To want to ban all outsourcing , tendering and rediscover the joys of institutional cohesion?

I am afraid I can't believe that everybody with a vested interest, possibly at arms-length (i.e. a relative has an interest) will declare it.
Is it right that the accountancy company that has devised numerous schemes of tax avoidance should be appointed as an advisor to the government - on tax avoidance?
However, if people are happy to believe that councillors and MPs are mainly motivated by a desire to improve the lot of their fellow men, who am I to try to shake their belief? Perhaps the numerous examples given in Rotten Boroughs in PE are just the odd few rogues. And CEOs of councils, health care trusts, etc. do not take huge pay-offs and take up an identical job in another area almost immediately.
The salaries of CEOs are mostly decided by remuneration committees. Clearly, A and B cannot recommend vast increases for each other, as the shareholders might smell a rat, so A recommends one for B, B for C and C for A. Cosy.
Ceesnan, any MP having a vested interest should not take part in any decisions regarding a particular subject.
I will leave this subject now and perhaps I should stop reading PE as the endless accounts of fraud, self-interest, and corruption just make me very angry.

Nightowl Is spot on with the agency social worker bit. Been there seen the evidence. Recruiting agents get paid commission for people recruited. The quality of staff varies enormously.
In general employment I cannot help but feel that with outsourcing and contract labour the employees are likely to feel less involved with the work they are doing as they do not develop the same relationship and loyalties and possibly care less about what happens.
I am sure most people work better if they feel that what they are doing is appreciated by someone on a personal level. We all need a few pats on the back.
How many GNrs with a regular cleaner would want to use fast changing agency workers with whom you cannot develop even a working relationship.

Yes the 111 is not a saga which brings a smile to the face is it. But not corrupt unless I am missing something. But it stems from bad management by govt rather than poor ethics. It was never going to stack up to have lots of suppliers AND save money. (just for starters) Oh and do more things than the NHS direct was doing as well.
Just like giving the whole Olympic security contract to G4S was a poor management decision.
As I said, MPs may give advice that may give unfair advantage. But they cannot give contracts. Even at the lowly levels of public life, such as school governing bodies, every meeting starts with the chair asking if anyone needs to "declare an interest" in any of the agenda items.

Is it not possible,*greatnan*, that these MPs, or some of them, were already financially involved in these companies before the possibility of outsourcing arose?

I used the example of the hacking scandal merely to illustrate that there is still widespread corruption. I could give you many examples of the awarding of contracts to companies with dodgy records, which have been detailed in Private Eye which has no axe to grind. They have not been sued by any of the individuals or companies they have 'named and shamed'.
NHS Direct was not perfect but was at least staffed by experienced nurses. In order to compete with commercial bidders for the 111 service, it put in unrealistically low bids for 11 contracts. When it was realised that a safe service could not be provided at such low cost, it pulled out of the contracts. Harmoni has a third of the contracts It beat Care UK in the bidding, but Care UK then bought up Harmoni and installed as its managing director Jim Easton, who had been with the Dept. of Health and then NHS England where he had overseen the NHS 111 procurement process. Channel 4 Dispatches secretly filmed one Harmoni manager saying 'We had a very bad service....Realistically at weekends we are still unsafe....We don't have the staff to deal with the calls that are coming in'.
The MPs register of interests shows that many are financially involved in companies which stand to gain from the outsourcing of medical services - and that does not even reveal how many of their relatives/friends have such interests.

Evidence jendurham ?
Some politicians may give their cronies tactical advice about how they might go about winning contracts but they can no longer circumvent the rules and procedures - these did not exist years ago.
Even at the level of an individual school you have to have competitive quotes for all contracts over a fairly low bar, and auditors come in to scrutinise your books and procedures with a fine tooth comb. Huge fuss if you have broken the rules.
greatnan hacking was about one of the commodities of the modern world "news" or was it "gossip" in some cases. it was not about the awarding of public contracts.

janeainsworth, T Dan Smith went to prison for what he did which was far less than government ministers do today. They get away with it, giving contracts to their friends, etc.

