The Times announced just
before Christmas that Conservative – controlled Essex County
Council has signed a deal with IT firm IBM worth £5.4 billion to
manage and provide public services in the local
area.
The eight-year deal comes
as a result of Essex advertising for private companies to put
forward tenders to provide ‘any and all’ county council services,
which include education, children’s services, transport and
highways and elderly care.
The Times has reported
that, one by one, services in Essex will be reviewed by IBM and,
where necessary, subcontracted or kept in-house if the authority
can provide it more cheaply.
Harlow MP Bill Rammell,
who has previously strongly criticised Essex County Council’s drive
to cut their budget by £300 million, putting at risk huge number of
services in the Harlow area, slammed this decision as “Tory
ideology at its worst and most destructive” as Essex leader Lord
Hanningfield follows the increasingly popular local government
model among Conservative councils prescribed by David Cameron and
local government shadow and Brentwood and Ongar MP Eric
Pickles.
Lord Hanningfield has told
The Times that IBM was chosen, in part, because of the company’s
experience in Canada where it saved “billions of dollars” by
cutting government services.
Bill Rammell MP said:
“Here we have another example of local Conservatives showing us how
a Conservative government would behave. This is Tory ideology at
its worst and most destructive. The fact that they will privatise
and streamline all services just adds further evidence that this
action is ideologically-based rather than based on what is viewed
to be in the benefit of ordinary working people. Trade unions are
right to have real concerns about terms and conditions of County
Council staff and I pressed for answers on this when the tender
process was first announced.
On the budget cuts, there
is no way the County Council can cut its expenditure by a third
without causing havoc to the front line services it provides. Care
services for the elderly, children’s services, the road system in
Harlow and the surrounding villages and our local library services
could all be at risk by such a dramatic cut in spending. They
continue to give no detail on where savings will fall and which
groups are to be affected. “
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