How should we live?
The Young Foundation’s report ‘Sinking not swimming: Understanding Britain’s Unmet Needs’ is an important contribution to public policy debate. This is how YF Director (and my former colleague) Geoff Mulgan, sums up the report in today’s Times:
Our survey shows that Britain is a rich country but with many poor people; a generally happy country but with many unhappy people. It’s not broken. But it is brittle, anxious and stressed. To the public it is obvious that psychological needs are as important as material ones, that love, care, peace of mind are as vital to a good life as having enough heating or enough clothes to wear. Yet there is an odd gulf between this common knowledge and public policy. Whoever can bridge that gap may win the battle to convince the public that they understand poverty and what to do about it.
This is a nuanced and credible account. It suggests we should give more attention to three sets of issues:
1. How can we enhance individual resilience? Earlier in his Times piece Mulgan says that one of the most important findings from recent research is that people can learn resilience. This has implications for schools, for health care (the Government marked the YF report by announcing extra public investment in services to fight depression), and for community development strategies. Individual resilience as a psychological trait could come to be seen as ranking alongside literacy and numeracy as a core competence in the modern world.
2. The report once again opens up the question of the relationship between conventional economic growth and wider social well-being (an issue discussed in the RSA’s Journal and which I covered here a few weeks ago). Interestingly, in his talk here last night about the enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov identified an unquestioning belief in technological progress as one of the weaknesses of enlightenment thought.
3. It may not be easy to have a national debate about growth and well-being nationally but how about at the local level? The RSA strategic partnership with Peterborough is exploring the concept of sustainable citizenship. Can public policy be shaped by a community wide exploration of the kind of place people want to live in and the kind of lives they want to lead?
After decades when policy debate seemed dominated by technocratic debates about how best to configure public services, the growing interest in more substantive questions of public good is surely to be welcomed. It is absolutely in line with the RSA’s way of thinking and working.
Innovation from public service adversity
Ben Lucas, Director of the 2020 Public Service Commision, posts here on Labour’s shifting strategy on public spending. I agree with everything he says.
A point he implies, but to which I would give greater emphasis, is the need to make a case for public services based not just on what we can afford but on the longer term economic interests of the country. The debate about deficits and cuts has tended to revert to a simplistic economic model in which the private sector generates money, the Government taxes it, and the public sector spends it.
The Government’s economic case for public spending is more in terms of maintaining employment and activity rather than the role public spending can play in helping address the medium term challenges such as demographic change and competitiveness. If Labour is to try and show it has an approach to public services which is both realistic and different to that of the Conservatives it needs to develop a story about the economic value of public services along with policy approaches that give this edge. One way of squaring this with the undoubted spending squeeze ahead is to explore how adversity can foster innovation.
Studies of social innovation (such as that reported by the Young Foundation last year) show that being in a difficult situation can be the best spur for creativity (in better times it is harder to stir people from complacency). Another key factor is the freedom to innovate. As public service budgets get squeezed the temptation for central Government will be to tie everything down promising that budgets and service levels will be maintained in the areas the public seems to care about most. But such an approach would be disastrous leaving service managers and front line workers no room or incentive to do things differently.
Currently it is assumed that the areas that will be most badly hit by public service retrenchment are those – like the North East – which have the highest proportion of their local economy in the public sector. But if the squeeze leads to new ways of thinking and working it could be those areas that see the biggest advances in overall productivity. This is not just about more efficient spending. Education and health care are two of the fastest expanding areas of global economic activity. Innovation in the public services could help the UK compete more effectively in these markets.
Rather than simply splitting the difference between ‘steady as she goes’ and the ‘we’re doomed’ view of public spending, the Government needs to show how effective public services can contribute to economic dynamism as well as social inclusion and well being. But this case relies on them giving local service providers the freedom to work with service users and communities to develop ways of providing public services which achieve better outcomes with the same or fewer resources.
RSA Animate
RSA Mobile
RSA Comment- RSA Projects Blogs
- Twitter @RSAMatthew
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.