Many public services are now delivered through 'quasi markets' - halfway between public sector delivery and the free market. Quasi-markets are where multiple buyers can purchase from multiple sellers, with the government able to ensure quality, conduct and, sometimes, user choice and/or price. Protection can be provided in various ways, such as government regulation, the sector's self-regulation, or through government enforcing controls.
This is a fairly new way for government to deliver public services. To be successful it must achieve a delicate balance between protective measures and encouraging competition and growth, and between choice and fragmentation. It must allow market mechanisms to work while ensuring universal and equitable services. This takes new skills, new ways of thinking and working and the recognition that for markets to work, failure must be allowed and must be managed.
Key NAO publications: Protecting consumers from scams, unfair trading and unsafe goods (Dec 2016); Market Analytic Toolkit: for assessing public service markets (Nov 2016); Principles Paper: Managing provider failure (Jul 2015); Public service markets: Putting things right when they go wrong (Jun 2015); and Using alternatives to regulation to achieve policy objectives (Jun 2014);
Young people are making complex choices about higher education without much effective help and advice, and the institutions concerned are under very little competitive pressure to provide best value.
Audit committees should be scrutinising cyber security arrangements. To aid them, this guidance complements government advice by setting out high-level questions and issues for audit committees to consider.
Regulators and government need to work together better to ensure that vulnerable consumers get the support they need.
The report examines the system protecting consumers from scams, unfair trading, and unsafe goods. BEIS has made progress since our 2011 review, but needs to do more, particularly in the context of the growth of e-commerce.
This toolkit is designed to guide those overseeing public service markets or assessing the effectiveness of these markets in terms of value for money and user outcomes. It helps government address a set of new challenges around its use of markets to deliver public services, including oversight, consumer protection, regulation and helping to achieve effective competition and innovative delivery.
The newly-created Competition and Markets Authority has made significant progress in improving how the UK’s competition regime works, and it is now more coherent than before. Business awareness of competition law, however, is low and while it has improved the robustness of its enforcement casework, the regime has so far not produced a substantial flow of enforcement decisions or fines.
Since 2010 there has been an increase in the number of companies in government at the same time as a reduction in the number of public bodies which raises issues of transparency, accountability, governance and review.
Since privatisation, Ofwat and Defra have overseen major improvements in water quality and service quality. Customers have seen a marked rise in bills but not the benefits of companies’ unexpected financial gains.
This paper explores the principles departments should use to manage provider failure. There is room for improvement in the way failure of providers is considered and managed.
Over 10 million people who used public services (about 1 in 5) in the UK last year faced problems with the services. Detriment can and does occur. But users find the complaints and redress systems confusing.