09 June 2006
Local Government Secretary Ruth Kelly this week delayed the sector's white paper until the autumn, allowing for a more radical assessment of plans to devolve powers to cities and town halls.
Kelly's decision, announced on June 6, was timely: earlier in the day Prime Minister Tony Blair had reiterated that he would press ahead with public services reforms, but made it clear he would seek a continual evolution in service delivery at national and local level.
Amid speculation that it could be turned into a green paper – described by Kelly as 'inaccurate' – sources from the Department for Communities and Local Government admitted that elements of the document could be consultative and not simply prescriptive.
Explaining her decision to delay publication, Kelly said she would 'rather do it right than do it quickly' and told Public Finance that she 'needed time to consider how complex and difficult local government restructuring would impact on the DCLG's new wide-ranging remit', within the context of wider government plans to improve public services.
Senior department sources later indicated that this could, for example, involve a reassessment of the city-regions agenda pursued by David Miliband, Kelly's predecessor.
Chancellor Gordon Brown's Treasury team has assumed increasing influence over the snowballing city-regions initiative – the idea that local authorities and their partners will in future pool resources across existing boundaries to fuel much-needed regional development.
Recent indications are that Brown favours a more influential, co-ordinating role for organisations such as regional development agencies than Miliband's embryonic plans for devolved city-regions had anticipated.
Dennis Reed, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit think-tank, said: 'The big question is whether the new minister will buy into the localism direction taken by David Miliband or whether we will see a change in direction away from “double devolution” [Miliband's plan to devolve influence over public services down to neighbourhood level, beyond town halls] to a more centralist evolution.'
Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhart, Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, said that what mattered was that the eventual local government Bill had 'the backing not only of DCLG, but also Number 10, the Treasury and other ministers for the work of Sir Michael Lyons and our own Closer to people and places report, both of which call for bold devolution to give councils powers to shape places, boost economic growth and give power to people locally'.
Kelly told PF that she 'saw no reason' to delay the white paper until after Lyons' final recommendations on the future form, functions and financing of local government, which are due in December.
In a week when the public services took centre-stage, Blair told the Cabinet Office's Twenty-first Century public services conference on June 6 that the government and taxpayers must begin to see a return on the record levels of investment in public services. He threatened that further investment was 'in jeopardy' unless improvements were visible.
Blair also responded to appeals from public servants – national and local – to ease back from reforms. Indicating there would be no respite under Labour, he said: 'The bad news is that the world changes very quickly indeed and it is not only the private sector that is buffeted from these changes. Change and reforms in the public services, therefore, will be continual.'
But Blair said that the days of central government 'prescribing' service delivery outside of standard targets for key services 'are gone'. He added: 'The real challenge for us now is… how we get to the point where the structures are sufficiently clear and the structures and capacity to innovate are there and don't need constant prodding from government to achieve [high-quality services]. That is the key thing for us to focus on.'
Conservative leader David Cameron chose the same day to launch a charm offensive on public servants.
Delivering a speech to the National Consumer Council, Cameron said the Conservatives' previous view of public servants could have been interpreted as 'there's too many of you, you're lazy and you're inefficient'.
'This is far from the way I see things. Public service, the concept of working for the good of the community, is a high ideal,' he said.
'We see it in our doctors and nurses, our police officers and our soldiers. But we also see it in many… areas of our civil service and local government. Yet this is rarely, if ever, acknowledged,' he added.
PFjun2006
