Sir, - The result of the ballot by Waverley council tenants is depressing. The proposal was a good example of a council acknowledging that it does not do things as efficiently as an external specialist organisation whilst at the same time releasing much-needed capital from assets it does not need to own.
One of the most important political lessons of the last 20 years is the acceptance that the public sector cannot offer the incentives or impose the sanctions to make it as efficient in providing goods and services as the private sector.
As a result privatisation, competitive tendering and out-sourcing have successfully flourished at national and local government levels. Indeed, companies in the private sector have widely out-sourced activities that used to be carried out "in-house".
The Liberal Democrats in Waverley have much to answer for. Their scaremongering campaign against the proposal was descrbed last week by another local newspaper as "questionable". After all, there was nothing unusual about a proposal of a kind successfully implemented elsewhere.
As he became involved, perhaps the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, Simon Cordon, could explain whether it is official Liberal Democrat policy to oppose the transfer of local authority housing?
Can he assure us that no Liberal Democrat councils elsewhere have implemented policies of this kind?
Unless he can positively confirm these two questions, the suspicion remains that Liberal Democrat opposition in Waverley was cynically driven to deny political advantage to the Conservatives.
John Littlewood
Greenhill Road, Farnham