Byers and Willetts battle to offer more choice

8 Apr 04
The concept of 'choice' must be extended across Britain's public services to ensure the government's radical reforms are successful, according to leading thinkers from the two main parties.

09 April 2004

The concept of 'choice' must be extended across Britain's public services to ensure the government's radical reforms are successful, according to leading thinkers from the two main parties.

David Willetts, shadow work and pensions minister, and Stephen Byers, Labour's Blairite outrider for policy reform, this week both called for a widening of the concept to improve services.

The former ministers, however, highlighted key differences between each party's agenda during speeches at a Social Market Foundation conference on the use of vouchers and 'smart cards'.

Speaking on April 5, Willetts expanded on Conservative plans to break open the 'fixed lump of public services' by allowing more providers to enter markets in education, health and other key sectors.

He said the Tories would abolish local authority powers to close schools with surplus places, thereby increasing genuine choice for parents by making places available at more establishments.

He also criticised the government's choice agenda because it did not fully address supply-side constraints, adding: 'If you throw large amounts of public money at a service while it remains difficult to increase supply, then [it] will be frittered away in higher costs and fringe jobs with little practical value.'

Addressing the conference the following day, however, Byers said governments 'must now go much further'.

He told delegates they should also consider the impact of choice in the context of 'social justice' and allow groups within society, as well as individuals, to express genuine choices.

Byers supported Willetts' calls to lift restrictions on pupil numbers, but added that 'the school curriculum needs to be made far more flexible to provide the choice of distinct and personal programmes of education and training for each child'.

In social care, he said, the elderly should be able to choose who carries out work for them, such as their home help. Tenants, meanwhile, should have greater choice over where they live through a process not controlled entirely by housing officers.

Reacting to criticisms that only the educated, well-informed classes benefit from extended choice, Byers concluded: 'At present, choice is available to those who can afford it. It needs to be made available to all as part of a modern agenda of distribution.'

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