A wake up call for the public sector
Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, gives it to us straight this morning in The Times:
‘Tax increases and spending cuts are inevitable immediately after the election….’
‘any managers of a public service who are not planning now on the basis they will have substantially less money to spend in two years time are living in cloud cuckoo land’
This message chimes with the detailed picture drawn last week for the 2020 Public Services Trust Commission (here at the RSA) by IFS Director Robert Chote. Put simply, we are talking about a period of at least three years, starting next year, in which public spending budgets will be squeezed more tightly than in the living memory of most public servants.
Which means three issues should be getting focussed attention in the public sector – but I see little sign of any even being seriously discussed.
First, we need to be exploring the scope for major productivity gains, not just cutting back office staff, but re-engineering services to achieve substantial cuts in costs. The example I have given in the past involves schools moving to a four day taught week for key stage four pupils with the fifth day being used for self guided study. With the right use of space, on-line tuition and teaching support this could make a substantial saving on teaching time and also be good for pupils. Another example is that if local authorities moved more boldly on individual budgets, putting in place the technological and community support necessary to do so, they should be able radically to reduce case and middle management costs in adult service departments.
Second, we need to be encouraging an intensified process of innovation in public services, designed to find ways of doing the same, or more, for less. There are many organisations out there, from Participle to Think Public to the Design Council (indeed the RSA itself) with expertise in citizen-led public sector innovation, but their work still tends to be at the margins. They need to be given more support and be incentivised to collaborate better.
Third, we need a frank and creative discussion between policy makers, practitioners and the public about the hard choices to be made over the coming years. Local residents may complain about moving to fortnightly refuse collection but they might feel differently if they understood this was one of the measures that enabled the council to protect other services. The creative question here is how could the actions of citizens themselves reduce spending pressures and enhance service outcomes?
These kinds of debates should be taking in every Government department and local authority. If public services don’t adapt, innovate and engage the public in new ways we face a demoralising and divisive era of cuts which will not only damage people’s lives but could fatally undermine voters’ faith in universal public provision.
Why migration policy is never right
My old friends at ippr have a report out today on immigration. In typical ippr style the work is balanced, evidence based and progressively inclined. It comes to the conclusion that there is no net impact on the existing workforce as a result of immigration. However, all the evidence upon which the project was based comes from before the recession, so I fear it won’t cut much mustard with the kind of people who have been protesting against the hiring of foreign workers.
Coincidentally, a former ippr colleague of mine, who now works for the US based Migration Policy Institute has asked me, ahead of a seminar they are hosting in London next month, to lay out a cultural theory approach to migration policy.
I’m not sure I am entirely equipped for the job (either in terms of expertise in migration or cultural theory) but here goes:
Migration policy is tough because it has to deal with powerful forces and perspectives along each of the three active paradigms of cultural theory: individualism, egalitarianism and hierarchy.
Hierarchists (by which in this case we generally mean Government agencies) want a migration policy which is orderly and leads to predictable and manageable outcomes. Moreover, they feel a great deal of pressure to show that they can engineer and deliver such a policy. This helps to explain why Governments not only tend to talk tough on migration but also consistently exaggerate their control over migration and its outcomes. The state’s frailty in the face of the uncontrollability and complexity of migration threatens to undermine its credibility not just in this area but more broadly.
This is because migration is an issue which stirs huge egalitarian feeling. People often associate egalitarian instincts (an emphasis on ideas of fairness, shared values plus a suspicion of change driven by the state and markets) with the left, but in this case egalitarianism is most often expressed in hostility to migration. Progressives and champions of the rights of migrants and refugees do attempt to counter this with their own appeal to common values and grass roots mobilisation (see, for example, the brave and creative campaign, Simple Acts, advanced by the Refugee Week Partnership, which includes he Refugee Council and a number of other agencies) but these appeals lack the intensity of nationalism or tribalism.
The individualist approach to migration combines the desire of migrants themselves to improve their lot (or in the case of refugees – to save their lives) with the need of business to have as broad a labour market as possible from which to select employees. Thus, individualism, which is normally associated with a right of centre perspective is, in the case of migration, the foundation for what looks like the progressive stance on this issue – the one argued by the RSA itself in a report published during the time of my predecessor.
