By Richard Johnstone | 10 February 2014
Ed Miliband will tonight set out plans to reform public services if Labour wins the next election, including giving parents a right to demand action to improve standards at failing schools.
In a lecture in London this evening, Miliband will pledge to tackle what he calls unaccountable state power and unresponsive public services.
He will say that as many people speak to him abut their frustrations with an unresponsive state as they do about their problems with untamed markets in energy and banking.
‘The causes of the frustrations are often the same in the private and public sector: unaccountable power with the individual feeling left powerless to act,’ he will say in the Hugo Young lecture.
‘So just as it is One Nation Labour’s cause to tackle unaccountable power in the private sector, so too in the public sector.’
This will require a major shift of power away from Whitehall into the hands of parents, patients and other users of public services, he will say.
As part of a drive to allow the public to access information about services, Miliband will set out specific plans to give parents a new right to demand action to raise school standards.
Schools will be required to produce more up-to-date information about their performance, while parents will have a power of shared decision-making to get together as a group to demand improvement, including at academies and free schools.
Miliband will announce that he has asked former education secretary David Blunkett to develop proposals as part of moves to decentralise decision-making over schools.
‘Having promised to share power, this government has actually centralised power in Whitehall and is attempting to run thousands of schools from there,’ he will say of the coalition’s education reforms.
‘That doesn’t work. And as a result some schools have been left to fail without intervention. Just last week we saw the Al-Madinah Free School in Derby close because its failings were spotted far too late.
‘In all schools, there should be a parental right to “call in” intervention. This would happen when a significant number of parents come together and call for immediate action on standards.’
Miliband will highlight that the need for further budget cuts in the next parliament will increase the pressure on services, making reform even more important.
‘Clearly the next Labour government will face massive fiscal challenges, including having to cut spending. That is why it is all the more necessary to get every pound of value out of services. And show we can do more with less by doing things in a new way.’
Improvements to public services will require a change in culture, he will say, including the expansion of the personal budgets approach that in some care services has allowed users to shape provision with providers.
‘Not old-style, top-down central control, with users as passive recipients of services. Nor a market-based individualism which says the answer is to transplant the principles of the private sector lock, stock and barrel into the public sector.
‘Instead, we need a new culture of people-powered public services. We should always be seeking to put more power in the hands of patients, parents and all the users of services. Giving them voice as well as choice.’
