As Britain rushes headlong towards a general election, the political parties are starting to put forward new ideas for public service reform, including ‘localism’. The Conservatives have given us such joys as Barnet’s ‘easyCouncil’ concept and Hammersmith & Fulham’s tax-cutting model. David Cameron has committed himself to localism and this week delivered a speech that extolled the use of civil society institutions rather than state agencies to produce societal benefits.
Seeing the Tory leader moving his policy-making onto their home territory, Labour has floated the ‘John Lewis’ version of public provision, to use co-operatives or partnerships to run schools, hospitals, social housing, social care providers and leisure facilities.
According to the Guardian, this would allow the government to get back to the pre-1945 way of running services, where local groups and charities would take charge. Any set of proposals intended to improve the sensitivity of public services deserves a fair hearing. Labour has yet fully to flesh out its ideas, but then neither has Mr Cameron.
As with the Tory proposals, Labour seem to have realised Britain (certainly England) is too centralised and that a shift of power is required. At first sight, the Labour and Conservative ideas look curiously similar. Both would move away from monolithic state provision towards a world of mutuals, co-ops and not-for-profit companies. The problem for Labour is that they have been in power for almost 13 years, so it is possible to look back at their recent activities and make judgements about their proposals. Cameron, like Tony Blair in 1996/97, has the advantage that he has no track record.
So Labour will need to explain how their new policy for hospitals will differ from Alan Milburn’s foundation trusts and from proposals for schools’ governing bodies to have more powers – then called ‘New Localism’. Such radical devolution proposals for hospitals were scuppered by Gordon Brown as chancellor. Labour also abolished John Major’s grant maintained schools which, as locally-constituted state institutions outside council control, sound suspiciously like the newly proposed bodies. Housing departments with co-operative ownership would be close to the original ideal of housing associations.
Labour will inevitably say their new proposals are nothing like previously constituted foundation hospitals, grant maintained schools or housing associations. But if hospitals, schools, council housing and social care were to be turned into mutuals, co-ops or not-for-profits, their new status would only have meaning if they were not subject to tight Whitehall control over resources and service levels. Short of abolishing the Department of Health, the Department for Children, Schools & Families and the Home Office, it is inconceivable ministers would really allow key institutions such as hospitals and schools to become independent.
Another issue that would face both Labour and the Conservatives in this new world would be the risk that the BNP or other extremist groups would take over the newly-liberated ‘micro’ bodies. Elected local councils almost always stop bad people getting control of them. But the smaller the institution, the greater the chance a body such as the BNP would be successful.
What about audit and inspection? Councils already complain of regulatory overload. What about Total Place and the need to produce efficiency savings? Could thousands of schools, hospitals, housing associations and care trusts be required to be part of Total Place? Crucially, what would the government say about locally-chosen ‘post code lotteries’? The major parties have much work to do if they are to pioneer new ‘new localism’ to shift power to bodies beyond the reach of the state. Thinking by both major parties is still at a very early stage.
