Anne-Marie Reynaers

To privatize or not? Addressing public values in a semiprivatized prison system

Through public–private partnerships (PPPs), the Dutch government is experimenting with private sector involvement in its prison system. Although considered a promising alternative to traditional public procurement in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, there is a paucity of empirical data on the impact of PPPs on other important public values, such as transparency or responsiveness, in the specific context of the penal sector. Studying the first Dutch detention center PPP, this article sets out to provide empirical insight into the safeguarding of public values in semiprivate governance settings and seeks to uncover the challenges and opportunities for prison (semi)privatization.

Public water in private hands: A case study on the safeguarding of public values in the first DBFMO in the Dutch water sector.

In DBFMO projects, public procurers transfer to private consortia the responsibility for designing, building, financing, maintaining, and operating public assets. Although DBFMOs are criticized for their possible threat to the safeguarding of public values, the Dutch government recently procured Europe’s biggest waste water purification plant according to DBFMO principles. This article poses two questions: to what extent are transparency, responsibility, and quality safeguarded in the waste water case and what factors are influential in this. The findings provide grounds for modest optimism. Tools such as output specifications, the long-term contract, performance monitoring, and the adequate way in which cooperation between the procurer and consortium has been managed have provided considerable opportunities for the safeguarding of all three values.

[Review of: R.C. Box (2014) Public service values]

Fund, Local Enterprise Partnerships should bid for central funding based on ‘market enhancement’ criteria, a One Nation way to improve not to contribute to ‘the inequities of capitalism’. Fourth, local authorities should encourage an active citizenry by providing digital means for them to improve their localities. Fifth, Carr suggests legislative reform of the National Health Service, to link up hospitals with public health – more integrated health care – and merged with social care. Sixth, to fund such changes, there should be merged budgets for health and social care, and pooled budgets across lower and upper tiers. Seventh, local councils should make more use of City Deals and beg Whitehall to devolve money and powers to them. Eighth, a new National Devolution Council should be established, composed of local and central government representatives, and given the task of ‘auditing the government’s record on devolving powers, and to ensure Whitehall buys into this general agenda’. He could have extended this list by bringing into the section, or better in a separate chapter, his local government proposals from the earlier chapters, such as an Office for Fair Investment to oversee local authority capital expenditure, a regionalised inheritance tax, localised banking, compulsory voting and the substitution of a land-value tax for the council tax. Carr is not content to tell the story of the One Nation tradition from the nineteenth century to today. His prime concern is to devise an agenda of what he calls ‘viable potential policies’ for a One Nation Government now, which means he is addressing the Labour party, in a possible majority or minority government, or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The book is essentially a political tract. It won’t have much influence since it is hard to read, disorganised and written in a sloppy style. He intrudes into his historical and thematic sections lessons for contemporary politicians, which break the flow of the narrative. A particularly irritating example is at pages 43–44, where there is a discussion of Baldwin’s and Macmillan’s policies on the economy, and then there is an abrupt jump to Cameron and Clegg in No. 10’s rose garden in May 2010, and to Labour possibly doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats to withdraw from some seats in May 2015. Carr must know the structure of his book has gone haywire because he ends this paragraph of his contemporary proposals with the words ‘It is an idea’ and begins the next with ‘But back to the 1930s’. A more readable structure would have been to have a Part One moving chronologically through an analysis of how the term ‘One Nation’ had been used, which would include as context the policies then being debated, and next in a Part Two discussing the relevance of these past ideas to contemporary issues. As it is, it is hard by the end to understand what his agenda for a One Nation Government consists of.

Public Service Values Richard C. Box Routledge, 2014, ISBN: 9780765643650

Fund, Local Enterprise Partnerships should bid for central funding based on ‘market enhancement’ criteria, a One Nation way to improve not to contribute to ‘the inequities of capitalism’. Fourth, local authorities should encourage an active citizenry by providing digital means for them to improve their localities. Fifth, Carr suggests legislative reform of the National Health Service, to link up hospitals with public health – more integrated health care – and merged with social care. Sixth, to fund such changes, there should be merged budgets for health and social care, and pooled budgets across lower and upper tiers. Seventh, local councils should make more use of City Deals and beg Whitehall to devolve money and powers to them. Eighth, a new National Devolution Council should be established, composed of local and central government representatives, and given the task of ‘auditing the government’s record on devolving powers, and to ensure Whitehall buys into this general agenda’. He could have extended this list by bringing into the section, or better in a separate chapter, his local government proposals from the earlier chapters, such as an Office for Fair Investment to oversee local authority capital expenditure, a regionalised inheritance tax, localised banking, compulsory voting and the substitution of a land-value tax for the council tax. Carr is not content to tell the story of the One Nation tradition from the nineteenth century to today. His prime concern is to devise an agenda of what he calls ‘viable potential policies’ for a One Nation Government now, which means he is addressing the Labour party, in a possible majority or minority government, or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The book is essentially a political tract. It won’t have much influence since it is hard to read, disorganised and written in a sloppy style. He intrudes into his historical and thematic sections lessons for contemporary politicians, which break the flow of the narrative. A particularly irritating example is at pages 43–44, where there is a discussion of Baldwin’s and Macmillan’s policies on the economy, and then there is an abrupt jump to Cameron and Clegg in No. 10’s rose garden in May 2010, and to Labour possibly doing a deal with the Liberal Democrats to withdraw from some seats in May 2015. Carr must know the structure of his book has gone haywire because he ends this paragraph of his contemporary proposals with the words ‘It is an idea’ and begins the next with ‘But back to the 1930s’. A more readable structure would have been to have a Part One moving chronologically through an analysis of how the term ‘One Nation’ had been used, which would include as context the policies then being debated, and next in a Part Two discussing the relevance of these past ideas to contemporary issues. As it is, it is hard by the end to understand what his agenda for a One Nation Government consists of.