Labour must have a public services reform agenda that addresses the issues that people feel most worried about – jobs, social care, opportunities for young people – but in a way that enthuses and engages both citizens and public servants; that was the central message of this session of the Progress annual conference. Kate Godfrey, PPC for Stafford, chaired the discussion, which was led by contributions from MPs Tristram Hunt and Steve Reed, academic Maurice Glassman, trade union leader Mary Bousted and Economist journalist Jeremy Cliffe.
Tristram Hunt MP opened the debate by saying that a public services reform agenda was essential for a future Labour government. The public finances are in an appalling mess. Tristram reminded Progress members that there is nothing progressive about servicing debt. Debt repayment is effectively dead money.
Tristram has recently joined Stephen Twigg’s shadow education team to lead on vocational education. Governments should rightly focus on academic excellence, but a future Labour government must have an ambitious reform agenda for vocational education, in which FE colleges have a crucial role. Forty per cent of young people do not achieve 5 A* to C grades at GCSE at 16 and of this group, only 20 per cent go on to achieve this benchmark at age 18.
The coalition’s agenda for public services is to franchise out whole swathes of the public sector to companies such as SERCO and Capita. Such an approach is destroying plurality in delivery of public services and further weakening accountability, and in light of recent reports by select committees on city academies and the work programme, no guarantee of efficient use of public resources. Schools should not be run for profit, as some Tories are advocating and moral and ethical values are integral to public services, Tristram argued. In his experience, services designed and delivered by the civil society sector of co-operatives, voluntary organisations and community groups are more effective at developing lasting relationships with local residents.
Engaging with residents and service users as equal partners was the key theme of Steve Reed’s speech. Steve argued that while the post-war welfare state was very successful in providing security in times of unemployment and old age and universal services such as the NHS, the state had a tendency to take over more and more of people’s lives, increasing dependency and reducing self reliance. A future Labour government must have a public services reform agenda which is about shifting power to people who use public services such as tenants, older people with chronic health problems and vulnerable young people. Politicians need to engage with people emotionally, and connect changes in public services to how people are feeling. No one chooses to live in poverty, but we will only be able to support people to turn their lives around by listening carefully to individual citizens and tailoring services to meet their actual needs, rather than assuming that we think we know what would make a difference in their lives. Steve concluded by saying that his contribution to the public services reform agenda is going to be through connecting the Co-op Councils Network to the Labour Policy Review process.
Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, began by asking the question: how much more reform can the public sector take? Mary described the blizzard of initiatives and ideological interventions from Michael Gove. One only has sympathy for secondary school teachers who have to teach new curricula and exam syllabuses for key stage 3, GCSE, AS Level and A Level, much of which hasn’t been thought through and imposed upon schools.
Looking back to Labour’s time in government, Mary noted the contribution of city academies to providing much needed investment and reform in some of the most deprived communities in England, and highlighted the success of the London Challenge. London schools used to be among the worst in the country, now they are the best. The London Challenge was about ‘whole system change’ with schools learning from each other, teachers sharing best practice as well as institutional change through creation of academies and federating schools. Mary felt that the London Challenge was an excellent example of successful public service reform that enthusiastically engaged teachers by focusing on improving their professional practice.
Looking ahead to 2015, Mary said that she wanted to see a future Labour government give real autonomy and professional accountability to teachers through a Royal College of Teachers. Academies need to be held much more rigorously to account for the expenditure of public money, following a highly critical report from the Public Accounts Committee, and growing evidence that academies and free schools are contravening the admissions code.
Maurice Glassman began his talk by saying how pleased he was to be at the Progress conference. Following attacks on Progress by some unions, he felt he should show solidarity by accepting invitations to speak at Progress events! New Labour in government was too managerial and that many people who worked in the public sector felt demoralised by constantly having change ‘done to them’. The community organising principle of never doing things for people that they can do for themselves should underpin a One Nation Labour approach to public services, as should a shared sense of the ‘common good’.
Maurice argued that the decline in social solidarity needed to be actively reversed and there needed to be a far greater focus developing public servants sense of vocation and ethnical practice. His ‘big idea’ is for Labour to close half of England’s universities and turn them into colleges run by unions and companies to provide high level skills training for working class people – reflecting afterwards, one wonders whether Maurice was calling for the return of polytechnics? In 1992 polytechnics became universities and maybe their original remit of engaging adult learners, working closely with local industries and delivering vocational degrees and courses needs to be reinvigorated?
Managers and politicians need to be much more effective at accounting to people for their actions, and that public services should be organised on the principle of sharing power and accountability between citizens who use public services, the workforce and funding bodies. Most people’s lives are focused around home and work, and yet Labour talks more about individual services rather than people’s daily experience.
