Local government’s largest trade union has warned Whitehall against plans to transfer staff to social enterprises, as ministers seek new avenues of public service provision.
Unison leader, Dave Prentis, said the Cabinet Office’s plan to create an extra 25,000 posts across social enterprises would mean swathes of workers being forced from the NHS and local government and into the social business sphere.
He warned that although diversifying public sector provision appealed to ministers wary of big business in the current economic climate, small social enterprises would struggle to compete with large, established private providers of public services.
‘The rapid push to move 25,000 workers out of NHS and local government into social enterprises is an alarming direction for the Government to be going in. With the private finance markets set to become even more volatile and dole queues rising daily, the Government needs to focus on securing jobs and services,’ Mr Prentis warned.
‘It should not be hiving public services off into small organisations to try their luck against big private sector players. There are no guarantees about the long-term sustainability of social enterprises, even in the best economic climate.’
Speaking to a social enterprise conference in Birmingham last week, Cabinet Office minister, Liam Byrne, promised to put the sector ‘at the heart of the new economy’ as Britain emerges from the recession.
Alongside the jobs target, he promised to review the pipeline of public service contracts, which often hindered small providers, ‘to get deal blockers out of the way’. An online hub, offering information to social enterprises and charities on public contracts, would also be established.
‘I’m not naive enough to believe that every business in the country is going to emerge from this downturn with a double bottom line,’ Mr Byrne said. ‘But I think the country is going to look harder for ethos with its enterprise.
‘It’s going to look harder to see whether a business offers care and trust, not just cut and thrust.’
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