This is the second of my two articles in which I set out my views on key policy areas which I hope Progress will focus on in the run up to the next election, and as a strategy board member would push for.
One of the umbrella themes of New Labour was public service investment and reform. It is a theme which has had some real successes, but significant failures as well. Reform is still needed in order to meet the evolving requirements and expectations of those who receive those services. In this brief scripture I set out a case of how I think public service reform should be conducted and believe Progress has a significant role to play in helping Labour reform services when it returns to government, in what is expected to be a very different economic environment than when it was last in office.
At the outset, I believe that there is a role for all in reforming in public services, by which I mean reform has to be undertaken with the engagement of those who deliver and those who receive public services. However, I want to begin with what is most frustrating for me when the issue of reforming public services is debated – when we talk about public servants we are not talking about a foreign regime, a criminal entity or an enemy, which I almost think some people debate using the same tone and sentiment, but we are talking about millions of people; neighbours, loved ones, and friends, who work every day for communities and for Britain. Therefore we need to recognise that any reform doesn’t just impact on those working in the public sector and those who receive the service, but also the rest of us in society as well.
So how do we identify and by what methods should we reform areas of the public sector? Lord Adonis, commenting on his recent book on education reform, answers these questions perfectly – it’s about grounding policy in evidence and in personal experience which in essence means getting out of Whitehall, visiting the front line, and talking to those who deliver the service and those who receive it, about how they think things could be improved.
Take for instance a TV programme which has left a huge impact on me on reforming the NHS. In 2006, private sector mogul Geoffrey Robinson was given the task of reducing waiting times in six months at Rotherham Hospital, without spending a single penny. He found during his first week the main problem that lies in many areas of the public sector – institutionalism. He found that surgeons didn’t work on Friday afternoons and that’s ‘how it had always been’.
Over the next six months he managed, with great difficulty but with considerable success, to negotiate people to work more flexibly across the week, from surgeons to anaesthetists to nurses, by empowering those at the bottom and putting pressure on the top. Robinson asked nurses how they would run their wards better and by listening to those who worked day in and day out, managed to reduce waiting times and create a happier working force for the benefit of the patients.
Although this seems more like a management problem, it is actually a reform of public service delivery and to me demonstrates how reforms more broadly should be conducted. Any reform should be triggered by identifying where a service fails to deliver what those in receipt of the service expect or require. Labour in government should therefore look to reform areas of public services where this is the case and conduct the reform by working with those on the front line both who deliver and those in receipt of services.
As a member of the Progress Strategy Board I would push for a serious debate in the two to three years before the next election to set out key areas of public services that need reform and how this can be achieved under the next Labour government.
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Mike Harrison is a candidate in the members’ section in the Progress strategy board elections 2012. You can find out more about all the candidates at the dedicated Progress strategy board election microsite