Far from it: the big fish have ended up protected, hiding behind a private sector shield of contractual certainty of payment, even though the contractual terms would never have been in the contemplation of the parties, had they known what was coming in terms of their revenue.

In the real private sector these contracts would have failed through market forces and come to an end. Instead these quasi-companies get jam yesterday, today and tomorrow, while the real recession hits the SMEs hard. Pre-austerity, long-term contracts are a really nice cushion available to only a select few posteriors. Especially if astronomical exit fees for the contract are readily enforceable at considerable public cost in the courts. Statutory intervention is required to level the playing field and allow a market to work.

The reality also is that the failure to reign in and top-slice the pre-severe-austerity private sector contracts signed with the Big Fish means, for example, that Birmingham City council is spending money on things through outsourced contracts it would not (under any colour of political control) have chosen to spend on had it known, at the time of signing, that its resources were to be squeezed so drastically.

The Big Fish carry on as if nothing has happened. Residents find they are being provided with services which now seem extravagant, in the face of other cuts, but they are contractually inevitable at unacceptable cost. Had a number of smaller contracts over shorter terms, with smaller enterprises been involved contraction would have been much easier to handle.

The added unfairness is that while the SMEs struggle with the effects on the local economy of austerity policies which depress both consumer spending, local and central government spending, and thence business-to-business spending, they are effectively locked out of negotiations for contracts which could provide much needed vitality and activity in local economies.

Indeed some public sector outsourcing companies are doing even better as councils and other public sector bodies, desperate for a quick fix on spending, swallow whole frankly dodgy sales pitches about likely 'savings' from them. The Audit Commission is also frank about how lousy the public sector and local government are at assessing these pitches objectively. The Capita contract (Service Birmingham) is a case in point with very recent claim and counterclaim about whether this has saved money or cost more money. I believe it is a flat-lining partnership which will cost even more money in future and would best be open to hundreds of other SME providers.

I have written frequently here about the importance in any economy (local or national) of econodiversity. A range of businesses models, variegated in size, structure and purpose can enliven local economies and end the dead hand of economic and business monoculture.

This applies especially in a recession. If services, supplies and products required from a local public sector entity are simply replaced by a few nationally-based, big, public-spending-reliant businesses, then one has to ask what the point is.

Capita's contract with Birmingham City Council could be worth well over £1billion over the next decade. Surely the contract would have added to economic vitality in the city and the region had it been available (or is made available) to the variegated, diverse ICT, media and other SMEs across the city and region. I think they should be asked. I think they should be treated better in the process.

I would suggest that, especially in the teeth of a triple-dip recession, such SMEs would be able to deliver massively better than publicly-listed, London-based, mega-international businesses like Capita; possibly together as a conglomerate of SMEs, franchises and co-operatives, and, yes, possibly some pop-ups.

Service Birmingham exists as a duopoly: Capita and Birmingham City Council. It should expand to incorporate vastly more local SME businesses and enterprises instead. Capita should accept that, and without charge.

I believe the same applies to Amey's roads, pavements and parks contract, and others.

It's high time that the SME lock-out came to an end. Local economies and their SMEs are suffering and are in real need of an economic boost. It must be to local SMEs that local councils turn first to provide.

Assessment of contracts must be able to consider the impact of keeping the services being provided by local SMEs. Such provision, especially by local, existing SMEs should be quantifiable as part of the assessment.

Since one of our biggest, most successful UK companies (about to land in a spaceship on New Street Station), John Lewis, is a employee partnership, we should also be looking at econodiversity in terms of what kinds of local enterprises can be part of local provision of public bodies' needs, along with our co-operatives and bog-standard SME limited companies and partnerships.

Our public and private economy needs to be rooted in its local enterprises, not in London-based, international capital, whether private or semi-private. And where such a big economic player as a Birmingham City Council has taxpayers' and other money to inject into the local economy, it should stay in that local economy and not be spirited away into the economic pathways and streams of the Big Fishes, to God-knows-where. Such real diverse partnerships with local enterprises can be part of the solution to finding local, sustainable economic growth and jobs, especially in such straitened economic times.