The bobby on the beat. Nothing It encapsulates better the idea of public service – a visible, essential service run by and for people who care about making communities safer and better to live in.

But behind the scenes even this vital public service is being undermined by outsourcing deals that make the police less accountable, and harder to run. What is worse, they put the police service in a position of opposition to the majority of people they protect who don’t want outsourcing giants taking over their public services. But despite this, outsourcing in the public sector is now worth more (much more) than outsourcing in the private sector, and continues to grow.

That’s why we were pleased to be asked to submit evidence to the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee, which recently published a report on outsourcing at the Metropolitan Police Service. (The committee provides oversight of the Metropolitan Police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and is made up of representatives of different parties out of the London Assembly).

This was a good opportunity for us to put forward the views of public service users across the country, who we know distrust outsourcing and deserve better accountability, transparency and value from their public services. We’re glad to see We Own It and our Public Service Users Bill mentioned in the final report.

The MOPAC report, written by a cross-party committee, isn’t the most exciting thing you’ll read this year. But within the limits of such a report, it successfully makes clear some of the problems with outsourcing – rushed deals, less transparency, dubious quality, short term thinking – that we have become all too familiar with. And it highlights some of the alternative options that can be pursued if authorities, faced with budget cuts want to keep services in house or focus on improving quality.

“ A key concern is that any rush to outsource is driven by budgetary pressures rather than wider organisational strength and without sufficiently considering the risks to service quality”, John Biggs, Chair of the Budget & Performance Committee (BPC)

There are currently seven back-office services covered by the Met’s ‘commercial strategy’. These contracts are worth £496 million in 2015-16 - 16% of its gross revenue expenditure. The different services, or ‘strands’, vary greatly in size. And while some of these are for fairly standard back office functions, but some are for specialist police services such as preparing case files for the Crown Prosecution Service, which the report suggests might not best be fulfilled through outsourcing.

The report found that most of these 7 ‘strands’ had already been outsourced, before the strategy to do so had been approved. This highlights the rush towards outsourcing, often without fully considering other options. But this is just one issue the report highlights.

Other things we noticed include:

Short term solution that makes things worse: The authors seem to suggest that the Mayor is protecting cuts to frontline police services through to May 2016 (the Mayoral elections). They also highlight that any future cuts to frontline services, which may have to happen given the extent of the budget cuts, could be compounded by dealing with a legacy of ‘ill-thought through structural and service weaknesses’.

There’s less accountability: The Met says the deal to outsource finance, human resources and procurement will save over £100 million. But it will also see 445 jobs moving outside of London. This raises questions of accountability – and of whether this is a good deal for Londoners.

The Met didn’t explore in house options: The report says the committee are concerned that even the possibility of keeping services in house wasn’t fully explored. Many public service organisations are actually bringing services back in house, mostly because it’s cheaper. In a survey of 140 local authorities, 57 per cent said they had brought outsourced public services back in-house or were considering it, with the need to cut costs being the major driver for 60% of these, and quality and control being further drivers of these insourcing decisions.

It might not be cheaper – in the end: The report states that they can’t be sure that outsourced services are cheaper in the long term. The key phrase being ‘long term’.

Outsourcing the frontline: Scarily, the report says that the Met are going to test outscourcing Dedicated Detention Officers (DDOs) – i.e. staff in custody suites,even though 62% of people don’t want the private sector involved in policing.

Transparency issues: the report highlights issues of transparency – one of the key planks of our Public Service Users Bill. They also show how transparency could be improved. It’s perfectly possible that the authorities could write contracts which ensure that information the contractor holds is still available under FOI Act. And the report highlights how other countries, with more recent FOI laws, such as Brazil, Estonia and Macedonia, have ensured that FOI covers whichever bodies are delivering public services or receiving public funds

Capacity to manage the process and the contract is limited: The report highlights that the Met needs to improve its ‘commercial expertise’ if it’s going to be able to effectively manage the outsourcing and procurement going on. The Chair of the BPC John Biggs said there is a “real risk to the public“ if the MPS signs a bad deal.

“The MPS could find itself handcuffed to a poor contract or even worse if the deal goes wrong. In particular, it must ensure it has the business nous to find the right commercial partners and then manage contracts effectively to ensure Londoners’ money is spent wisely,” he said.

Of course, no-one wants to see a repeat of the electronic tagging scandal – where G4S and Serco were overcharging the Government to tag offenders.

All in all, the report makes clear that there are serious issues with outsourcing, both in the rush to do it, and the process pursued by the authorities to do it. But the report also makes some really good recommendations about how these issues could be, or could have been, addressed, including making better use of existing FOI law to make services transparent, and properly looking at in-house options.

The full report can be found on the council website.  And you can join our campaign to put people before profit here.