The attribute of stealth is rightly applied to the Labour government. But for the wrong reasons. There is not an A&E centre in the country that has not been rebuilt and brought up to date since 1997. Half the NHS estate is now newly built, replacing the pre-NHS legacy hospitals and their wards that Florence Nightingale would have recognised. In schools around the country, new buildings have replaced temporary classrooms, many of which were built in the 1940s or 1950s and not expected to serve more than a few years.
In many cases, the budget has been sufficient for inner-city schools to undertake some works to make their site pleasant – gardens, landscaping or better staff rooms, for example. The benefits are intangible but these improvements add up to a feeling among pupils that society cherishes their schooling, just as the green lawns and quads of Oxbridge signify to students that they are in a place that society values. The whole fabric of our public services is being rewoven, not merely mended.
Nothing on this scale has been achieved since Victorian times. Even the great reforms of the 1940s were more organisational than concerned with infrastructure. And the Labour government has managed this through public investment in just seven years. However, nobody has noticed. It has been done by stealth. True, a lot of people have noticed improvements in their area, but that has not added up to a coherent picture. As Deborah Mattinson and Graeme Trayner wrote in the March/April editon of Progress, people often think that they have simply been lucky with where they live or with their GP when they get good service or a shorter waiting time. The natural tendency to swap bad news more readily than good and the relentless cynicism of some newspapers are together more than enough to edge out the sense of improvement.
This is not just bad for Labour. People across Britain have spent their money, through taxation, and they have built marvellous things. In every neighbourhood, the decision they made in 1997 and renewed in 2001 has created things they should be proud of. But these are hidden behind school fences and hospital walls. People should be able to see what they have done and what they have paid for. It is also about trust. Right now, the results of the investment people have made through their taxes is not visible enough – no wonder they fear that the money may have been squandered.
It is not as though the boards that surround rebuilding projects on schools are blank. They are full of logos. Logos for the builders, the council, the engineers and the architects. Everyone, then, except who is actually paying: the government and, behind them, the taxpayers. We have to connect the dots. We have to make sure that the various efforts that make up this unparalleled investment in our public services are connected together in people’s minds.
One solution is very simple. That is to put all the many public sector infrastructure projects under a single umbrella. Call it, say, the National Bank for Public Service Reconstruction. Don’t worry too much about the name; it can be changed. The important thing is that by giving the diverse improvements in our schools and hospitals a single handle, we have stressed the level of the task that Labour is undertaking (after Tory underinvestment) and we have already made the results easier for people to see. Now when a school or hospital is rebuilt, a logo of the National Bank can signal to people what the government is doing with their money to renew their area.
The head of the National Bank could report on progress each year to the Treasury and to parliament. That way, we could learn how many classrooms, wards or A&Es have been rebuilt in a verifiable and trustworthy manner. Instead of arguing over methods of finance – PPP, PFI, bonds – we could focus attention on the outcomes. Finally, putting the diverse mission of renewing our public services infrastructure under a single heading helps insure it against a time when Labour is not in power.
It would be much harder for the Tories to ever cut money if it was a visible, headline figure.
It would also make it easier for the press to track what is going. What’s going on in our public services is one of the stories of the decade, but only after the dots have been connected. The National Bank’s report to parliament would not only generate news but also features. What was the best bit of architecture completed in the public services last year? Where have local communities had most to do with the design of their services? What is smartest, or most innovative in the revolution that surrounds us?
Communicating well what a government does is vital. It is not
spin. It is the follow-up to a vote. Some of the abiding concerns of people in Britain should be addressed by making the way government works more open and more transparent. Another example would be better communication from magistrates’ courts, perhaps newsletters or local email groups, so people could see justice done in their area. A National Bank for Public Service Reconstruction organises the way government works in the same way as people see the world around them.