the Tory obsession with privatisation of everything, their touchingly quaint faith in 'the market' and their pathological hatred of social enterprise.
It is just not conceivable for this country, or probably any country, to operate it's entire public sector investment strategy without private contractors.
I don't think anyone is saying it is. There have always been specialist suppliers, particularly of armaments, medical kit, materials etc. for e.g. All of the current problems stem from the idiotic Tory idea that ANYTHING can be delivered better, simply by introducing markets and privatisation.(And, the unspoken point that all that lovely Taxpayers money is just waiting to be exploited.) But if Corbyn uttered one crucial phrase at PMQs it was 'public service ethos'. That is what drove my 30 years in public service and it is what is sadly lacking in so many areas now that 'the market' rules. Also, it is far too easy to lump in areas such as local Govt and class them as 'nationalised', when in reality they were services (libraries/parks/leisure amenities etc., etc. ) which arose out of Civic action and which Govt has basically forced into the market.
@ Mull, the point of progress is to find better ways to do things.
Of course. But whoever said that outsourcing was about doing things better? I seem to recall that most arguments in favour (When Govt has even bothered to explain itself) revolve around the alleged efficiency of the market. A very, very debateable argument, which Govt. has won largely by avoiding it.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, but on balance it is generally unlikely that a process that was acceptable in 1950 is going to be most effective today. In fact I can't really think of anything that hasn't evolved, even Morgan cars. This is why the call for 'nationalisation' doesn't get taken very seriously by a lot of people. Sure, the current process might be badly flawed but that doesn't mean the solution should be to dial the clock back.
The trouble with the above is that you are confusing 'process', with 'ownership'. The 'processes' in my profession developed incrementally over more than 100 years. It was only when successive Govts attempted first privatisation, then re-design and finally a hopeless mix of 'partial' and 'targeted' provision based on an almost total misunderstanding of
purpose and function, that they finally destroyed 100+ years of collective expertise. I can say this with confidence about what I know for fact. God only knows what else they have ruined along the way.
People are happy enough to accept the benefits of capitalism, in terms of rapidly improving safety, convenience and cost across pretty much every sector but then get up in arms when that very mechanism produces a corporate failure. You should be happy that the company was operating on such slim margins that it couldn't actually survive, the state, 1, free enterprise 0 on this occasion.
That is a bizarre assessment of reality. How much taxpayer's money has been lost? How much more will it take to complete contracts and rescue pensions? To use an old phrase.. 'The Game's Bent'
The concept of state ownership is pointless today, the only thing that matters is delivering high quality and high value. It really matters not a jot who actually 'owns' what.
That is simply bunk. If the 'the state', as a representative of the taxpayer and citizen, does not own it, it cannot guarantee to control it and thus the Taxpayer and citizen is open to exploitation and theft. This is what we are seeing with Carillion and have seen with similar 'One Size Fits All' 'contractors' when they are let loose in the delivery of Public Services. Seriously.. why do you think Carillion, Capita, G4S, Serco and the rest of the crooks miraculously appeared in the wake of Thatcher? This was not 'progress'. This was a deliberate conspiracy to defraud the UK population. And it is still happening.
Mull
