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Public Services

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords and especially the Minister for a thoughtful and cross-cutting debate. I hope I made it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that I do not regard private companies, either individually or as a whole, as the great Satan. I contest one point in his speech; he said we can always trust the service users to drive forward quality. We cannot, because often in the case of public services they are vulnerable people not in a position to do so, such as children, frail elderly people or prisoners. I thank my noble friend Lady Miller, who talked about the lines of accountability being blurred, and my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, who talked from her great experience in both the public and the private sectors, and of her experience of the lessons we can learn from local government. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, has certainly whetted my appetite to read the JCHR’s upcoming reports on private care homes and asylum seekers. Her powerful speech exposed the 10 per cent information gap about prisoners. It also emphasised the importance of the achievement of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, although he is unable to be in his place today, in keeping the inspector of prisons free-standing and not part of a larger inspectorate. My noble friend Lord Wallace, in true academic style, gave us a thoughtful analysis and exposed the lack of principles and research about these matters. One thing struck home to me; people want good local schools and hospitals. If they get them, they are not terribly bothered about choice. I share the sympathy of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for the Minister having to respond to a debate such as this. She certainly put him on the spot about the figures and highlighted a number of failures, particularly in big IT contracts. Yet I do not agree with her that members of the public are indifferent as to who delivers their public services. The Minister kept talking about consumers. Consumers are not the same thing as citizens, and when we consume public services we are citizens first and foremost. I am most grateful to all noble Lords. It has been an enormously thoughtful and thought-provoking debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers. Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.