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Top 20 questions to consider before starting a business
Private security firm G4S to run Lincolnshire police station
Private security firm G4S has been contracted to design, build and run a police station in Lincolnshire, in what is thought to be one of the most radical outsourcing deals seen so far in Britain.
Under the £200m 10-year deal signed on Wednesday, more than 540 civilian police staff will join the company, which will deliver a range of middle and back-office services.
This means that almost half the force’s 900 civilian workers will be transferred to G4S as a result of the deal.
The new police station, based on a hub-and-spoke design, with 30 custody cells and a two-storey office block will house up to 120 operational staff. The police officers involved will remain police force employees.
G4S will provide Lincolnshire police with a range of support services, including running cells, administering drug tests, firearms licensing, human resources, computer systems and managing the force’s vehicle fleet.
It will also establish a shared services centre that will enable it to sell its expertise in human resources, payroll and finance to other forces.
Lincolnshire police authority is facing a £19.7m cut in its funding from Whitehall over the next four years. G4S claims savings of £28m over the next 10 years or £2.8m a year will be made as a result of the deal.
The Lincolnshire police authority chairman, Barry Young, said: “By taking over a range of support functions, G4S will contribute to the force’s aim of being able to put 97% of its warranted officers in frontline roles by April.
“Crucially, the new strategic partnership will also deliver significant infrastructure investment that will offset the budget reductions called for by the government. I believe we are leading the way.”
Kim Challis, group managing director of G4S government and outsourcing, said the deal was the first of its kind in Britain.
“We are delighted to have the opportunity to implement many new innovations, such as our purpose-built ‘Bridewell’ custody suites – the first of which will be completed within a year,” he said.
“This new police station will be the first, tangible demonstration of the benefits this partnership will bring to Lincolnshire. But others, such as the planned shared services centre, will place Lincolnshire at the heart of Britain’s policing future, generating vital additional income as well as creating new jobs.”
But the Police Federation has raised concerns about the deal pointing out that police force staff have an enshrined sense of public duty, whereas private employees may not.
“Our concern is the resilience of the companies doing this,” said Simon Reed, the organisation’s vice-chairman. “When we have national emergencies or unforeseen events, will they be able to bring their staff in to work long hours, regardless of what their contracts say?”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Cameron accused of putting NHS on sale over plans for life sciences
Labour has accused David Cameron of being willing to put “large chunks of the NHS up for sale” before a speech on Monday in which the prime minister will outline plans to increase collaboration between the health service and the life sciences industry.
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said he was worried about the commercialisation of the NHS after it was revealed that Cameron’s plans could involve private companies getting access to patient records and other NHS data.
Cameron will say he wants the NHS to be “working hand-in-glove with industry as the fastest adopter of new ideas in the world”. He will argue that this could benefit patients as well as the £50bn life sciences industry, described by Number 10 as the third largest contributor to economic growth in the UK.
Britain already has a good record in medical innovation, but Cameron will signal that he wants to make it easier for drug companies to run clinical trials in hospitals and to benefit from the NHS’s vast collection of patient data.
He will announce a £180m “catalyst fund” to help develop projects until they attract outside investment. Universities and small- and medium-sized firms will be able to bid for money from the fund.
And he will announce a scheme that would give seriously ill patients access to drugs around a year before they were licenced for general use.
“The most crucial, fundamental thing we’re doing is opening up the NHS to new ideas,” Cameron will say. “I want the great discoveries of the next decade happening in British labs, the new technologies born in British startups.”
His speech will coincide with the publication of a life sciences strategy from the Department for Business and a review of innovation in the NHS from David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive.
Burnham said that in principle he was not opposed to the idea of private firms getting access to some NHS data. But he said the government had to “tread carefully” in this area, and that he was concerned about Cameron’s willingness to open up the NHS to the private sector. “[Cameron] sees no limit on the involvement of the private sector and says he wants it to be a ‘fantastic business’. In his desperation to develop a credible industrial strategy, he seems willing to put large chunks of our NHS up for sale.”
Roger Gross, from the pressure group Patient Concern, said that allowing private firms access to NHS data would mean “the death of patient confidentiality”. Patient Concern resigned from a Department of Health consultation on the plan.
“We understand GP surgeries will have the right to refuse to release their patients’ records, but whether patients will ever be told what is happening, let alone have the choice to protect their privacy, is still unclear,” Gross said.
David Willetts, minister for universities and science, denied a conflict of interest could arise. Asked on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme about concerns that the NHS would become a laboratory for the pharmaceutical industry to test its drugs on the UK population, and about the possible use of patient data and patient confidentiality, he said: “First of all there has to be absolute protection for the confidentiality of the individual patient’s data and it shouldn’t be possible to trace it back to an individual, and of course we absolutely understand that. This is above all in the interest of NHS patients.”