Jeremy Cliffe began reminding everyone that the Labour governments of Blair and Brown were very successful at delivering public services and improving the quality of life for many people in Britain. Crime fell markedly, schools improved significantly, more young people went to university than ever before and investment in the NHS doubled. However, Labour has a problem: its record on public services is not portrayed as a success by the media, partly because the Tories – and right wing commentators – have skilfully presented Labour’s record as wasteful.
Jeremy felt that public services presented a big opportunity for Labour in 2015. Jobs, education and health are very important to everyone in Britain and the Tories are seen as far too ideological and obsessive about issues such as Europe and gay marriage. We shouldn’t apologise for our record, but equally we will suffer at the polls if we are portrayed as being hostile to the private sector. We must start putting some flesh on the bones in policy terms otherwise people will see us as being about the past not the future. Labour needs a very strong message on value for money for taxpayers and delivering services in ways that treat people as individuals. There is a great danger of politicians talking in jargon – no one in the queue in Sainsbury’s would talk about communitarism, reciprocity and mutuality!
The discussion that followed opened up some of tensions in Labour debates between professional autonomy and user empowerment. Mary Bousted felt that ‘common sense’ was not good policy and that professional expertise need to be utilised while Steve Reed was unequivocal in believing that professionals have to share power with users whose insights and expertise was of equal value, if not more so, than the skills and knowledge of public servants.
Tristram questioned Mary’s view that period of stability is required; that professionals and managers had had enough ‘change’ by simply saying that there is never a perfect time for major reform. Under Labour, Stoke had had its first new hospital for 140 years, teenage pregnancies have fallen significantly and there was significant investment in early years through Sure Start and Children’s Centres. None of these improvements would have been achieved without the drive and determination of politicians who want a better future for their constituents.
A Progess member who is an assistant head teacher, stimulated a lively discussion on working with people, when she talked about the importance of engaging parents to support children’s learning, while other members raised concerns about the crisis in social care and the demands an ageing population was placing on local government finances. Steve gave excellent examples from his time in Lambeth of working with a mother who wanted to tackle gang violence, young disabled people managing their own budgets and our community freshview programme. Another member rightly challenged the panel about how none of them had mentioned housing – perhaps the subject for a future Progress seminar, or given the scale of the housing crisis, a Progress conference?
My contribution was to request that a future Labour government is as focused on reform of services that are the responsibility of central government such as Job Centre Plus and the criminal justice system, as services which are the responsibility of local government. Ministers should also avoid micromanaging and avoid trying to dictate from Whitehall how local councils deliver local services. Tristram was rightly scathing about Eric Pickles trying to tell councils how to organise their bin collections when there was a crisis in social care funding, libraries were being closed and youth service decimated!
In 2015 an incoming Labour government will have the huge responsibility of improving public services with no new money. The key to success will be devolving power, not only to local government and public service managers, but most importantly, to people themselves. Harnessing everyone’s expertise and enthusiasm will be critical to ensuring that we are addressing the issues that matter most to people in a way that they think will be most effective. Listening is a skill that is undervalued both by politicians and professionals. The horrific cases of sexual abuse and exploitation of vulnerable young women in Oxfordshire is a salutary reminder to politicians and professionals that they not only need to listen, but they need to reflect on what they have heard and act. Labour politicians come into politics not only to exercise power, but more importantly, to give power away. That’s what makes Labour governments and Labour councils more effective.
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Sally Prentice is cabinet member for culture and leisure in Lambeth. She tweets @SallyPrentice and has a website www.sallyprentice.org.uk
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Not being at the debate on Public Services at the recent Progress conference means I cannot comment on the solid proposals that may have come out of the workshop. However, I see no detail in this summary as to what actual policies a future Labour government might pursue in order to ‘devolve power’ to citizens and service users or even how we might go about ‘listening’ to what those same people are telling us. Devolved budgets to service users are mentioned, but even here there are risks – a persons individual budget might be spent on goods and services that are inappropriate to the users needs. The self same service user may then return to the local authority/health service provider requiring additional support – if such further demands on services are agreed then devolved budgets becomes expensive and an additional burden on council tax payers – if a local authority/health service provider does not agree to provide additional support they get accused of heartlessness or a lack of care. Devolved budgets can simply become another one size fits all policy (another version of top down authoritarianism) – something we would all like to get away from. The workshop appeared to assert a need to ‘listen’ to what services users are asking for. I’m all for looking at an individual’s needs in the round and consulting widely on a range of solutions or choices that may be offered, but there comes a point when saying we’ll listen to you tell us what you want just sets up inflated expectations. We can’t have infinite choice. If resources are scarce then choices will be limited – we need to be honest with people about this. One area of the discussion that does interest me is how our public services should take a more active role in getting people working. At present our public services seem to be primarily about patching people up so that they can physically work or providing life time support if deemed that they can’t. A welfare state that sets out to revisit its role in dealing with what Beveridge called ‘idleness’ we should as a party argue for.