04 July 2008
A former Labour Cabinet minister has blamed 'a set of prejudices' for the continued exclusion of the private sector from areas of public service provision.
Speaking at a public services summit held by the CBI business lobby on June 26, former home secretary Charles Clarke said the private and voluntary sectors had a strong record of providing services, but it was still difficult in some areas even to include them in discussions on reform.
He also criticised the use of pilots and initiatives by the government. 'It's just ridiculous,' he said. 'I certainly think pilots and initiatives were justified for the first two or three years of this government, but they are not justified after 11 years,' he said.
Clarke went on to warn about the range of 'parallel services' in the public sector and said the lack of overall responsibility in many areas presented 'a major problem for social cohesion'.
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell told the summit that 'public service is something which isn't the preserve of the public sector'. He called for the debate to 'move completely away' from the question of whether involving the private sector in some areas was fundamentally 'good or bad'. Competition works, he insisted.
Speaking about the personalisation of services, Purnell said that in creating a 'single, flexible new deal which allows you to have one service overall but personalised for the individual', there could be a 'right to bid' for organisations to submit innovative delivery ideas for welfare and job services.
Charles Leadbeater, senior research associate with the think-tank Demos, had earlier told delegates about the importance of individual budgets in providing personalised public services.
'Key to that is to see people not just as recipients, consumers but as participants,' he said. 'There's a huge agenda here for public services that create tools and support that allow people to increasingly self-manage.'
The conference took place as Prime Minister Gordon Brown was launching a Cabinet Office report on transforming public services. Brown said: 'Excellent public services lie at the heart of any civilised society. They express our core values of fairness and common endeavour and they underpin a strong economy.'
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