UNISON defending public services (in-house!)

Having just corrected the post below to clarify that the UNISON speaker at a Labour Party Conference fringe on "mutuals" made it very clear that the only circumstances in which UNISON might support co-ops would be to 'mutualise' personal assistants or privatised workers unlikely to be brought back in house eg home carers, I thought I would repeat the correction in a new post as the wording of the previous post could be misleading.

Mutuals may be better than outright privatisation - but are no substitute for proper in-house provision of public services.

This is of course consistent with UNISON’s policy of support for in-house service provision in the public sector, as expressed in our guide to procurement, as well as the justifiable caution about public service mutuals expressed by our Conference and reflected in our guidance on mutuals.