The night watchman state?
I had a visit last week from Government advisors exploring how best to describe the Coalition’s approach to public services. This was, I guess, partly because I was credited with helping to provide a narrative for the Blair reform programme.
The latter comprised four elements: first, strategy, accountability and funding from the top; second, choice and voice from the bottom up; third, diversity and contestability providing dynamism among providers; and, fourth, a general attempt to build capacity and confidence through the system (for example through the proliferation of public service leadership institutes – many of which are already, or soon to be, toast).
The fascinating starting point for last week’s conversation was the statement by one of the advisors that Whitehall civil servants have been cast adrift as a result of the effective abolition of outcome targets. The public service agreements which provided the core rationale for thousands of Whitehall jobs have been swept away, and many other regimes focussed on achieving measurable results – such as the local authority comprehensive performance assessment – have also gone. In time we are likely to see a major downsizing of Whitehall itself but in the meantime, the advisors asked, what are the officials to do?
Their answer was an elegant diagram exploring the different dimensions of Big Society public services. The problem with this, I thought, was it assumed central Government has a major constructive role in society. So, for example, the advisors identified increasing civic capacity as a task. The implication is that civil servants can shift from trying to deliver public service outcomes to trying to build the Big Society. But this misses the point. Labour believed the centre could make good things happen, the Coalition is much more sceptical.
Instead, I suggested the Coalition’s approach might be better captured as a set of radical principles. Here, for discussion with readers, are what seem to me to be the key assumptions/principles:
• Markets are in almost all circumstances better than planning as a way of allocating resources
• Any collaboration between public service institutions and agencies should be voluntary. It is counterproductive to enforce or incentivise collaboration (see, for example, the lack of enthusiasm for Total Place)
• In most cases third and private sector providers are better than public sector providers
• Outcomes should be a function of bottom up deliberation, implementation and scrutiny not top down
• There is a substantial underused resource in civil society, including in deprived communities
• The primary way in which this resource can be accessed is if third sector and community groups take responsibility for delivering services previously provided by the state
• Differences in local service levels and outcomes is the inevitable and justifiable price for innovation, local accountability and civic engagement.
The new, much more circumscribed, task of civil servants is to enact these principles while trying at minimal cost and with minimal regulation to ensure that other public policy imperatives (such as Parliamentary accountability, basic equity, and financial probity) are observed. This is not an easy thing to do, especially in the context of severe austerity. So the task of civil servants is much changed, and much more limited in scale, but in some ways even more important.
What I have called the ‘civic market state’ will need a smaller, tougher, more strategic Whitehall. Who’s to say that isn’t a good thing?
Local collaboration will be even more necessary in the tough times ahead
What does the Coalition programme mean for local government? Some of the most specific of the 28 points in the ‘communities and local government’ section focus on planning where the thrust is double devolution. Councils see the return of local planning powers, a measure which will presumably be used to block new housing developments where there is local opposition. But there will also be steps to give neighbourhoods an enhanced role in very local place shaping.
Beyond this there are three sets of issues. The first is a commitment to ‘a radical devolution of power’. Beyond planning, the main specific measures are a general power of competence, cutting local government inspection, scrapping ring fenced grants and the abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment. However, as local government has a minimal place in the NHS, crime, schools and ‘social action’ sections, and as there is no mention of Local Strategic Partnerships or any other co-ordinating body, it doesn’t appear this devolution of power will include a wider strategic function across local public services.
Indeed the opening up of schools to new providers, the strengthening of the right of local communities ‘to save local facilities and services threatened with closure’, the direct election of local police chiefs, the freeze on council tax for one (and possibly two) years and the enhancement of rights for residents to veto ‘excessive’ council tax increases, could all be seen as measures that will make it harder for councils to get their way. In this sense the agreement confirms the impression of all the party manifestos which is the absence of a coherent framework for local governance.
It is difficult to know what will be the outcome of the second theme; the reform of local governance. Councillors will no doubt be pleased to see the back of the Standards Board, have some fun with the right to vote on remuneration packages for chief officers but possibly be less enthusiastic about publishing every item of spending over £500. But how many will vote to return to the committee system, and will the 12 big cities take up the opportunity to have mayors, or fight for a ‘no’ in the ‘confirmatory’ referendum?
The third theme isn’t in the local government or public services sections but in paragraph three of the introduction by the two leaders: ‘We are…agreed that the most urgent task facing this coalition is to tackle our record debts’ and in the pledge to ‘significantly accelerate the reduction of the structural deficit….with the main burden…borne by reduced spending’. It is this issue which is certain to be the most important for councils.