Willetts said the government had a role to play because of the amount of public money that finances medical research and universities, as well as into the National Health Service.
He said there had been a failure to date to “link them all up” with independent private businesses.
“There should be a very clear route from the idea in the publicly supported research lab through to the application to the patient in the publicly supported NHS. We need to have a very clear route through. That’s the way to get the businesses the growth for the future and of course it’s the best thing for the patients as well.”
He cited the example of Scotland, to highlight what can be achieved. “In Scotland, they are better than in England at linking up the data from the GPs, the data from the hospitals, researches,” he said. “What that enabled them to do … is they reduced the rate of amputations from diabetes by 70%, they reduced the rate of blindness from people with diabetes by 40%, so there is a gain for the patient if you link up the data. But what they have also got in this fantastic cluster across the University of Dundee through to Strathclyde in Edinburgh, is they have got life sciences businesses setting up because they can also use this patient data to research and develop new products. So everybody gains: the patients get better treatment and the life sciences industry comes in. But that will only happen clearly if we can be absolutely confident of full protection of patient confidentiality.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011
George Osborne’s autumn statement speaks to the public mood
The historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that people only understand that a period in history has ended when it has been over for quite a long time. This is surely right. Bloodied soldiers didn’t stand around on the battlefield at Bosworth and immediately reflect that, though it had been a hard-fought day, at least the later Middle Ages had now ended.
Obviously there are exceptions. The British foreign secretary who announced, on the eve of the first world war, that the lamps were going out all over Europe and would not be lit again in his lifetime made an on-the-spot epochal judgment that was vindicated by history. But Sir Edward Grey‘s remark was not as obviously true or widely understood at the time as it now seems in retrospect.
In general, though, history is what Coleridge said it is: a lantern on the stern of a vessel on the nocturnal ocean, partially illuminating the waters through which we have sailed, but saying little about what awaits us ahead in the dark. For this reason we should be cautious about assuming too readily that our politics reached a tipping point this week with the chancellor’s humbling autumn statement and the largest public sector industrial action in decades.
There are long-, medium- and short-term reasons for such caution. The long-term reason is embodied in Hobsbawm’s overarching observation. If, as Zhou Enlai said, it is too soon to have a view of the French Revolution, then it is probably too soon to say if the coalition is a failed government. The medium-term reason is that there is already very little agreement about how to characterise the times we are living through. Some believe that we are witnessing the failure of neoliberalism. Others that we are witnessing the historic failure of the nation state. They can’t both be right.
But the proper province of a newspaper columnist is the short term. And while the temptation is to talk in terms of days of reckoning, turning points, watershed moments, lost decades and the rest of it, the events of this week already point in a less exciting direction: in economics towards more of the same in one austere form or another; and in politics, towards another hung parliament and another coalition government after the 2015 general election.
That’s not to pretend that nothing has changed this week, because it certainly has. The claim that Britain could come safely through the global economic storm merely by sticking to the coalition’s 2010 deficit reduction plan has been destroyed – in a mere 18 months. That means, economically, tougher times for all of us for longer; and, politically, that the coalition parties now cannot go to the country in 2015 claiming to have balanced the books. That wish was central to the entire Osborne strategy of 2010-11. Now it’s not possible. By any standards that is a big coalition setback.
Nor is it to pretend that nothing new may happen in the coming months that could, after all, break the economic strategy or political mould. To write such a thing would be foolhardy for any number of reasons, mainly to do with the eurozone – not least in the aftermath of the Bank of England governor’s warnings on Thursday about systemic crisis and the inability of any UK national authority to resolve the current turmoil.
But it is to say that the initial response to Osborne’s autumn statement is strikingly in line with the public’s pre-existing view about the state of the country. A YouGov poll, taken after Osborne’s speech, found that people are pessimistic about the economy, negative about the coalition’s handling of it and negative about Osborne generally. But these same voters do not blame the coalition for the economic problems, think that things would be worse under Labour, and rate Ed Balls unfavourably when compared with Osborne.
These findings are extremely consistent with what voters have been saying for several months. As YouGov’s Peter Kellner put it before the autumn statement, the Conservatives are continuing to win the argument that they are cleaning up a mess left by Gordon Brown, while Labour is failing to make an impact. What is more, even though Labour leads the Conservatives in most voting intention polls, when voters are asked a “forced choice” question as to whether they would prefer a David Cameron-led Tory government after the next election or an Ed Miliband-led Labour one, they opt for Cameron and the Tories by a steady five-point margin.
All of this may change. Deepening stagnation, rising unemployment and the continuing programme of cuts may mean that public opinion will eventually reach the critical mass of revulsion against the coalition that some anticipate and others crave. But there is precious little sign of it. And it may not come at all. The autumn statement was shocking. Yet it did not come as a shock. People have increasingly been braced for worse times. Osborne speaks to that mood more effectively than Labour does. And he may go on doing so, unless Labour can win a wider credibility. Perhaps, over three grim years, that will happen. But it is not happening now.
