Who runs Britain? Inside the outsourcing of the British state

The NHS is one of the UK’s largest users of private companies to provide key services such as cleaning and catering. Image: Shutterstock Across the UK, public services are increasingly delivered by private companies working behind the scenes. Critics say outsourcing has not only produced failures and scandals, but changed the relationship between citizen and state From school meals and hospital cleaning to asylum accommodation, welfare assessments, prison management, airport security, data systems, ferry services and care homes, many of the services through which people encounter the state are no longer delivered directly by the state at all. Over the past four decades, Britain has built one of the largest public-sector outsourcing markets in the world. It’s now possible for a child in care, a disabled person applying for benefits, a patient waiting for cataract surgery, a prisoner being moved between courts, a migrant seeking accommodation or a commuter using an urban bike scheme to find that the service they rely on is being delivered by a private company under contract. The case for outsourcing has always been that the private sector can bring efficiency, expertise and innovation that government can’t easily provide itself. At its best, outsourcing can allow…