In a pamphlet published by Progress today, Alan Milburn, former health secretary, argues that “neither Thatcherism nor Blairism” have successfully “moved power from the state to the individual or to the community” and that “victory in the battle of ideas over the next decade will go to the party which can facilitate a paradigm shift in the relationship between state and citizen.”
He fears that the growing gap between politics and the public requires that Labour resolves its “ambivalence about the modern roles of the state and the citizen.” Milburn writes: “my conclusion is that the public is not so much turned off by politics, as the way politics is done. Or for that matter, the way public services are run.” He continues: “ Public disengagement is a symptom of disempowerment. Too often we shut people out when we should be letting them in.”
Milburn suggests that while the Prime Minister has committed himself to putting greater power in the hands of citizens, “a splurge of Whitehall initiatives seem to point in the opposite direction.” Mr Milburn argues that “this half-in, half-out approach won’t work. Uncertainty has to make way for clarity.”
The former health secretary has authored the introduction to the Progress pamphlet titled ‘Beyond Whitehall: a new vision for a progressive state’. The publication also includes essays by four Cabinet Ministers: James Purnell, Work and Pensions Secretary; Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Olympics; John Hutton, Business Secretary; and Hazel Blears, Community Secretary. Other contributors include former Downing Street advisers Michael Barber and Patrick Diamond, and Chris Leslie, Director of the New Local Government Network and former MP.
Mr Milburn also writes about the slow down of social mobility arguing that “action by this government has halted that process. The glass ceiling has been raised. But it has not yet been broken.” Milburn believes this can only happen if Labour shift the focus “beyond the traditional welfare state solution of correcting the symptoms of inequality retrospectively – such as low wages and family poverty – towards an approach that proactively deals with the roots of disadvantage before they become entrenched.”
He suggests a number of policies which could form part of this new shift including:
• Cutting taxes for the low paid
• Making local police and health services directly accountable to local people through the ballot box
• Giving local communities referendums to determine locally decided tax rates
• Allowing locally elected bodies to borrow either from the market or through local bond issues
• Giving communities the legal right to have failing local services replaced
• Encouraging the development of community courts and restorative justice
• More community-run mutual organisations to take over the running of local services such as children’s centre, estates and parks
• Individual budgets, publicly funded, for older people, people with long-term conditions, families with disabled children or people in training
Milburn concludes: “one of New Labour’s key strengths has been its preparedness to face the future challenge rather than taking comfort in the past achievement. The willingness to change is what has made New Labour so dominant in British politics and forced even our most strident opponents into contemplating changes they once thought abhorrent. Now change beckons once again.”
Other authors in the pamphlet tackle the issue of what Labour’s message should be at the next election. John Hutton writes: “New Labour cannot fight and win the next general election on the issue of tax cuts vs investment alone. Or a big state, little state argument. The next election will be a choice between a Tory version of a weak state and New Labour’s vision for an effective state.” Hutton says “experience doesn’t have to be a liability at the next general election; it can be an asset if we show a willingness to reflect and apply those lessons to the new challenges the country faces.”
Hazel Blears warns people about Conservative plans suggesting we should be “quite clear that when David Cameron says ‘post-bureaucratic state’ he means a smaller state, with cuts to people who feel at the limits of their capacity to pay more tax.” James Purnell similarly writes that Cameron is “attempting to use the veil of ‘social responsibility’ and the caricature of a ‘broken society’ to undermine the state through a thousand tiny cuts.”
Tessa Jowell writes about the danger for the Labour Party: “We are with a Tory Party that has got smarter, less openly traditional in its thinking and a public that is rightly demanding better and more responsive services. We need to be determined in holding firm against the temptation clearly felt by some in the party to see clearer definition by recreating the old dividing lines of left versus right, state versus private, that ultimately produce a convenience that too often crushes individual choice.”
A full pdf copy of Beyond Whitehall: A new vision for a progressive state is available to download here