Unions are the only protection employees have against exploitation by their employers and it is the work they do supporting individual workers that is almost more important than that they do supporting groups.

I was very grateful to have union support when I had a bullying manager. In a previous non-unionised job I had been in a similar position and had to deal with it without support and ended up with what was essentially constructive dismissal.

What I disliked was the close connection between the union and the labour party that led to union leaders enjoying walking the nationals stage cracking their whips and claiming that they had member support to force what ever political policies they supported onto the LP. I refused to pay the political levy and rarely supported any of the national policies my union's leaders were shouting about. I also found some of the wage demands they made for employees in the company I worked for ludicrously high and unrealistic, but suspect that these were just negotiation ploys rather than real demands.

I wish I had your confidence, Jess. I am afraid I believe that there is still widespread corruption - did the hacking scandal not reveal some very worrying links between the police, big business and the press?

Agree with you Jess, Newcastle being the home of T.Dan Smith and his cronies!

Damn sight more integrity now than there used to be greatnan
I come from a borough in which the council was riddled with corruption for decades. Some of them even ended up in prison. Things are much better run now than they were in those days.

I mean public bodies!!!

Greatnan "And I agree that nationalised industries which were not being properly managed should have been overhauled, rather than privatised."

Yes, bad management has a lot to answer for, this can still be seen today in pubic bodies. Often an individual will know and recognise a problem, but knows that doing anything about it will rock the boat. They don't want to rock the boat, they are thinking about their pension, and they know their boss won't mind because their boss behaves the same way.

It is not competence that worries me - it is integrity.

Well I guess the point is that serco are massively successful in most of the things that they do, as are G4S. We only hear about problems in the news. e.g. g4s runs a young offenders centre here, without any incident that i can recall.
I don't know much about capita.
the mess up over rail franchises was due to public servants getting things wrong wasn't it. not the principle itself. ditto many of the computer systems - if public bodies make a hash of setting up a contract then it will fail.
I am you understand, putting a point of view, in the interests of debate.
Otherwise we could just all sit round going "yes it is awful what they say in the papers, it's all terrible isn't it"
There are a number of issues here...
If there were not advantages to outsourcing many large successful companies would not do it. So we know it must potentially save money.
Whether we want that money to be saved in the public sector or not is another matter.
And whether those in charge of the tendering process (public employees all) are competent is yet another.
Agree that PFI, a special type of outsourcing, was a terrible idea!

Jess, what do you feel about huge contracts being given to companies who have failed miserably? Capita? Serco and G4S prisons? The mess-up over the rail franchises? The computer systems that never worked? Even air traffic control is apparently up for grabs.
I would have no objection to the profit motive if it meant efficient services at reasonable cost, but it hasn't worked like that.
And I agree that nationalised industries which were not being properly managed should have been overhauled, rather than privatised.

Care homes are the next big scandal which will hit the headlines, I think.
Treasury Minister Sajid Javid accepted an £11,000 donation from a care home in his constituency that had failed to provide 'safe and appropriate' care for residents.

I am not sure how many words you think posters are allowed to use, but I am with Otw all the way!

Yes Jess you are right, the care staff do not get the same benefits that permanent staff used to get and in fact the ones I knew had very poor terms and conditions. I think my post was a bit unclear (trying to do too many things at once), and I was referring to the qualified social workers who earn a lot more through an agency than they would as permanent workers. That's what doesn't add up.

I agree nightowl that is it difficult to oursource social care. But my MIL seems happy with her private provider that is subsidised by council. She had a previous lot that were ok. They had to provide their own cars and no allowance. The staff may get the minimum pension but nothing resembling a local council pension surely?
otw it would be easier to debate with you if you did not use so many words at once. Hard to read I find.

