Blair resets standard for public services
Blair resets standard for public services
Gary Sturgess
Australian Financial Review - September 2006
An edited version of this paper was published in the Australian Financial Review, 18 September 2006. It is based on a speech to the Menzies Research Centre, Canberra, Australia, 11 September 2006.
Within a year, Tony Blair will be gone. It is a little early to say what will be made of his Premiership, but as far as public services are concerned, it is likely that history will look kindly on the Blair years.
That is not to say that he has done everything right. Nor is it to say that he achieved all that he might have wished. But he has made significant improvements, and he has changed forever the way that we look at the delivery of public services.
Since well before he was elected, Blair has held the view that government's relations with the public (and vice versa) was fundamentally changing as a result of globalisation, technological innovation and rising public expectations.
But while he has had a clear view about the changes taking place, he has been pragmatic about the way in which government should react. He has described his approach as 'permanent revisionism', and New Labour's guiding philosophy throughout has been 'What matters is what works.'
So until very recently, there has not been a clearly-articulated framework of public service reform. In recent months, however, the government has begun to assemble the various elements of its reform agenda into a coherent model.
Performance accountability has lain the heart of this agenda. It's harder than it sounds, because what governments normally do is to pay for good intentions.
New Labour didn't invent performance management - it was pioneered in the United States throughout the 1990s. But in the UK, it has been developed into a comprehensive management tool, with public reporting of performance, and central intervention in public authorities that fail to improve.
Results have been mixed. The most impressive results have been delivered in education, whilst in the National Health Service, targets appear to have been less effective.
Top-down target-setting seems to be better suited to some functions of government than others. And it may be that performance accountability is better at taking institutions from 'poor' to 'good' than from 'good' to 'excellent'.
The second element of the framework - and the most radical - is the creation of a mixed economy in public services. This is much more fundamental than merely contracting out or creating a few public-private partnerships.
It has consisted of three elements: separating out the demand side and the supply side of the public service economy; replacing the monopoly on supply with a diverse range of providers from the public, private and voluntary sectors; and competitively sourcing the right to supply particular services.
It is the focus on diversity that will perhaps have the greatest effect in transforming the public service sector.
The UK government is actively assisting voluntary providers and social enterprises to enter this market, providing management advice and financial assistance.
Successful public service organisations are being given greater commercial freedom, and new quasi-public entities are emerging - foundation hospital trusts, trusts schools, probation trusts and local trading enterprises.
Diversity brings a number of benefits to the public economy, including the prospect of mixing and matching of institutional forms. Someone has coined the term 'recombinant governance' to describe the hybrid solutions that have begun to emerge.
The third (and newest) element of reform places much greater emphasis on the end-users of public service - choice, voice and personalisation.
This arises directly out of the Prime Minister's deeply-held belief that 'the state must provide the same level of customer service as the public have come to expect in every other aspect of their lives'.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, John Hutton, argues that that public want uniformly high standards; they just don't want uniformity.
The sceptics have insisted that the public doesn't really want greater choice - what they really want is the quality that comes with choice. The research suggests that the sceptics are wrong - choice is important to people because it increases their sense of control. And contrary to what many had expected, choice is more important for the disadvantaged than it is for the well-to-do.
The recently-released framework seeks to make reform 'self-sustaining', and it is difficult to see how the clock could be turned back on some of these initiatives. Gordon Brown insists that he intends to persist with the modernisation of public services.
And between now and when he departs, it is likely that Blair will continue to drive this agenda. As he told the Labour Party this time last year: 'Every time I've introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I had gone further.'