Public service savings – no pain, no gain
Fresh on the heels of Tessa Jowell’s welcome call for politicians to be more open and honest about hard choices (see yesterday’s post), we have the Government and Opposition implying that it is only if we elect the other lot next year that we will face public spending cuts. Perhaps Tessa should send a copy of her speech to Andrew Lansley and Liam Byrne.
We need significant public sector reform so that services are more effective and responsive, and particularly (as 2020 Public Services Trust Director, Ben Lucas, said at a Number Ten seminar this morning) to embed the idea that most public service outcomes result not from ‘delivery’ but from the combined efforts of the state, communities and individuals. But this kind of change will be gradual, and although it will ultimately create better services, it will not reap savings in the short term.
In as much as politicians, officials and advisors are facing up to the coming spending crunch it is possible to distinguish an important difference in emphasis between Labour and Conservative.
There are some specific cuts to which the Conservatives are pledged, for example scrapping Regional Development Agencies. But, as Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, emphasised here at the RSA last month, the Conservatvies put great store by better management. They genuinely believe it is possible to find major savings (of the order of ten percent) through improvements to the way Government works. In essence, this involves an updating of the Thatcher strategy of Next Steps agencies and contracting out to create a leaner, meaner government machine.
The Conservatives are unapologetically technocratic saying that the ways to make a step change in productivity are clear but that Labour has failed to pursue them due to vested producer interests and the inability of ministers to control the growth of targets and initiatives. There may be much to this, but the kind of savings the Conservatives are aiming for still won’t be achieved without resistance from both workers and the public.
Labour also thinks it may be possible to save a lot of money without damaging public service entitlements (indeed the Government’s soon to be unveiled public service reform plan is likely to propose putting key entitlements on a statutory footing). But Brown’s advisors are also stressing the potential of decentralisation.
Following on from a report compiled by Sir Michael Bichard, a former Permanent Secretary and now Director of the Institute for Government, a series of pilot studies has been established looking comprehensively at the public money spent in specific local authority areas. I understand that early indications suggest a huge amount of waste, over-complication, duplication, and, more profoundly, a failure to get funding directly to the problems it is supposed to be addressing. The main cause of this lies in the overload of targets, funding streams, guidance and accountability mechanisms spewing forth from Whitehall. Labour’s plan is therefore to embed key public service improvements from the last ten years (and there have been many) while devolving to local government as much as possible beyond these core entitlements.
Labour’s plan is bold and makes sense as policy and politics. But – and this is a huge but – it will only be credible if Number Ten is willing to tackle the dysfunctionality of the political management of central Government. Problems like these need to be dealt with: there are far too many ministers, all of whom think it is their job to generate initiatives; ideas are allowed to be developed and launched without any reference to those at the front line; change management and the time it takes is not treated seriously; there is complete lack of realism about how far the centre’s intended messages actually reach; civil servants fail to see or warn (or be allowed to warn) their masters that every new target or piece of guidance had an adverse impact on all these existing targets and instructions (not to mention local morale).
However well intentioned Brown’s advisors are, they will not achieve real change unless they do something about this. The process of Whitehall capability reviews started when I was in Number Ten but, despite my best efforts, the political management of departments was largely excluded (even though everyone knew this was the biggest single problem).
Labour’s reform plan won’t be taken seriously, nor will it deserve to be, unless it involves a profound shift in the way policy is made at the centre. And if you want me to make this more concrete I will: I would find it impossible to believe in any plan to decentralise power from the centre that did not commit to a substantial reduction in the number of Government ministers
No related posts.
Comments
11 Comments on Public service savings – no pain, no gain
-
steve johnson on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 9:28 am
-
Getting the politics right for reform « Local Democracy on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 11:12 am
-
Max Hogg on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 11:40 am
-
Julian Dobson on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 3:57 pm
-
matthewtaylor on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 5:55 pm
-
matthewtaylor on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 5:57 pm
-
matthewtaylor on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 5:59 pm
-
ad on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 6:08 pm
-
Adrian Thacker on
Fri, 12th Jun 2009 6:24 pm
-
Dave Gorman on
Thu, 18th Jun 2009 11:14 pm
-
matthewtaylor on
Fri, 19th Jun 2009 9:05 am
Matthew,
Just catching on your blog.
