HC Deb 23 February 1983 vol 37 cc920-1
11. Mr. Marks

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made in privatisation within local authorities.

Mr. King

A growing number of authorities are testing the efficiency of their services by putting them to competitive tender, and an increasing number are finding that significant savings can be made by awarding contracts to specialist outside firms.

Mr. Marks

Is it the Government's intention to put pressure on local authorities to sell off or put out to private enterprise such things as sports centres, allotments, playing fields, swimming pools and even cemeteries?

Mr. King

I am anxious that every local authority should test every service to ensure that it is being provided in the most cost-effective way. As the hon. Gentleman decided to ask this question—perhaps his hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) will be interested in this—I checked on Manchester's refuse disposal service. Manchester now has the most expensive refuse collection service per capita, outside any London borough, in the country. On a rough estimate, it now appears on the new proposal that Manchester's refuse collection cost is twice that of Birmingham, and that if Manchester could make an equivalent saving to Birmingham, £2.5 million would be available which might go to deal with some of the difficult problems with which the hon. Gentleman has to reckon.

Sir Anthony Grant

I welcome the good sense of the increasing number of local authorities which, in the interests of their ratepayers, are using private enterprise for there services, but is my right hon. Friend aware that we are still a long way behind many other countries in this respect? Will he follow the excellent example of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services and issue a powerful circular to local authorities along the lines of the one issued by his right hon. Friend in the case of the Health Service?

Mr. King

I am upset by that question. I thought that we were well ahead of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. We have been advocating and encouraging this approach, and my noble Friend Lord Bellwin, the Minister for Local Government, has also been extremely active in this area. I believe that no council, no councillor and no council official can honestly claim to be properly discharging their duties unless they have established and checked whether services are being provided in the most cost-effective way. The only way to do that is to put them out to tender.

Mr. Eastham

The Secretary of State continues to make snide remarks about refuse disposal in the city of Manchester. Does it ever dawn on him that refuse disposal sometimes costs some cities hundreds of thousands of pounds because they have no tipping space, which means that tons and tons of refuse have to be transported out of the city? What about that aspect?

Mr. King

That is absolutely correct. That is why I was referring not to refuse disposal but to refuse collection. If the hon. Gentleman is dismissing the fact that it costs twice as much to collect Manchester's refuse as it does to collect Birmingham's, that is the most classic example of a closed mind that the House can ever have seen.

Dr. Mawhinney

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the pressure to privatise local authority services is motivated by a desire to give the ratepayer the best value for money rather than being simply an ideological exercise?

Mr. King

If we are to see services of the type that the House would wish to see for the handicapped, for the elderly and for the disadvantaged in our society, it is essential that main services are provided in the most cost-effective way.