Quote:
Originally Posted by arcimedes
Dare one mention the unmentionable. Privatisation 
There is no incentive to save. |
In my experience, privatisation is the reason behind a lot of the wastage. Certainly when I was working for our local hospital, I raised queries about a *lot* of our contracts when I found we were paying way over the odds for some stuff (e.g. our greengrocer was charging enough that it would have been cheaper to send a member of staff or two over to Sainsburys to get the vegetables every day).
I don't have anything against privatisation as such, but there do need to be adequate controls in place to prevent abuse on both sides, and the government need to take a tougher line when negotiating the contracts. The contracts I've seen define how the government department will behave quite tightly (as they should), but the contractors are often allowed to do pretty much what they want.