CAPITA, the private sector company seeking a partnership with Blackburn and Darwen Council, has had a meteoric rise growth and expansion over recent years. Year on year, shareholders' dividends and profits continue to increase.

Capita's calculated total profit per employee for 1998 is more than £5,000. On the basis of these figures, if the company recruit and transfer 200 employees from the council and sustain the same remuneration per employee, it would result in £1 million of public money, exported from Blackburn annually, to Capita's headquarters in Westminster, London.

There is a clear and well-worn path for private sector companies looking for lucrative public-sector contracts, providing they are prepared to speculate before they accumulate.

The hiring of presentation stands at Labour Party conferences can reap rich rewards. Free personalised ballpoint pens, hospitality, receptions, glossy brochures, can only be helpful.

Are we supposed to believe that this is some form of missionary work? And that the money is not that important and their main concern is to bring efficiency and reward to the local community at large?

Recent Lancashire Evening Telegraph reports covering the official statement of the council's proposed introduction of Capita to take over several council departments and services, included voiced concerns of elected members, some of whom, surprisingly, wished to remain anonymous. Certainly, one concern that has yet to be established in detail is the efficiency and performance of the departments to be privatised, and a full explanation as to why someone else is bound to provide a better service to the local taxpayer.

There is that wonderful, all-encompassing, nebulous term "increased efficiency and savings." At whose expense? That of the workforce? Or the introduction of cuts and reduced services?

We don't have to look far to see what can and has happened nationally. The privatisation of British Rail has led to a plethora of complaints by users across the country. The recent rail disaster at Paddington was officially labelled as the result of shareholders first and safety and the public elsewhere.

The introduction of the market philosophy into the NHS, introduced by the last government and continued by this one, has meant efficiency savings of three per cent annually placed on health authorities, with some catastrophic results.

There is at last some sanity being brought to the national debate and realisation of the harm that has been done by the mindless rush to privatise public services during recent years.

We should therefore expect some public debate on this proposal before transferring the control of public services to the shareholders of a private sector company.

COUNCILLOR DON RISHTON, Livesey Branch Road, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.