Euston Manifesto forum: Last 35 Posts

counsell on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

counsell — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 01:37:44 +0000

Tell you what, Verbena: you bung us ten grand to keep the joke running and I'll see to it that you get to be Viceroy of the New Persian Empire when our Eustonian World Government takes over.

Verbena on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

Verbena — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 06:34:00 +0000

I suspect one of TB's 'Sebastians' did the actual bloggery. TB has often admitted to be a cyber-innocent.

Not a bad piece justificative, though the recital of targets achieved at the end was a shade reminiscent of Cde JV Stalin announcing over-fulfilment of the five year plan. Trouble is, what value should be attached to promises of onward and upward from a man who is halfway out the door of No. Ten as he utters them?

"In the early days of universal services the standard of service provision, in all aspects of our lives, was poor." Except the Post Office, Tony. That's one mouldering nut neither Mrs T nor you have dared to crack. I don't think water services are as good as in the 1950s either.

PS: The Euston Manifesto has given us such hours of innocent fun that I would quite like to slip it a little something to keep it on life support a mite longer, if things are as desperate as Damien says. Is there a way of doing that which does not infringe the charities legislation? (One must be so careful not to seem to want a peerage in return, these days, as TB would be the first to agree.)

PCS on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

PCS — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:00:59 +0000

The Prime Minister’s article, though interesting, is very thin on detail and evidence. Much of his approach consists in setting up a number of straw men and then knocking them down. For example, he begins by saying that there is “always” a progressive case for reform, and asks – rhetorically, one must suppose – what progressive case is there for the status quo, except in utopia?

This is astoundingly innocent. Instances of a status quo preferable to destructive, unnecessary reforms are not hard to find. German Labour laws in January 1933, for instance, were infinitely preferable to the “reforms” which the newly elected Nazi government introduced. That does not make Weimar Germany a “utopia”, but it does serve to illustrate that reform is not always and automatically a good, positive and beneficent alternative.

Other generalisations by the Prime Minister are equally dubious. He claims that “In the early days of universal services the standard of service provision, in all aspects of our lives, was poor”. This is a definitive and damning statement for which he provides no evidence at all. All public sector universal provision was poor? Health? Education? Welfare? Not mixed, even, but simply and completely poor. This is a ridiculous argument, which nobody with any knowledge of the welfare state from 1945 would dream of making (leave aside the gratuitous insult offered an entire generation of dedicated, low paid public sector workers).

As ever, the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for new technology unbalances his argument. He moves from the obvious need for improved service delivery to exploit the benefits of new technology – changes that can and should be introduced within a properly funded public sector model of public service – to conclude that services must therefore be provided through an entirely different model based on increased private sector provision, outsourcing and a variety of other delivery methods, none of which on their own necessarily enhance or integrate new technology into service delivery any better than adequately funded, well managed public sector provision.

Nevertheless the Prime Minster asserts that the alternative to reform “according to our values” is not no reform at all, but reform lead by the values of “another political creed”. He leaves unclarified what “our values” are, and why they differ from that of “another political creed”. As well he might, as there is no serious difference between the current Labour public sector reform agenda and that of the Conservatives’ rather vague visions for the same. As we know, David Cameron’s Conservatives have pledged to maintain current levels of public service spending and there is no reason to believe that is essentially untrue. What then? Methods of delivery? Labour is keen to press on with its programme (already far in advance of John Major’s government) of privatisation and outsourcing of public services. So are the Tories. Labour favours use of the “Third” (voluntary) sectors in public service delivery. So do the Tories. All use “choice “and “contestability” as their mantra, leaving aside what that might actually mean.

But these polices are hardly immune from challenge. To take but one example, my own union (the Public and Commercial Services Union – PCS) have already established from discussions with management in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) that not only do the skills required to fulfill the tasks envisaged in the DWP reform programme not exist in the private and voluntary sector, but their decision to use only private and voluntary sector providers for the proposed Pathways to Work programme is driven by the Treasury’s demand for a reduction in staff numbers in the Jobcentre Plus network, arising from the implementation of the Gershon “Efficiency” programme.

In reality, the evidence supporting a move to further private and voluntary sector provision in employment services is weak or non-existent. It is unfortunately the case that many of the advocates of such involvement have a vested interest in accruing a profit making business for their sector, which will generate funding to support their existing infrastructure, or in plugging the gaps left by a mechanical pursuit of staff cuts in the DWP.