Do not overlook, either, that this has been a surprisingly successful autumn not just for the Tories, but the Liberal Democrats too. The Lib Dems have put their distinctive stamp on several progressive announcements in the autumn statement, not least the commitment to uprate benefits in line with inflation, on which Osborne vacillated. But the extra spending on work placements for young people, the targeted extra money for toddler care and the spending on infrastructure projects all bear the mark of Lib Dem pressure inside the coalition.
Yes, these are changing times. But the dominant mood is not currently for radical change, let alone radical change as defined by the unions. It is to hang on to what we’ve got, ride out hard times and submit to perceived necessary austerity as best we can. Eurozone tumult would play into that hunkering-down mood, not against it. Meanwhile, as the Office for National Statistics reports, this is in general a happy country.
Politically, all this is proving unexpectedly kind for the Conservatives and comparatively tough for Labour, while the Lib Dems show justified signs of renewed confidence. Another hung parliament in 2015, again overshadowed by deficit politics, looks a growing possibility. If so, then this week, far from a turning point, could be just another bump in a surprisingly straight road towards more of the same.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011
Manchester’s trams to be run by Paris Metro firm
Attractions such as the Imperial War Museum North and the Lowry centre may have put Manchester on the international tourism map in recent years, but even the most strident proponents of the city’s renaissance would still concede that the capital of France is in a slightly different league.
And yet the very people who keep the City of Light moving clearly see something they like in a city famed for football, Coronation Street, and the industrial revolution. For the running of Manchester’s Metrolink tram network is to be taken over by the French government-owned company that operates the Paris Metro.
The surprise move, announced at the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday, comes halfway through a 10-year contract held by Stagecoach to run and maintain the tram network, which was due to end in 2017.
Metrolink, the UK’s most successful and sprawling tram network, carries 20 million passengers a year and is regarded as a model transport network for other British cities. Since the first line opened in 1992 it has become an integral part of Mancunian life. Last month, a longed-for extension to the south Manchester suburb of Chorlton opened. Within a day, tram services were temporarily suspended after thieves tried but failed to steal live overhead cables.
The new operator RATP Dev UK is a subsidiary of RATP, the French state-owned transport company. The tram network, including vehicles, platforms and track, will continue to be owned by Transport for Greater Manchester.
Metrolink has tramlines snaking between the city centre and Bury, Altrincham, Eccles, south Manchester and to MediaCityUK, where many BBC departments are moving to from London.
Stagecoach, which also operates Supertram in Sheffield, took over Metrolink from Serco four years ago in a decade-long contract that generated £22m a year in turnover. Transport for Greater Manchester is midway through a £1.4bn expansion and improvement of the network that will ultimately take trams to Didsbury, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Rochdale, and to Manchester Airport via Wythenshawe. There are also plans for a second line to cross Manchester city centre.
Paul Matthews, chief executive of RATP Dev UK said: “Metrolink is one of the UK’s most successful tram networks, so we are naturally delighted to join with the existing team to be able to bring our expertise and knowhow to continue its further development.”
The expansion, he added, presents the company “with plenty of opportunities to assist in producing a world class tramway of which the city can be rightfully proud”.
The company already has more than 3,000 employees in the UK, operating buses in London, Bournemouth and Bath.
After the liberalisation of UK bus and rail services, national rail operators in Germany, France, and the Netherlands all now have a presence in British transport. As well as running the Tyne & Wear Metro, Deutsche Bahn owns Chiltern Railways and Arriva, the Sunderland-based rail and bus group, while France’s SNCF is the dominant shareholder in Eurostar. The Northern Rail franchise is a joint effort between UK firm Serco and the Dutch national rail business, which also runs bus services in Surrey and London.
Jim Steer, a rail industry consultant who drew up franchises at the Strategic Rail Authority in the previous decade, said international companies had probably saved the taxpayer millions of pounds by competing for rail franchises.
“Without them, perhaps the taxpayer would have ended up putting more money into the system,” he said.
Graham Stringer, the MP for Blackley and Broughton, said he was not a fan of Stagecoach. “As far as I am aware this is going to be good for public transport,” he said. “Stagecoach, like other companies, are interested in their business model and not helping public transport. They are designed to get maximum public subsidy.”
Stagecoach said the sale of Metrolink was part of a review of its portfolio. It said it was not engaged in any similar discussions with regard to its Sheffield trams.
Councillor Andrew Fender, chair of Transport for Greater Manchester, welcomed the takeover. He said: “RATP Group has a span of expertise covering 12 countries and the experience of carrying 12 million passengers a day. They will help us to continue to improve services, providing us with access to experts who are operating tram services and light rail systems in major cities across the world, from Paris and Florence to Seoul, Hong Kong and Mumbai.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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