Osborne stakes claim to Blairs public service reform mantle

31 May 07
Public service reform will grind to a halt under Gordon Brown's premiership as the Labour party lurches to the Left, shadow chancellor George Osborne argued in a speech this week.

01 June 2007

Public service reform will grind to a halt under Gordon Brown's premiership as the Labour party lurches to the Left, shadow chancellor George Osborne argued in a speech this week.

Addressing the centre-Right Policy Exchange think-tank on May 30, Osborne argued that the Conservatives are the true inheritors of the Blairite mantle.

Spelling out his party's support for taxpayer-funded public services, Osborne endorsed Tony Blair's prescription for services that are free at the point of use, but with a diverse range of providers and organised on the principle of consumer choice.

But he warned that the emerging consensus on the direction of public sector reform did not include the prime minister in-waiting.

'Therein lies the political battle ahead. For Gordon Brown rejects the very idea that there should be alternative providers of taxpayer-funded public services,' he said.

The shadow chancellor said the Tories would devolve personal health budgets to GPs and patients together, allowing them to jointly commission services. In education, funding should follow the pupil, good schools be allowed to expand and the academy programme accelerated so that parents had a greater choice of school provider.

'There is nothing like control of money to give a person voice and choice,' Osborne said.

He also vowed to devolve power over services to the professionals who provide them. 'We will trust public service professionals, because we recognise that they want to be able to respond to the individual needs of their patients and pupils, but central targets and top-down control are preventing them from doing so.'

But Richard Brooks, head of public services at the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, told Public Finance that warnings of a slowdown in the pace of reform rang hollow.

He said: 'Gordon Brown has to win the argument on public services or it will be almost impossible for him to win the next general election.

'The Conservatives are right to be getting on to that territory — but Brown's not going to move off it now.'

PFjun2007

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