Migration policy is complex for many reasons but a cultural theory analysis highlights why this is such a ‘wicked’ issue. Egalitarians, individualists and hierarchists share powerful and apparently irreconcilable views which invert traditional alignments between ideology and models of change.
A successful migration policy has to find the aspects of each perspective which can be reconciled with the others. How can hierarchists accept a policy that recognises and works within the limitations of state regulation? How can egalitarians be engaged in shaping a realistic and humane migration policy that can be reconciled with cohesion and local fairness? And how can individualist aspirations be met in ways which recognise that for many people migration has few obvious benefits.
As usual, cultural theory offers no answers but it does force us to address the really tough questions. As the recession deepens, the tendency of hierarchists to over-claim, and egalitarian to express fear and suspicion, will grow. But people’s desire for a better life will not go away, nor will the globalising effects of modern business and technology. At a time like this a workable and progressive migration policy requires exceptional insight and courage from those who frame discourse, develop policy, and live with its consequences.
New challenges for a new Fellowship
As I suggested yesterday, thinking about conversation does seem to improve it. I had some fascinating exchanges in Sheffield and Leeds yesterday and also met up with other bloggers, including Rob Greenland who has already blogged about last night’s Fellows evening.
Rob and I spoke last night about the role social businesses might play in responding to the deepening recession. He wasn’t sure the sector would in itself be able to make much impact. But I was able to share with him the conversation I had earlier in the day with William Perrin.
I first met William when I was an advisor and he a civil servant in Number Ten and our paths have kept crossing since then. Now I am working with William in my new role as interim Chair of UK Online Centres Foundation. He is developing a new venture to provide training and support to people setting up community websites.
Some of these sites are fantastic but they tend to be reliant on the unpaid dedication of heroic individuals. Many other people have sites that make much less impact than they could with a bit of guidance. Among William’s many ideas is to establish a national network of community website authors.
Given my interest in how to energise untapped capacity within communities, I am really excited by William’s idea (in fact I tried to float something similar here at the RSA last year!). It is not just that community websites can be an effective way of mobilising local people, for example against unwelcome planning applications, I believe they can evolve into powerful channels of collective self help and innovation. How about a community website organising people to make wholesale orders for basic fresh foods, perhaps buying them direct from local farms? We have been exploring an idea a bit like this in Scotland. Once the market is created through the website it might be enough to sustain a small social business taking and delivering orders around the neighbourhood.
In the difficult years to come we need many ideas like this to develop new economic activity and to protect those who face hard times. Sadly, the Government has chosen to channel the overwhelming majority of is economic stimulus spending through national programmes with virtually no extra money getting down to local or neighbourhood level. There is a big agenda here for the RSA as we develop more and more city and town groups. (Imagine the difference a bit of mentoring or expertise from a Fellow could make to someone setting up their own community website.)
Judging by the mood in Leeds last night, and the quality of the people who came along, Fellows are up for the challenge.
It’s good to talk
One of my minor achievements in politics was having the idea of the Big Conversation. This was an attempt by the Labour Party to reconnect with its supporters in the wake of the divisive decision to invade Iraq. I remember writing a chunk of text for Tony Blair’s conference speech calling for a national debate over future policy and being both flattered and terrified when he delivered it verbatim.
The Big Conversation was successful in one way and a failure in another. It helped to accelerate the shift away from politicians engaging primarily by delivering speeches to the process of participants engaging with each other, with politicians responding to the points raised by the groups. This process helped to identify some key issues which Labour leaders then agreed to push up the agenda – for example, expanding flexible working rights for parents and carers. The process was seen to fail as a way of developing detailed policy recommendations, which was slightly unfair in that no one sensible would ever have thought such a thing was possible in the first place.
I was reminded of the Big Conversation when reading ‘Conversation: how talk can change our lives’, a book of lectures by Theodore Zeldin. It’s one of those books that is impossible to summarise, so full it is of fascinating perspectives and insights. But running through each perfectly formed lecture is a simple assertion that runs doubly counter to intuition. We tend to think of conversation as easy but unimportant; in calling for a ‘New Conversation’ Zeldin says the reverse: conversation is vital to well being, growth and social harmony but it is also hard to do well.
