There is another reason why contracting might not be regarded by ministers and senior civil servants as a suitable vehicle for the delivery of public services: control.
A number of survey participants mentioned this in passing, but one - a former civil servant who had been the commercial director for a large government department - thought that it was central to the sector's recent difficulties:
While governments say that they want to focus on outcomes, in practice, their day-to-day talk is all about inputs. They feel that they can control inputs, like the colour of the wall. If the system focuses on outputs, they feel that they have lost control, especially ministers. We need to be frank about their ability to transpose policy into outcomes. Ministers and civil servants say they want a market, but then something odd happens - they feel like they are out of control.
Some of the unhappiness with PFI contracting lies in the way in which it revealed and specified in advance the true cost of maintaining assets, and constrained the government's ability thereafter to defer spending on repairs and maintenance. When PFI was launched, this was listed as one of its great virtues. It was well-understood that, over many years, governments had compromised the quality of health and education services through the repeated deferral of spending on such intangibles.
In clarifying outcomes and authority, resources and results, accountability and consequences, contracting serves to substantially increase the leverage of policymakers and funders in the delivery of public services. One of the ways in which it does this is by stabilising the policy and funding environment within which front-line managers operate, enabling them to make better-informed decisions about delivery. Government retains the ability to change the policy environment, but under a contracting regime, the financial consequences of doing so are obvious. Policymakers may still elect to reduce the amount being spent on maintenance or on the delivery of services, but they will not be able to blame providers for the consequences.
If this is not acknowledged, then contracting has little to contribute to the better delivery of public services.