07 December 2007
Geoff Mulgan, the former Downing Street adviser, has called on senior government figures to take direct responsibility for efforts to make public services more user-focused.
Addressing the Public Management and Policy Association's annual meeting on December 4, Mulgan said that the government's rhetoric on that front had not yet been matched by the reality, and the gap between the two needed to be closed.
'Both “service” and “innovation” are words that are used a lot at the higher echelons of government. But what doesn't happen is people at the higher echelons being really called to account for how they are managing these two things,' Mulgan said.
'These two things are, strikingly, everywhere, but nowhere in terms of roles, responsibilities, buck-stopping and walking the talk.'
He argued that users of public services should be treated as consumers to harness their collective strength, and lamented the lack of any organisations to help that process.
'There is no nationwide, bottom-up institution representing consumers' interests in any public service.'
Mulgan, head of the Young Foundation think-tank and a former senior adviser to Tony Blair, suggested that the way forward lay in 'mobilising demand', which had not yet been 'seriously applied to the public sector'.
He said this should extend to giving service users legal rights akin to those enjoyed by consumers.
'Some formal rights, some formal guarantee of rights of redress, should play a part [for service users],' he said. 'It's perhaps unfortunate that, for political and other reasons, that got rather dropped off the enthusiasm list of the current government.'
PFdec2007