‘Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts; they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards it creates new cards…It’s like a spark that two minds create. And what I realty care about is what new conversational banquets one can create from those sparks’
Yesterday I had a conversation with Matt Grist who is running our ‘social brain’ project here at the RSA. We are at the difficult early stage of the project, trying to develop a conceptual framework both for the ideas themselves and for the method and purpose of the project. It is a good investment of time to work away at this but the sense that we might never crack it generates anxiety. We were discussing the three levels from which human action emerges: the physiological (hard wired-automatic responses), the socio-cultural (the norms which tacitly determine behavioural options) and the cognitive (the decisions we choose to make).
Human development can involve moving actions from one level to another, and, interestingly in both directions. Learning a skill, for example, a new language or musical instrument or sporting prowess involves moving down the levels. We start off having to think about everything but – if we persist – more and more becomes automatic. Cognitive and behavioural therapy involves a reverse process by which patients are given insight into dysfunctional hard wired mechanisms, which they must learn to identify and deliberately block if they are to relieve anxiety or depression.
Good conversation involves action at all three levels. Research in neuroscience and psychology has shown the powerful automatic processes of empathy taking place when we enjoy speaking with other people. A conversation will also conform to powerful cultural rules governing what is appropriate. And, of course, during the conversation there will be moments (although probably not as many as we tend to assume) when we ‘decide’ to listen or speak in a particular way.
In my annual Chief Executive’s speech last year, I offered the inelegant phrase ‘neurological reflexivity’ – the idea that important consequences would flow from more of us better understanding the ways our minds work. I am planning to have lots of conversations today, ending up with a Fellows’ evening in Leeds. I’ll report back later on whether thinking about conversation affects the way I experience it.
How David Cameron could make Britain happier
In response to the growing Conservative lead in the polls a number of commentators, including Michael Portillo and Andrew Rawnsley, used weekend articles to ask questions about how ready is David Cameron for power. The thrust of the pieces was that Labour is almost down but that the Conservatives still have work to do, not just to secure a workable majority but also to show they are fully prepared for the difficult circumstances the country will face in 2010.
It may be that team Cameron can win just by not being Labour, but if the Tories do desire more definition I suggest they dip into two books I have been reading this weekend (I had to have something to take my mind of West Brom’s abject defeat by Fulham).
The first, which I am helping to launch at the LSE on Wednesday, is ‘Towards a more equal society?’ edited by John Hills and colleagues from the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion. The book is a comprehensive and data rich analysis of Labour’s record on inequality. One of its general conclusions is that Labour succeeded in marginally reducing inequality in those policy (and geographical) areas to which it devoted substantial and consistent time, energy and money. The implication is that there are gravitational forces in the modern world which tend to increase inequality. On the socio-economic side these include labour market globalisation and the importance of post compulsory education, while, on the political side there is there disproportionate attention paid to the needs of ‘middle England’ as a result of the electoral system, and the commercial interests of the print media. Unless Government is very determined, the UK will drift towards greater social inequality.
The other book (which is the subject of an RSA Thursday on 5 March) is an authoritative overview of research on the relationship between social inequality and individual well being, measured by such indicators as levels of reported well-being, trust, criminality and mental illness. Richard Wilkinson, who has spent a lifetime making this point, and Fellow author Kate Pickett, demonstrate conclusively that among developed nations more equal societies are more successful. Indeed, so strong is the correlation that even if it were the case that strategies to reduce inequality had a detrimental impact on overall growth (and there is no evidence that they do) those living in the slower growing more equal societies would still be safer, happier and enjoy better health. Politicians have no difficulty in signing up either to meritocracy or to tackling poverty. In both cases they can – spuriously – imply they have policies which help the poor without taking away from the middle or top. But the same politicians tend to avoid any commitment to tackle overall social inequality. For example, to my dismay, my old boss Tony Blair made it a matter of political pride that he was insouciant in the face of massive income disparities.
Labour’s big stride forward was the commitment to abolish child poverty (although the strategy is now a long way off target), and David Cameron has committed to maintaining that aspiration. But if the Conservatives wanted real definition, and at the same time, to place millions of traditional Labour supporters in a quandary, how about David Cameron committing to a concrete target (there are plenty to choose from) to reduce social inequality in the UK?
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