I had begun to worry that the panda which represented the public service elements of our policy review wasn’t just not pregnant, but had taken a vow of chastity. However, this week we can welcome a flurry of activity and ideas on the role of the state and public services.
Ed Miliband’s Hugo Young lecture today, Jon Cruddas on devolving power on Wednesday, and Liz Kendall launching the IPPR report on the relational state, also on Wednesday. In addition, Progress launches a thinkpiece in this area too, Reform in an Age of Austerity.
This is enormously welcome – for the sake of all those who depend on or work in public services, Labour must take the lead. We’re the people who actually believe that public services and the state have a key role to play in our lives and in the success of our society and economy; we represent people who don’t have the opportunity to opt out of state education, social or healthcare; we don’t think public sector workers are those who can’t cope with the ‘real world’ of the private sector, but, in fact, do some of the most challenging and most ‘real’ jobs about.
I’m also glad to see the range of people engaged in this discussion and debate. I sincerely hope that it doesn’t descend into a battle about how much we want to disown the work of the last Labour government and, in particular, ‘Blairite’ public service reform. I’m perfectly happy to see a new phase with different approaches and priorities, but am not convinced about the public argument which goes ‘vote for us to improve your public services, because we’re willing to tell you how bad we were at it last time’.
I think the most compelling analysis of what we need to do next builds on the success and learning from our work in government. Without centrally set targets I doubt we’d have achieved the success in driving up standards of literacy and numeracy or bringing down waiting times in our early years in government. Without the publication of information, and the spur from ‘reputational’ competition where people and organisations rose to the challenge of public scrutiny of their performance – absolute and comparative – I don’t think institutions like schools and hospitals would have focused on improvement so clearly.
However, the next stage is far more complex than what has gone before – and that seemed tough enough at the time! As IPPR rightly emphasises, problems don’t fall neatly under the responsibility of one agency or department or into those amenable to market solutions or bureaucratic solutions alone. As identified in today’s paper, ‘reform’ itself has become more complex with no single blueprint for all services and contexts, and austerity creates an environment in which change cannot be bought through increased spending and where Labour will need to determine the real priorities for action.
Is there any common ground among all those springing to this debate? Undoubtedly there is in the following areas.
First, with more complex problems, we need new forms of funding, delivery, accountability and performance management. For example, as home secretary, I rolled out neighbourhood policing to every area. But how they tackled the work of building community confidence and tackling antisocial behaviour had to differ not just from force to force, but from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. And the most successful teams worked with a wide range of partners from local authorities, the voluntary and private sectors. In fact, one of the most depressing elements of the funding pressures on policing is how neighbourhood officers now have to cover areas which are too large to really tailor activity and build relationships and where partners are retrenching as money becomes short.
Second, there is a growing recognition of the power of relationships, which hasn’t always been valued in previous reform. Delivering hospital or long-term care; policing communities; or educating children aren’t transactions. They are dependent on long-term, flexible, caring relationships and professionals with the skills and values to develop them. In government we began to recognise this, particularly in the way we developed new professionals – PCSOs, teaching assistants – but there is much farther to go and public sector unions can work with us on this.
Third, from The Purple Book onwards, there is a growing emphasis on devolving power. IPPR talks about the failure of the work programme to recognise the value that local authorities could bring to tackling worklessness. That’s right, but, in addition, one of the most interesting initiatives I have seen in this area links jobless people with psychologists who help to build their self-esteem and ability to take decisions and grasp opportunities.
There needs to be far more emphasis on place-based rather than service-based provision, and local authorities are already showing us the way to do this. But I particularly welcome Ed Miliband’s use of the term ‘people power’. It will not be enough to simply devolve power from one level of the state to a lower one without also empowering and supporting individuals in the system. Parents should have the right to prompt inspection and new providers where schools are failing, but we also need all parents to be able to play a role in their individual child’s education and for personalised teaching and learning to recognise the specific needs of each child regardless of any institutional change going on too. In 2006-7 in the Department for Education, I worked with Ruth Kelly and Bev Hughes on new support and roles for parents.
In the Department of Health, personal budgets and expert patient programmes both recognised the expertise and wish of many individuals to have far greater power over the decisions made on their care.
These experiences and learning about what stopped some of these initatives really taking off must also be part of the planning for the next stage of Labour public service ‘reform’. This week brings some enormously interesting new thinking from Ed, Jon Cruddas, IPPR and Progress. Couple these ideas with some of the experience of those who know what it’s like to try to deliver in government and we have the makings of some innovative and effective policy and, what’s more, we might do it without a bitter internal battle too!
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Jacqui Smith is a former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @smithjj62
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