Read your article on 7th may about the Poplar Housing association. This is something we are looking at with a number of organisations and in some sense crudely links with the government’s Total Place concept though more positively form the community viewpoint as opposed to the provider viewpoint.
If you are still looking for potential partners we would be interested to discuss
[...] Posted on June 12, 2009 by Anthony Matthew Taylor, former No 10 policy wonk, has an interesting article on his blog about public service reform. He rightly says that finances over the next few years are [...]
Matthew,
Your conclusion reminded me about one of your posts a few months back suggesting that the best bet for Labour to try to win a fourth term is to abandon party politics in favour of taking the (sometimes) hard choices that are good for the country, and hoping that these hard choices pay off before an election.
Reducing the number of ministers seems to be one of those hard choices and Labour appears to have little to lose by taking that choice.
This leads me to a question: If the current government are not willing to take this sort of risk in the context of almost certain defeat at the next election and despite the once-in-a-generation need to reform public services to make them more efficient, what else is needed by way of incentives or drivers for this reform to occur?
Changing the culture at the centre is really important. But if the aim is to be more effective and responsive, we need a much more mature attitude to local government too.
There’s an all too common assumption that local government is synonymous with waste and bureaucracy. It’s easy for ministers to demand efficiency savings when they don’t have to make the choices about which services to cut. And it’s easy for the media and populist politicians like Doncaster’s new elected mayor to attack ‘politically correct’ local authority jobs without any knowledge of what these staff do.
Even the most obviously necessary front line services, like child protection, are under huge pressure because as well as being inadequately resourced, practitioners risk being pilloried by ministers and the media whenever something goes wrong. I doubt such pressure encourages anyone to be responsive and effective.
I’d argue that rather than nebulous talk of reform and modernisation, we need to think in terms of valuing and supporting staff to do their jobs well.
Thanks Steve; great offer. We are trying to find out more about Total Place and then to think how the concept could be localised more and made more citizen centric. Perhaps we could think initially about an RSA/London Councils event exploring the emerging findings from Total Place and their implications for community organisations?
Hi Max
TB would never take on this issue despite Geoff Mulgan first and them me urging him to. Leaders need the payroll of keep people loyal and obedient. GB needs this even more but he lacks credibility if he tries to change the centre without changing the political management – that’s why I’ve put the bar here in terms of my own judgement.
I agree Julian. We need most of all to replace top down accountability to Whitehall with bottom up engagement with, and accountability to, citizens and clients. To be fair this is the language the Government talks, but until they slay the beast of Whitehall (or at least tie down some of its thousands or tentacles) we will get nowhere.
Saving money would seem to require giving less of it to employees, contractors etc.
What scale of cuts in jobs , pay and pentions are we talking about?
After the last ten years of “public service reforms”, I will not believe in any savings until people are receiving the redundancy notices.
Matthew
New to your blog, looks good. Where possible, I’m all for going local.
In addition to Whitehall Departments, there are a whole host of departmental agencies, many of which have admirable aims but can often dilute accountability and, ultimately, need funds to maintain their own infrastructures.
And another thing. We’re told to work in partnership (I work in the third sector) yet agencies themselves often don’t share data, perhaps for Data Protection reasons. But the net result is that infrastructures have to be set up to find out what someone else in government already knows, hence more money goes to structures and less to the end beneficiary.
Matthew,
Fascinating as usual, I do enjoy reading what you have to say. I started my career with the ‘next steps’ agencies approach in full swing. I am based in scotland and its interesting that the current Scottish administration is, if anything, reversing now and ‘de-agentificating’.
Do you have a sense of where England is going on these questions of structures and delivery of services i.e. is there a new ‘theory of government’ on agencies and delivery?
I agree that major savings can be made, the devil is in the detail. But I am not sure if you can re-arrange the furniture on efficiency grounds without losing something of the ‘public good’ or constitutional safeguards stuff, and in the absence of a paradigm of some sort.
Thanks Dave. The Government is publishing a new public sector plan next week. As i understand it, it will try to combine statutory entitlements to public service standards with devolution to local government. I am writing a piece for the FT about the strengths and weaknesses of this approach (in on Monday I think). But i agree with you that however technocratic solution seems if it involves major cutbacks it will hurt.
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
RSA Pamphlets
RSA Vision
RSA Animate
RSA Comment
- 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.