Choice is only a major issue while services are improving, says Jowell

26 May 05
Choice will be less prominent in future in the public services debate, a senior Cabinet minister said this week.

27 May 2005

Choice will be less prominent in future in the public services debate, a senior Cabinet minister said this week.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said she viewed choice as a mechanism by which the middle classes could be re-engaged with public services, and expected its prominence to recede as all services were raised to a first-class level.

'I believe that in ten years' time, we won't be obsessed with choice in the same way that we are now,' she told delegates at a PricewaterhouseCoopers conference on public services on May 24. 'From that vantage point, the emphasis on choice will be seen as a transitional stage, although it will always remain an important element of people's experience of the public services.'

She cited Sweden, where choice was not an issue because services are so good. 'But in this country, showing more respect for people's choices is how we get to better services and a greater sense of public ownership,' Jowell said.

But Conservative David Willetts said he was disappointed with Jowell's characterisation of choice as transitional, when it was a fundamental feature of society.

Willetts, who now shadows the trade and industry portfolio, said more thought should be given to the degree of standardisation within public services. 'A debate I would like to see more of is where diversity can rule and where we need to set standards,' he told the conference.

Willetts said there was no need, for example, for local authorities to design their own housing benefit forms, but they should have more discretion to spend their social services budget as they see fit.

Jowell also said that respect for people's concerns would be the focus of Labour's legislative programme for its third term in office. 'Respect has become the word of the moment and what we will see over the next two to three years is the development and elaboration of that in practice.

'The early success of neighbourhood policing is a very good example, which will be taken further,' she said, adding that the government had listened to people's concerns about the lack of visible policing and was acting on them.

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