The Treasury maintains that greater labour-market “flexibility”, and the increasing use of the private sector in the public sphere will produce efficiency savings and improve the overall performance of public services. However, there is no reliable evidence that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Private companies are not producing the anticipated improvements in delivery time or cost, nor are they meeting quality standards, as the record of companies like Balfour Beatty have evidenced.

Privatisation does, though, mean massive profits for multinational companies such as Fujitsu and Siemens. Since 1993 these two companies have won contracts in areas such as taxation, defence research and the Driving Standards Agency. These profits made by private companies are out of all proportion to the risks taken, which – especially when providing a basically monopoly service such as water supply or a train service – are minimal.

It is of particular concern to PCS that despite previous assurances from the government, core frontline services in the DWP are now being privatised. For example, after the closure of Jobcentre Plus Action Teams (previously praised for their high performance) the government announced that their replacement would provide employment services exclusively from the private sector. No in-house bid was allowed. This is simply political dogma riding roughshod over “what works”.

Similarly, over 20,000 MoD civilian staff currently faces job cuts and privatisation, which PCS fear will adversely affect the current high quality of logistical support to our armed services. Areas under threat of privatisation include specialist and basic training, and most of the defence supply chain – including procurement and delivery of frontline equipment, IT and military communication systems, and maintenance of military vehicles. PCS believes these plans will make the MoD less accountable to Parliament and weaken the cohesiveness of Britain’s defence forces at a critical time for those forces. But, again, such wider considerations are being ignored in the rush to impose a simplistic model of private sector provision, despite the clear need for an integrated approach.

Perhaps the most alarming example of this approach was the government’s plans - unveiled in 2003 - to privatise the UK’s Forensic Science Service. Only a campaign by PCS and Labour MPs forced the government to pledge that the service would remain in the public sector for two more years. If privatisation now goes ahead, it will make the UK the only country in the world that considers the detection of crime should be a matter for private profit. The possibilities of miscarriages of justice are obvious.

PCS does not put its head in the sand. We have endeavored to engage with the government's reform agenda, by acknowledging their criteria for debate and responding with constructive proposals of our own. A PCS sponsored conference in December 2005, attended by senior civil servants, business leaders and cross-party political figures, made a significant contribution to taking forward the debate. The conference launched a major publication by Professor Roger Seifert and Mike Ironside of the Centre for Industrial Relations, Keele University, "The Case for Civil and Public Services : An Alternative Vision", printed and published by PCS earlier in 2005.

But engagement with the government’s reform agenda can not preclude serious and fundamental criticism when major planks of that agenda are so misconceived. PCS has grave concerns about the nature and impact of the Gershon Efficiency programme, announced by the Chancellor in the Comprehensive Spending Review 2004, which included a commitment to achieve 104,000 civil service post reductions by 2008. PCS is on record as opposing this headcount reduction as the very epitome of the top-down “diktat” model for public services that the Prime Minster now so strongly opposes, especially as the post reduction was not decided upon after a careful, evidence based analysis of performance targets, workloads and staff in post across individual departments and NDPBs from which appropriate "efficiencies" were concluded as practical and desirable, but rather a centralised imposition of broad brush targets on a wide variety of different bodies performing different tasks.

The result of this has been predictable - many front line services such as Benefit Offices, Pensions Centres, Tax Offices, Child Support Offices, etc, have cut back on delivery to the public in order to achieve their targets, with a subsequent negative impact on service delivery (to take but one example, the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee found that the DWP's efficiency programme has led to many calls now going unanswered and benefit calculation taking much longer, resulting in a "catastrophic" level of service delivery). This flows directly from an ill planned and impractical programme that may have initially aimed for qualitative improvements in service delivery, but is now focused more on crude headcount reduction than reforming public services to become more effective, innovative and user-friendly.

PCS’s analysis and concerns are not based on a narrow view of “producer interest”, nor we do we suppose that the only required solution to better public services is a huge injection of cash, without efficient and accountable administration (including full and flexible use of new technology to meet the requirements of a diverse population) Yes, we seek to protect the interests of our members, but we see no contradiction between doing so and promoting the health and effectiveness of the services they devote themselves to delivering.

