Localism – the way to save Whitehall

February 24, 2010 by · 8 Comments
Filed under: Politics, Public policy 

With OFSTED reporting that progress in primary schools has been hampered by too many central initiatives, and the the inquiry into events at Stafford Hospital in part blaming the ‘target culture’ of the NHS, today is going to be another bad day for centralism.

As I said last week, there is a debate going on at the heart of government over how far Gordon Brown should go before the election in showing real determination to decentralise. For a long time now I have been encouraging politicians to adapt one of Bill Clinton’s most famous phrases and assert that ‘the era of big central government is over’.

But I sense that the localists in Government are still having a hard time, especially in the face of the unwillingness of large service departments such as DCSF or DWP to give up any of their levers of control. If Labour doesn’t move on this, an  incoming Conservative Government probably would, offering local councils a non-negotiable deal: ‘you won’t get any more money for several years but you can have much more control over how you spend it, and by the way, the buck stops with you’.

But even after news like today’s, the way this argument is structured in Government makes the localist case difficult to sustain. It is up to the localists to ‘prove’ that devolving power would improve outcomes. But given its complexity and the confounding variables this is an impossible case to make.

Instead every presentation on this issue to ministers and officials should start with a slide headed ‘myths of centralism’, containing the following bullet points:

1. Centralism does not lead to uniform performance levels or outcomes

2. Every new central initiative/target reduces the salience of existing initiatives and targets

3. The messages sent by the centre (especially if there are lots of them) are very different to the messages eventually heard at the front line

4 There are systematic reasons why opt-in pilots are more likely to succeed than the same policy when it is made a mandatory national programme

There is a big opportunity here for new ways of thinking, but my recent discussions with insiders leave me with little confidence it will be grasped.

For many years now the Cabinet Office has been conducting capability reviews of Government departments. All well and good. But the question not asked is whether the capabilities these reviews are looking for – the ones currently expected of Whitehall departments – are those that will be needed in the future.

A radical devolution of power (and, of course, there need to be safeguards about how this is done and how the centre deals with demonstrable local failure) could be accompanied by an equally radical recasting of the way that Whitehall plies its trade.

Instead of a machine driven by the desire to maximise control, to compete with other departments for money, power and legislative time, and by silo accountability, a modern on-line Whitehall needs to be a place where people get what they want through thought leadership, trust, persuasion, innovation and collaboration.

Most local authorities and other public agencies have no desire for the centre simply to abandon them. But they want supportive and clever leadership rather than mechanical and oppressive interference. If Whitehall doesn’t learn these skills, then, when the inevitable shift of power away from the centre comes, it will not only lose an empire but find itself without the skills to perform a new role.

So, far from devolution being a threat to Whitehall, it can be the opportunity for it to become the kind of centre it needs to be in the 21st century. Most people who think hard about the medium and long term future of Government get this. Sadly, the combined nervousness of Number Ten, intransigence of service departments and limited vision at the top of the senior civil service suggest it may have to be a different administration that makes the shift.

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The foundations of localism

February 18, 2010 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Public policy 

Ministers are digesting the results of the Total Place pilots, 13 schemes around England which explored in depth how public money is spent locally on a particular set of outcomes. It seems that the pilots have found scope for major savings as a result, first, of the simple exercise of analysing why things are being done and whether they achieve any purpose and, second, by much greater inter-agency collaboration – for example, recognising the savings that can be made on health and social care costs by investing more earlier to help people stay in their own homes.

The results of the pilots will go towards yet another Government public service strategy (the fifth in three years) which will emerge around the time of the budget. If there is to be any chance of a disengaged and sceptical public noticing a new approach, it will have to be very bold. And so, yet again, the debate is on in Whitehall between the devolutionists and the centralists.

Of course, all the party leaders have pledged to remove power from the centre yet none so far have engaged properly with the implications such an approach would have for Whitehall, Westminster and the public at large. This means the fine words have very little credibility.

If this is to change, Whitehall needs to undertake a piece of work which has, to my knowledge, never previously been commissioned. Instead of another review of whether power should be devolved, or of what the next grudging incremental step might be, Number Ten needs to commission research which starts from the assumption of radical devolution and then explores with rigour and realism what is involved in making this happen.

What does a post devolution Whitehall look like? How does accountability in Westminster happen if most service outcomes are determined at the local level? How can the media be educated to accept that ministers cannot be held responsible for devolved outcomes? If local politicians are to have more power, how should local accountability be strengthened?  How can we – without undermining the core strategy – address the social and legal issues arising from people getting different services depending on where they live? (By the way, one of the myths used by those opposed to devolved power is that people get the same outcomes in centralised services. They don’t. It just that differences result from bureaucratic and professional discretion and differential performance rather than choices made through democratic processes.)
 
If this piece of work was undertaken it might slightly increase the chances of Labour’s new strategy being taken seriously. But even if it did nothing to change the likely outcome of the election it would be a valuable resource for an incoming Government. And, given the apparently limited impact that Conservative blunders (and haven’t there been a lot!) and the Brown media offensive are having on the polls, legacy may be all the current inhabitants of Number Ten have to comfort themselves.

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