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Outsourcing (Government Departments)

I agree that there are various interpretations of what constitutes public sector reform, and I will speak about academies in a few moments. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. On all three points illustrated in that detailed survey, the Government are out of step with the public on public service reform. Ordinary people want public services in public hands for the public good, but the Government seem to want public services outsourced to business for the good of private profit. Ordinary people want universalism, but the Government want to decentralise, to remove targets and to create local variations and postcode lotteries, so going against standardised and universal access. Ordinary people oppose rapid upheaval and fundamental reform to public services, and a case in point is the opposition to the NHS reforms. The Government have run amok with the reorganisation of the health service and forged ahead with public service reform and outsourcing at breakneck speed. It is no surprise that when Ministers make speeches on public service reform, they do so to business leaders, never to public sector workers, service users or trade union groups who work in the public sector. I want to place on the record my support, sympathy and admiration for the front-line workers who are so often treated like pawns in a game of chess, facing constant change, reorganisation and regrading, often at the whim of political elites. Workers across the public sector know that the latest policy move to the mass outsourcing of services and a free-for-all for business will be a last hurrah, because many of the changes will be irreversible. For people who work in the public service, it means an end to job security and to nationally determined pay, conditions and terms of service. Instead, national public services will become ever more fragmented, unstable and variable, offering short-term and risky employment not by the state, but by any fly-by-night private sector operator.