Waugh, MI and Hodkinson, SN orcid.org/0000-0001-7676-5331 (2021) Examining the Effectiveness of Current Information Laws and Implementation Practices for Accountability of Outsourced Public Services. Parliamentary Affairs, 74 (2). gsaa001. pp. 253-275. ISSN 0031-2290
Abstract
Recent events linked to outsourcing such as the Grenfell Tower disaster in June 2017 and the collapse of Carillion in 2018 have again highlighted the challenges of maintaining democratic accountability of government expenditure where public services are contracted out to private companies. Although not the only focus of policy debate, pressure is building from both parliamentarians and the Information Regulator to extend UK information laws to the rapidly expanding number of private companies holding major public sector contracts. However, there remains a lack of evidence as to the nature and extent of this accountability gap and the implications for legislative reform. This article presents findings on non-compliance from a comprehensive field experiment using Freedom of Information requests on the Private Finance Initiative model of outsourcing. We demonstrate the limits of Freedom of Information as a tool for accountability and argue both legislative and regulatory reform are needed to enable proper public scrutiny of outsourced public services.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. This is an author produced version of an article published in Parliamentary Affairs. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Accountability; Freedom of Information; Outsourcing; Oversight; Private Finance Initiative; Right to Information |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > SOG: Cities & Social Justice (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Mar 2020 11:11 |
Last Modified: | 20 Jul 2022 09:24 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/pa/gsaa001 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:158043 |