In all the talk of the £6 billion savings package, which George Osborne will unveil next week, it is easy to forget this is just the tip of the iceberg. We will have to wait for the budget and the autumn spending review to see the full scale of mainstream budget reductions. But the likely pressure on local government budgets looks even greater in the context of other Coalition spending pledges, including major areas like the NHS, schools and overseas aid which are to be safeguarded from any reduction. With councils apparently having less scope to raise money locally and with communities having more power to slow down or block unpopular cuts, to say councils are between a rock and a hard place is an understatement.
Unless I have missed something, there is little to suggest the Coalition is interested in supporting – let alone incentivising - initiatives like Total Place (perhaps this is just too humdrum for these heady days). But local collaboration and budget pooling is surely vital to minimise the impact of the coming cuts on the most important aspects of local life and the most vulnerable local people. Maybe, in fact, the most important message of the Coalition programme for local public service leaders is actually page seven where we see the photogenic Dave and Nick sitting together committed to overcoming old rivalries for the good of the nation.
A strategy for hard times
The 2020 Public Services Trust published its interim report this week. Although an independent entity, the Trust is based at the RSA, I am a Commissioner and there is increasing collaboration between the Trust secretariat and our projects team.
The interim report got some good publicity (see for example this very nice piece from the Guardian’s Deborah Orr.
The report calls for decisions about public spending to be taken with a clearer long term strategy in mind. In particular it urges three principles:
• A shift in culture: from social security to social productivity
• A shift in power: from the centre to citizens
• A shift in finance: reconnecting financing with the purposes of public service.
The task between now and the final report of the Commission will be to apply these principles to particular public services, looking across a ten year time frame. I am involved in the education strand of this work and one idea is to develop a workshop in our partner city Peterborough asking a range of stakeholders to imagine what a 2020 education system might look like under two conditions: much greater local freedom but no extra money.
The public has every right to be confused about where we stand on public spending. Today there are dire warnings about the impact of cuts in higher education funding at the same time as news that the UK’s borrowing figures are likely to be significantly better for 2009/10 than most economists feared and even slightly better than Government predictions. Perhaps it is not surprising that an IPSOS MORI poll commissioned jointly by the RSA and the 2020 Trust found that only a half of voters accept there will have to be any cuts at all in front line services.
But even though the economy is over the worst and the deficit is beginning its long journey downwards, there are still many hard decisions to make. My own view is that the period of spending restraint may be less severe than our worst fears but will also be longer lasting.
I get the impression that ministers and civil servants are under instructions to choose their words very carefully. At a recent event I chaired, Cabinet Secretary Gus O’ Donnell used the euphemism ‘we are entering a period of public spending consolidation’. But at an event earlier this week another civil servant let slip a much more accurate phrase, before immediately making me promise to keep his identity secret (which is not of course incompatible with me naming him in my blog): ‘we are’ he said ‘entering a decade of dearth’.
Now, that’s not a phrase you’ll be reading on a political party poster any time soon.
The foundations of localism
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.
Leave the outcomes to the people
Lots of travelling recently – I am writing this on a train from Chester to Bangor (and what a great train journey it is too) on my way to do some interviews for a couple of Radio 4 programmes I am presenting. Friday saw me near Stafford at an AwayDay for the 2020 Public Services Trust.
One of the sessions at the AwayDay involved my group examining the proposition that the state should move from the goal of social security to one of social productivity. The notion of social productivity is based on the idea that there’s a lot of good ‘stuff’ outside the state which is vital to the functioning of a fair and decent society: self-reliance, caring and volunteering, for example. Public services should aim to recognise, nurture and grow this ‘stuff’. The more services do this, the more productive they are.
Our conversation led us to see the key sets of issues around this proposition. Firstly, if the state is seeking to tap into and shape people’s own efforts, there is a need for strong legitimacy. Secondly, however commendable the principles might be, how practicable is the idea that the state can enhance pro-sociability? Thirdly, if services are the outcome of the combined efforts of the state, individuals and communities, how does accountability work?
From this sprang a surprising conclusion: if service outcomes flow from explicit collaboration between public servants and citizens, then those outcomes must be both negotiated and contingent upon that negotiation.
Among public service planners and commentators, there has been a common call in recent years for outcome based performance management. But, if outcomes are merged from collaboration between service providers and people in specific and varying circumstances, then they shouldn’t be centrally specified.
Instead, the state should focus its energies on the core functioning of public services. Whether school children achieve good exam results, neighbourhoods are safe, or towns become healthier should be seen as a function of the objectives jointly agreed between the state and citizens and the ability of both sides to deliver on their commitments. Rather than services promising to meet outcomes which are not, in the end, in their hands (in which case they may resort to ‘fixing’ the outcomes to meet the targets) they should ensure they are guaranteeing specified levels of functioning, levels which make them a credible and respected partner, with which the public can deal.
This is not a conclusion I expected to reach and I haven’t thought through the implications in full. Perhaps some of my readers can help?
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