The illusion of choice

By Shibley Rahman / @shibleylondon

An ongoing onslaught by David Cameron has been that the state became too big through Labour. Yesterday, somebody remarked on Twitter, “BREAKING NEWS: Cameron to replace top-down bodies with top-down bodies”.

Three policy developments, the English Baccalaureate, NHS corporate restructuring and the Big Society, provide evidence of a ‘top-down’ approach which actually encourages less – rather than more – choice.

The English Baccalaureate

In a less than successful interview on Victoria Derbyshire’s Radio 5 show last week, Michael Gove explained to the listener his perception of the “English bac” scheme.

Gove promoted an English baccalaureate qualification to recognise the achievements of GCSE students who complete a broad course of studies. The “English bac” apparently wouldn’t replace GCSEs, but would be a certificate to reward pupils who pass at least five of the exams, at grade C or above, including English, mathematics, one science, one foreign language and one humanity.

One wonders how Einstein or Bach would have coped under a system. More worrying is that it is the government (or rather Michael Gove’s elite) who are imposing changes (based on what they think is important) onto the rest of the education system.

Corporate restructuring in the NHS

A second example concerns a massive issue, which is being sold to voters as reducing the state and increasing choice. Nothing could potentially be further from the truth. The NHS in England is to undergo a major restructuring in one of the biggest shake-ups in its history. A huge new NHS (independent) Commissioning Board will oversee GP commissioning, sitting above as many as 500 “consortiums” of GPs to set standards and hold the groups to account.

Furthermore, it is proposed that this new system also will give patients more information and choice. “HealthWatch” will be set up to compile data on performance. Experts in this area have often noted that the quality of data concerning benefits (often mixed up with outcomes) has been extremely poor – so much so that it could be dangerous for GPs to use such data to guide their commissioning policy. This is a longstanding problem which is not addressed by NHS restructuring – estimated to cost £3bn in its first year.

The Big Society

The final example concerns what possibly is the flagship policy of the Conservative Party. According to the Big Society’s own website:

“The Big Society is a society in which individual citizens feel big: big in terms of being supported and enabled; having real and regular influence; being capable of creating change in their neighbourhood.”

Again, the Big Society is sold as creating ‘an enabling and accountable state’. The Big Society as a whole might be fairly innocuous if it simply was an extension of the volunteering, pro-bono practices which are longstanding; or indeed a development of social enterprise policy. The unique selling point of the Conservatives’ approach to the ‘improvement of society’ is in fact its focus on venture capital, which is a point hardly ever addressed.

Venture philanthropy, also known as philanthrocapitalism, takes concepts and techniques from venture capital finance and high-technology business management and applies them to achieving philanthropic goals. It has a strong focus on measurable results: donors and grantees assess progress based on mutually determined benchmarks. There is also a high involvement from large corporate donors with their grantees, such as taking positions on the boards of non-profits they fund. Critically, the venture capitalists are the ones who choose where they wish to spend the money.

Do financially-strapped worthy projects in the community get a chance to participate in this choice?

The illusion of choice

All of these examples demonstrate a ‘top down’ approach – giving an illusion of choice.

This will be a painful pill for Labour to swallow – especially while Cameron’s PR team fill the airwaves with the message that the state is too big, with the assistance of their Liberal Democrat accomplices.

I am confident that they will be ultimately punished for this faulty ideological rhetoric, once the public realise they have been spun – as they have been with the economy.