I agree with you Otw except to say that there are many agency managers in the public sector now, and they are a disaster. No commitment to the service, only to their own CV and huge pay packets. They reinvent the wheel and cause mayhem and then leave for someone else - another agency manager - to repeat the process, and so on..... Those of us on permanent contracts are left feeling like the stupid ones for putting up with it. And permanent contracts are no longer secure anyway, as I found out last year when my job was removed at one stroke.

Just a few off the cuff comments after reading this thread.

France - Barrier nursing is excellent. When I was in hospital, cleaners refused to even touch my mobile, asking me to do so instead, to prevent cross-contamination. As financially adrift as the UK. Basically bankrupt.

USA - No-contract work: this does sometimes suit families. My son is on a no contract, so if there's no work, he doesn't do it, but when there is, he does, if it fits the family schedule. With a child with special needs, he is able to be around. Many 'stay-at-dads' find this a suitable way forward, as they can fit their hours around their specific needs. Having said that, it's not good for the main wage earner.

Schooling - Jess Agree with your comments on schooling.

Deserving I was a weed - but went on to get a Masters. It's never too late, eh? And what is 'getting it right' ?

I remember telling our sons [back in the 90's) that the days had long gone where you had a job for life; that they should be innovative, prepared to have more than one string to their bow and to take charge of their lives, because no one else will. Look for different opportunities, be alternative and and challenge the status quo .

Things are a bit of a mess, I agree, but the youngsters are the future. We need to look to them and educated them in lateral thinking.

An outsourced human person ? One with a family, aspirations for a steady , stable , maintainable future ? If those who managed workforces actually strengthened and united the workforce by sharing the goals and rewards ( like John Lewis, where everyone is a partner over 16 hours) then you'd perhaps ,get a better chance of effective cohesion . Music is what I do and it requires harmony gained through listening , respect , hard work and creativity ; something we all need . When those people were taking advantage of the situation , what was the management doing ? Why should the management then outsource the work despite having failed to manage effectively. They will , no doubt , get to keep their permanent jobs despite their failures. Outsourced management , me thinks , would never take off and why - because they couldn't afford the contracts ( and pay-offs) and they need sustainability - which is all any normal human wants . Is that a fact or not ? I believe in the basic goodness and equality of human beings ; I'm lucky in life despite personal pain and cannot understand how we can fail to see that sharing our wealth is only reasonable . The bottom line is not the way to run the human race - it's a way to lose the human race !

I have never seen a good example of outsourcing in social care. Not good for employees or, more importantly, for service users. Services for vulnerable people should not have a profit motive. And agency staff are paid a lot more than council employees for doing the same job, and they get leave and pension entitlement via their agency. It doesn't add up.

Outsourcing good for bottom line. Bad for employees. e.g. bins here get collected by serco. They do a very efficient job. Employees work in a very focussed way. Some of them are even women! Bet they are not on the kind of contracts they would have if they were council employees though. That is why they are used. If they took services like that back into councils and put the extra costs onto bottom line council tax would shoot up. But the down side is that there are fewer secure public sector jobs these days.
Another example of outsourcing is car industry. I know someone who works there in a now very successful plant, managing a large "temp" workforce. Why to they choose to have a temp workforce? Flexibility is one thing - if sales go up or down they can increase or decrease the workforce accordingly. Why else? Because the permanent workforce in these plants took the piss on such a spectacular scale. e.g., they routinely took their "full entitlement" of 30 sick days a year, whether or not they were sick. Another scenario was: 2 weeks factory shut down, then a large proportion of workforce took their banked time off in lieu, immediately after shut down. management tolerated this. This is not the 60s, it is within the last 10 years.
Is it any wonder that against this background when someone on one of these contracts leaves, they are replaced initially by an outsourced person?

JessM I qualified in 1968. We always had isolation units even then. We called it barrier nursing and the precautions were more stringent than nowadays. The wards etc were also much cleaner and there very little cross infection. Unlike now! I never stay in hospital longer than I can help and have even discharged myself as the state of the wards has been such that cross infection is inevitable

I agree , it is outsourcing and destroying cohesion that is ridiculously costly and ineffective !