Pauline Allen convened the symposium to discuss recent developments in the delivery of public services. Using the government’s recent White Paper ‘Open Public Services’ (2011) as a starting point , the increasingly diverse range of providers of public services was discussed. In fact, this policy is not new – the previous New Labour government had been encouraging the entry of different providers to various public services. The symposium provided an opportunity to explore and compare rationales, processes and results of increasing diversity of provision within different areas of the public sector and to assess the implications for the performance of public services.
One of the contributions was from Imelda McDermott, dealing with the increasing diversity of providers of primary health care services.