What might Labour’s new public services agenda look like?

Since losing power Labour has thrown off the New Labour fixation with markets and top-down centralisation and embraced what Ed Miliband has called ‘people powered public services’.

But the details on what this should mean in practice have been thin on the ground. This is quite understandable. After all there’s an election to be won and the topic of public service reform does not make for catchy soundbites or good election posters.

But when a Labour government takes office in 2015, it will need to have its plans in place. It’s not a job that can wait, Labour must hit the ground running. So today the Fabian Society publishes a roadmap for Labour’s new public services agenda which fleshes out the new direction. There are four key lessons:

1. Public character matters The coalition government’s mantra of ‘any qualified provider’ simply doesn’t pass muster. Quite apart from the fact that people value the idea of the public good and are cautious about more marketisation, it simply doesn’t work.

We’ve seen huge PLCs taken to task for fraudulent activities and local care providers found guilty of neglect and abuse. These aren’t just individual rogue companies but an outcome of a structural flaw in the system. Where there is a strong public character there should be an ethic of care, protection and empowerment. A free market cannot guarantee these values and leads to short-termism, ‘gaming’ of the system and the prioritisation of profit. While public services should be accountable to citizens, companies are answerable to shareholders.

There is a places for corporate involvement in the public service supply chain, but it should be circumscribed and controlled far more effectively than at present. And, above all, we should never see a whole public service system outsourced to the private sector again, as we’ve seen with welfare to work or the probation service.

2. But so does value for money. The Labour party should never come off second best as champions for value for money in public services. After all it is the left, not the right, that has the most at stake when it comes to proving that public services can provide excellent quality at an affordable price.

The key to unlocking value for money has all too often been sought in the wrong places. The answer isn’t in large national inspectorates and centrally-mandated performance standards. In fact, we argue that national inspecting organisations like Ofsted should be stripped of their improvement duties, with public services encouraged to set up their own sectoral improvement bodies.

Localism is a better avenue for driving better value. Often cost-saving innovation is best pursued on an area-wide basis by making services work together and driven by those closest to the action, as Labour councils have been proving since 2010. Local authorities should be given more powers to act as ringmasters coordinating public services and as scrutineers to ensure that performance and value are prioritised in all services in an area.

3. Don’t forget public service workers. Prioritising public character over markets, and seeking greater devolution in the drive for performance and value, means an enhanced role for public service workers. They should be encouraged to form national professional institutes, where these don’t exist, an avenue being considered by teachers with the proposed Royal College of Teaching. Employees’ potential for autonomy, innovation and vocational development should be recognised in job training and design. Rather than top-down management they should share in the responsibility for shaping services.

4. And most of all don’t forget the people who use the services. All too often, discussions of public service reform get lost in jargon around outcomes and performance. But people-powered public services should be just that. And that involves a radical rethinking of how we do public services. We argue for a ‘Russian Doll’ model of public services where each level of government – national, regional, local – have overlapping powers but all have a duty to push power out to citizens. By involving people in the leadership, design, planning and evaluation of public services, providers will come to better reflect the priorities and experiences of all of us who use them. We should not obsess about ‘public owenership’ when an independent, non-profit provider brings strong public character. But we should demand ‘shared ownership’, so that citizens, as well as employees, managers and politicians all have real control over their services’ future.

Andrew Harrop is General Secretary of the Fabian Society