How would you like your cuts? Performed with a scalpel or a chainsaw? Done reluctantly and sensitively by people who will shield your local hospital and school from the blade, or by people who are foaming at the mouth with excitement at the prospect of reducing the size of the state? Peter Mandelson’s speech to Progress on Monday revealed the bare bones of Labour’s election strategy. By the weekend, the strategy has neither unravelled under Tory scrutiny, nor being fatally undermined by our own side briefing against it. If it can survive a week, perhaps at last we have a strategy which we can take into the election next May. Certainly Labour’s decision to make it ‘nice’ Labour cuts versus ‘nasty’ Tory cuts is more robust than the ‘investment versus cuts’ line which was the backdrop to our defeats in several elections since 2007.
If a life in politics teaches you anything, it is that people are not stupid. People want better public services, and overwhelmingly remain committed to state schools, the National Health Service and other collective services. Importantly, the salaried middle-classes – what the admen would call ABC1s – in Britain have not opted out of the NHS or local school in favour of private options. But people’s commitment is conditional. It rests on public services being fair and efficient, and it relies on standards being high and consistently improving.
That’s why New Labour’s crusade to reform public services was not only the right thing to do to cut waiting lists for operations, reduce class sizes, and put more police on the streets, but also the right thing to do politically, as an election-winning strategy. If that meant ministers were ritually booed and barracked at trade union conferences, then so much the better. There’s an enduring image of education secretary David Blunkett being surrounded by bawling, swivel-eyed Trotskyists at some education union conference, and I am pretty sure that most people watching would have sided with the minister over the mob. The nuances of education reform may be lost on most parents, but if the unions are angry, Labour must be doing something right.
Without a strong commitment to public service reform, few will trust Labour’s commitment to make the cuts without major pain. A Populus opinion poll in the Times this morning suggests that Labour is lagging behind on the major issues. On improving the NHS, the Tories lead Labour by three points (up 10). On improving standards in schools, the Tories lead by six points (up 11). They are 18 points ahead on ‘dealing with crime and anti-social behaviour’ (up 8). They also lead on managing the economy well, getting the balance right between tax and spending, tackling climate change, immigration, dealing with the recession, and representing Britain in the EU. Partly, this reflects the overall unpopularity of Labour. But the hard truth is that it also reflects the impression that Labour has rowed back on public service reforms, especially in the NHS and the ‘respect’ agenda to tackle anti-social behaviour, since 2007.
Reports started to appear such as this from the Telegraph on 26 July 2007, ‘Alan Johnson, the new Health Secretary, laid out his plans for the NHS yesterday, promising that the involvement of the private sector would be limited.
In a clear break with the Blair years, Mr Johnson announced there would not be an expansion of contracts with the private sector to provide operations for NHS patients after those in the pipeline had been approved.’
Or this from the Guardian on 24 December 2007, ‘In a significant change since Gordon Brown took over from Blair, the government has closed down its Respect taskforce, and its head, the high-profile civil servant Louise Casey, has moved to a job inside the Cabinet Office looking at community policing.’
There was a clear endeavour to signal an end to New Labour’s public service reform. What was less clear was what Labour would do instead. It was a short-term tactic to show there was a new sheriff in town, but in the medium term it added weight to the Tories’ ‘roadblock to reform’ jibe, and worse, risked reversing New Labour’s hard-won improvements.
On the public services, if you take your foot off the gas, you don’t stand still, you go backwards. The public know full well that services aren’t always as good as they should be, and they can see wasted money and daft, inefficient systems. That’s why Peter Mandelson was right to highlight public service reform in his speech this week, alongside the need for ‘wise spending’.
He said ‘More recently, the government has emphasised the role of service guarantees and entitlements with means of redress available to individual citizens where services fall short. For example, the right to be seen within 18 weeks in the NHS or offered alternative provision. The right to see a cancer specialist within two weeks or go private on the NHS. The right to a health check.
These entitlements, backed up by the offer of an alternative provider, will ensure that future reforms build on the improvements of the last 12 years and there will be no going back. Our plans to create real rights and entitlements are the new frontier of public service reform.’
Without a radical programme of public service reforms, Labour will not have permission from the electorate to make cuts.
Alistair Darling meets his Cabinet colleagues in coming days to discuss how their departmental budgets can be cut. He should ask a simple series of questions: what is your programme for reform? How can you drive up standards and efficiency? How can you harness the private sector to challenge existing services? How can you extend choice to the citizen? What plans have you to pass power to local people?
Only then should Labour decide where to insert the scalpel.