By Lucy Phillips
19 May 2010
The new coalition government this week pushed forward with its ‘Big Society’ approach to reforming public services, but critics claim the ideas are a smokescreen for cuts.
On May 18, the prime minister and deputy prime minister met community leaders in Downing Street to launch policies giving citizens more powers and enabling voluntary groups to run public services, in line with the central vision of the Conservative Party’s election manifesto. Communities will be given a greater say over planning decisions and the power to stop the closure of local services such as post offices.
David Cameron said: ‘Today is the start of a deep and serious reform agenda to take power away from politicians and give it to people.’
But Rachael Maskell, national officer for the Unite union, claimed the political rhetoric was masking ‘an insidious angle’ of cutting state costs and responsibilities. ‘In troubled times, let somebody else take the rough for it… it’s a cynical agenda glossed up by the Tories to look attractive, but scratch behind the surface and it’s not going to work,’ she told Public Finance.
She warned that removing the checks and balances of the public sector would lead to a postcode lottery of services, with a workforce that would be badly paid and over-worked. The result would be that ‘the Big Society will turn into the broken society’, she said.
Maskell added that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done themselves no favours’ by supporting the Tories on this agenda, which they had been sceptical about before the election.
But the local government think-tank Localis welcomed the moves to reform public services, saying the current top-down, centralised approach had failed. Tom Shakespeare, director of policy and research, told PF it was ‘absolutely not about cuts to services’ but about ‘rethinking how services can be designed from the bottom up, involving communities, and ultimately delivering better services which better meet the needs of people’.
Another policy is to give councils a general power of competence. Local Government Association chair Dame Margaret Eaton said the new freedoms ‘will deliver big savings to the taxpayer and help make vital services even more responsive to people’s needs’.
19 May 2010
The new coalition government this week pushed forward with its ‘Big Society’ approach to reforming public services, but critics claim the ideas are a smokescreen for cuts.
On May 18, the prime minister and deputy prime minister met community leaders in Downing Street to launch policies giving citizens more powers and enabling voluntary groups to run public services, in line with the central vision of the Conservative Party’s election manifesto. Communities will be given a greater say over planning decisions and the power to stop the closure of local services such as post offices.
David Cameron said: ‘Today is the start of a deep and serious reform agenda to take power away from politicians and give it to people.’
But Rachael Maskell, national officer for the Unite union, claimed the political rhetoric was masking ‘an insidious angle’ of cutting state costs and responsibilities. ‘In troubled times, let somebody else take the rough for it… it’s a cynical agenda glossed up by the Tories to look attractive, but scratch behind the surface and it’s not going to work,’ she told Public Finance.
She warned that removing the checks and balances of the public sector would lead to a postcode lottery of services, with a workforce that would be badly paid and over-worked. The result would be that ‘the Big Society will turn into the broken society’, she said.
Maskell added that the Liberal Democrats had ‘done themselves no favours’ by supporting the Tories on this agenda, which they had been sceptical about before the election.
But the local government think-tank Localis welcomed the moves to reform public services, saying the current top-down, centralised approach had failed. Tom Shakespeare, director of policy and research, told PF it was ‘absolutely not about cuts to services’ but about ‘rethinking how services can be designed from the bottom up, involving communities, and ultimately delivering better services which better meet the needs of people’.
Another policy is to give councils a general power of competence. Local Government Association chair Dame Margaret Eaton said the new freedoms ‘will deliver big savings to the taxpayer and help make vital services even more responsive to people’s needs’.
