Excited by the Prime Minister’s closing passage

May 23, 2011 by
Filed under: Politics, The RSA 

Poor old Big Society. It does sometimes seem to be doomed.

The day in December when David Cameron made his set piece speech on business and the Big Society was also the day England got trounced in its World Cup bid. Today the Prime Minister has tried again to get people enthused but I rather suspect it won’t be his speech in Milton Keynes but a certain Welsh footballer who will be dominating the news headlines for the next 24 hours.

But the speech is important reading for that dwindling band of us willing to put up some defence of the Prime Minister’s big idea. I’m afraid I have to admit to being pretty underwhelmed by most of it. The long section on Big Society public services served to confirm the suspicion that almost anything can be referred to as a Big Society initiative. There may, for example, be lots of reason to give parents more school choice and set up more Academies (although very few of those set up by the Coalition are in the poorest areas) but it is hard to see how individual parental competition for places and establishing institutions which can – if they choose – more easily divest themselves of links to the wider local community is anything to do with strengthening social bonds.  

I haven’t read the Giving White Paper and the tax changes look like they could be powerful, but I do have some concerns about the approach to philanthropy. It is good to offer people new ways of donating but as people tend to over-estimate how much they give the danger of being asked to round up our grocery bills and add a quid to our cash withdrawal is that it will, at best, simply displace other forms of giving

But that’s enough churlishness. Near the end of the speech there was a passage that was genuinely interesting. It chimed with my point on Friday that social brain thinking should direct us to looking at the whole purposes and systems of public services not just some nudging at the margins (by the way, thanks for all the people who responded far too kindly to my pathetic attention seeking threat to stop blogging). The Prime Minister’s words also offers a lever for those of us trying to get the whole of Whitehall to be a bit more convincing in its commitment to the Prime Minister’s agenda

“ And in a way that I don’t think has been sufficiently appreciated, we are bringing that insight right into the heart of the business of government.
 
Right across Whitehall we are today applying to the design of policy the best that science teaches us about how people behave – and what drives their well-being.
 
We are revising the ‘Green Book’ – the basis on which the Government assesses the costs and benefits of different policies – to fully take account of their social impact.
 
We are developing a new test for all policies – that they should demonstrate not just how they help reduce public spending and cut regulation and bureaucracy – but how they create social value too.
 
And, the Office for National Statistics is developing new independent measures of well-being so that by the end of the year, we will be the first developed country in the world that is able rigorously to measure progress on more than just GDP.”

I have in the past questioned the Government’s resistance to strategy and measurement of any kind. But if a social value test is to be meaningful it will have to have some basis in method. Perhaps what method should be chosen is an issue we could debate here at the RSA?

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3 Comments on Excited by the Prime Minister’s closing passage

  1. John Furnival on Mon, 23rd May 2011 7:04 pm

    2. Matthew

    I believe that the majority of people don’t understand the Big Society at all. It is a huge communication problem – the Government (Steve Hilton) should know this.

    The whole Big Society idea is beyond most peoples reach – it’s difficult enough for most dealing with the day-to-day unless you live in a close community.

    I think.

    John

  2. Paul Brewer on Mon, 23rd May 2011 7:06 pm

    3. I would certainly be interested to attend a debate about social impact methods. Pro Bono Economics and NEF, and I’m sure there are many sceptical finance people. Need to understand long term incentivisation – where the saving accrues to a different organisation. How do you make that work?

  3. Tom Brookes on Wed, 25th May 2011 7:25 pm

    4. Matthew,

    I share your enthusiasm for the Big Society, I’d like to see nothing more than a working society – it might make way for a working civilisation.

    However I fear any faith in David Cameron delivering a working Big Society is misplaced. Perhaps he’s read the spirit level, and about time, but (at the risk of revealing how cynical I’m becoming) I’m starting to think I can’t believe a word he says. It all feels like PR & marketing for cuts; or is riddled with contradiction and oxymorons. Like this speech – ‘creating social value’, ‘cut regulation and bureaucracy’ – great buzz phrases – but I don’t believe Mr. Cameron knows what social value is if he thinks it can come from cutting public services, massive redundancies, rising inflation coupled with pay freezes, the poorest priced out of considering university and a stagnant economy waiting for it’s next crash.

    Also nonsense like schools ‘competing’ – how schools are to compete on the quality of individual education is quite beyond me – how someone else’s children turn out is no measure of how yours will. I read recently that most parents do not want a multitude of schools to pick from, they just want one good school, near their neighbourhood, which teaches their children well (and hopefully along the lines Sir Ken Robinson suggests). Now that sounds like a Big Society idea – excellence in every school, coupled with communities on living wages able to support, encourage and love their children – whilst doing socially useful, personally enabling work.

    Society is not a business. Neither is the UK. Adam Smith is perpetually misquoted. Competition and money are not good motivators for anybody. We can do better than this. And if you’ve read any Johann Hari then there is a strong case to be made for public spending to go up if anything, the public deficit levels described in this piece are corroborated by a range of graphics which can be found easily on Google: http://johannhari.com/2011/03/29/the-biggest-lie-in-british-politics . I’m sure I needn’t tell the head of the RSA these things, though I feel almost compelled to comment strongly when your blog verges on… fence-sitting coupled with misplaced optimism. I tweeted a remembered or made up quote earlier: stand for something or lie down for anything. It can’t be possible to both stand up for society and lie down to big business.

    I appreciate your need for political neutrality as head of a royal society, but really it is quite a radical organisation you head – some of the ideas presented by, say, David Harvey in one of the RSA’s most watched lectures aren’t exactly in line with government policy. Maybe that’s the way to reinvigorate this blog, write what you really believe to be true on the balance of evidence, and analyse policy – presenting 21st Century enlightenment alternatives drawn from the remarkable thinking floating about the RSA. Perhaps the acid test for your approval ought to be if an idea or policy encourages self-aware autonomy, empathic capacity, and progress designed to increase the sum of human happiness (your words). Maybe I’m short-sighted, but I fail to see how much anything the coalition’s done thus far has or will encourages anything of the sort.

    Best wishes,

    Tom Brookes

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