Privatising social services

The Coalition has long trumpeted the idea of outsourcing Government programmes to the private sector if the business case can be made.

However, when it comes to sensitive social services such as back-to-work schemes and social housing, you'd imagine some in the Labour Party might harbour reservations.

It's somewhat ironic then that the Department of Social Protection, under the command of Labour ideologues Joan Burton and Kevin Humphreys, should be the first to dip its toe in the water.

The department is farming out its flagship programme for tackling long-term unemployment to three private sector recruitment firms. Its JobPath scheme is to be run on a payment-by-results model, meaning providers only get paid when they get clients back to work. It’s principal purpose is to stop long-term unemployment lingering after recession has receded like it did in 1980s.

Since coming to office, the Tories in Britain, a party ideologically wedded to privatisation, have been outsourcing everything from disability services to the electronic tagging of criminals, albeit with mixed results.

Its version of JobPath, the Work Programme, was set up in 2011 and is operated by public and private sector groups. In 2012, a progress report found only 18,270 people out of 785,000 on the programme had held down a job for more than six months – a success rate of 2.3 per cent. The UK government was mauled by the opposition on foot of the results. However, many believe the figures were mined too early, perhaps for political reasons, and the programme should have been given more time to prove its worth.

The Government here is acutely aware of the criticism thrown at the British programme. Significantly, it has structured its own programme in a way that prevents providers from cherry-picking the cream of the crop. With an election around the corner, the Coalition will want the scheme to feed into its positive message about the economy. Whether it can wait for the programme to produce some hard numbers remains to be seem.