Labour will have to make the case for some unpopular decisions
By Meg Hillier
—As we brace ourselves for more cuts, the government is considering plans to slay some of the most popular policies on the altar of efficiency. This will challenge the Labour party and politicians generally. It will fall to us to strike a balance between efficiency and popularity while being seen to be acting responsibly.
At a recent meeting of the public accounts committee, on which I sit, Treasury officials revealed that preparations for the 2014-5 spending review include discussions around a ruthless measurement of performance against stated aims and outcomes. If the spending does not deliver what it sets out to (David Cameron’s ‘Ronseal’ deal), it is not value for money and it should be cut. This was the message emanating from the heart of government. They highlighted classroom assistants and police numbers as examples, and at the committee we have had revealing sessions on the effectiveness of the money pumped into hospitals.
One official told us: ‘Schools are [an example] where you have a lot of analysis that the big increase in workforce, principally teaching assistants who are loved by teachers and loved by parents, has neutral if not negative impacts on school outcomes, because you tend to get the weaker ability children taught by the less well-qualified professionals.’
Does any politician have the courage to take this on? Of course, we would argue that there are other advantages to teaching assistants that are not so easily measured: calm and ordered classrooms; job creation; upskilling of a group of, mostly, women workers; and the fact that the salaries of these staff are likely to be spent locally. But if the objective of these roles was to boost pupil achievement, and this is not happening, we need to take this seriously.
The same is true with policing, another area the Treasury has in its sights. When Labour was in power we presided over a huge expansion in the number of uniformed officers.
The orthodoxy up to and after 1997 was that tackling crime was all about intelligence-led policing. But the public clamoured for more ‘bobbies on the beat’ and we made a great virtue of listening and delivering this.
It was under Labour that crime levels began to seriously fall. Previously it had always been orthodoxy that there was a certain stable minimum level of crime. But under Jacqui Smith as home secretary Labour set a target for fear of crime to fall.
Fear of crime was dropping by 2007. Then, on 22 August of that year, the country was rocked by the shocking murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool. Fear of crime shot up overnight. This crime was horrendous. And part of our horror was that it was rare for one so young to be gunned down in the afternoon close to home.
Public reaction is not necessarily purely rational. Even when presented with the full facts we can react with a gut emotion. My own local police chiefs still tell me how important crime analysts are and some ache for more flexibility over their budgets. But more uniformed police and community support officers on the streets – a friendly everyday presence, and not just an adrenaline-fuelled blue light fly-past – can make a difference as the figures on fear of crime show.
I firmly believe in efficiency – every pound of public money saved can be spent on something important – but this is perhaps where the bean-counting, value for money approach departs from pure politics.
Back to the Treasury officials, who said: ‘Do we know, for health or for schools, what £1 of spend is delivering in terms of outcomes? There were some areas, policing is a good example, where there is almost an inverse correlation between what we spend and the outcomes that we deliver.’
With hospitals, if we focused ruthlessly on outcomes we would have many more specialist centres. The leading surgeon and former health minister Ara Darzi made some headway when he persuaded me and other London colleagues that a smaller number of specialist stroke centres in the capital would save more lives than if early stroke aftercare was available across the board. But Richard Taylor became the pin-up doctor-turned-MP for local feeling when elected as an independent over the future of Kidderminster hospital. No one wants their hospital to close.
On all money matters Labour still has to prove that we will spend taxes wisely. We should be clear that we are a party that squeezes every possible drop of value out of investment in public services.
But politics is not a sterile debate between accountants. Part of the alchemy of being an elected representative is leadership, so, where spending is wasteful, make the case and say what should be done instead. And part of the role is to read the public mood and make changes that reflect that. Words are our business – we need to lead and persuade but listening is crucial too. Imposing against the grain of public opinion is challenging and can be career-ending. Just remember Kidderminster.
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Meg Hillier is MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch
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I couldn’t agree more. We need more senior figures in the party like yourself challenging the defend every hospital, fire and police station demand of our activists. We need to demonstrate we’re credible on the economy. We will need to be creative about apportioning public spending in times when we can’t simply spend the proceeds of growth, as even under us that growth might well be limited. Most people know we can’t promise to restore every benefit cut or save every sergeant. We need to be honest with people that keeping open a hospital in one locality simply means a cut to probably better and more useful health services elsewhere. Furthermore we simply pour petrol on the fire of public cynicism by opposing cuts now but when in office we implement them, because after all it is sensible politics to carry them through. We do need to set some priorities for public spending. For example, we will apportion resources into getting more people into work, but this will be paid for through cuts in other benefits. We’ll need review our health provision by looking at providing services on a national scale rather than determined by local demand. Just how many A&Es does Greater London need and where best to locate them. We should be more critical of these campaigns and our members participation in such campaigns should be constructively critical.
Does this include paying for investment in infrastructure via public borrowing rather than off-balance sheet PFI (or similer) if the government borrowing is cheaper than the private sector doing the borrowing and the passing on the re-payments as part of their service contract?. In other words will you make the case that public sector borrowing in itself is not bad – it depends on what the borrowing is used for?