In that regard we are ready to engage with the government at any level about the future direction of public services, and to consider all options for reform, if they are necessary, fair, effective, and the product of genuine consultation with all stakeholders, including public sector trade unions. Sadly, the Prime Minster’s article hardly demonstrates that he is pursuing such options, and is not supported by the widely acknowledged evidence of the failures of private sector provision of public services.

Charles Cochrane
Head : Protect Public Services Unit
Public and Commercial Services Union

trackedback on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

trackedback — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 23:18:07 +0000

Bill Cooke

Dear Prime Minister,

You make a very important point that there is a progressive case for public sector reform. You should know that I am one of those business school academics who nonetheless is critical of the unchallenged spread of managerialism in the public sector.

Yet we should recognize that in the drive for what is called New Public Management there was often a progressive agenda. It was as much late 1980s demands for fair employment for ethnic minorities and women as it was Thatcherism that led to the establishment of processes which are now seen as best human resource management practices. So you are hooking into a noble historic tradition, which you could argue goes back to the early Fabians.

Yet, again, there is much about the public sector which is as good as---no, better than---the private sector. An example: the notion and sense of vocation. Vocation is why, historically, nurses, teachers, and even some university lecturers did great work for little money, but with the perk of society's respect. The latter cost the exchequer nothing, but delivered the public sector lots and lots.

In the meantime, people's experience of the private sector is not good---and it may be that it is one of those issues which demonstrates the out-of-touchness of political life. I am one of the Google generation, and the web certainly has changed my patterns of engagement with the private sector. But read the money pages of all the quality newspapers. They are full of stories of private sector incompetence and rip-offs. I'm kind of guessing you haven't in your life had to spend hours waiting on a 0870 number (do you know what that means?), nor had a disappearing e-ticket, nor had an internet service company help itself to cash from your account. Most people have.

So, yes, there is a progressive case for public sector reform. But what is needed, and maybe is impossible to achieve within the political setting in which you have to work, is nuance and pragmatism, rather than big change initiative one after the other (with, perhaps, the exception of IT based change). For me there is a simple rule. Look to outcomes first over processes.

Targets, fine. But assuming particular institutional frameworks (e.g. quasi-market) might be better than others, particularly when it is hard to get disinterested advice, is problematic. Of course, there must be a care for delivery. But maybe you need to engage the progressive people engaged in delivery to work out how best it might be done.

Yours,

Bill

Dr. Bill Cooke is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Analysis at The University of Manchester, Manchester Business School.

trackedback on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

trackedback — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 23:15:25 +0000

Peter Ryley

The Progressive Case Against Change

Tony Blair's sally into the world of Euston certainly has all the hallmarks of a classic, using the techniques that Jamie Whyte mercilessly pilloried. There are instances when banality poses as profundity---what on earth does "We are a much older people than we were" actually mean? These are supported by generalisations asserted without empirical foundation---I am sorry, Tony, but being employed in the public sector feels more like being a participant in a continuous revolution than working in institutions that "were established in something like their current form in the 1940s".

However, the heart of his appeal for the support of the left in his programme of public sector reform is more important and is contained in the following statement.,/p>

"There is always a progressive case for reform. What progressive case is there for the status quo, except in utopia?"

The obvious question that arises is what reform? The introduction of compulsory human sacrifice to propitiate the Gods would certainly be a reform, but hardly a progressive one. The debate is not about reform versus stasis; it is over which out of a range of reforms are preferred. Trying to make a case for reform per se is not enough to convince.

There is more though. There is a progressive case to be made against change. This was beautifully put by Trevor Blackwell and Jeremy Seabrook:

"We began to wonder if the reason why parties advocating radical change were so unsuccessful was because they were striking against the resistance of people who had changed, who had been compelled to change, too much. … In this context the desire to conserve, to protect, to safeguard, to rescue, to resist becomes the heart of a radical project. A form of conservatism – to be most sharply distinguished from its multitude of imitations, its travesties and caricatures, and scarcely know to those who carry the banners of conservatism in the modern world – becomes indispensable to this work of resistance. This conservatism leads us to search for all those valuable resources that have been thrown away in the process of eager industrialisation. For the greatest casualties in this version of development have been human, perhaps even more than material, resources."

<i>The Revolt Against Change. Towards a Conserving Radicalism. Vintage, London. 1993. pp.3--4)</i>

Part of the reason for the decline in Labour support does not lie in those issues that the media obsesses over, notably Iraq, but in an inchoate desire for a more stable and kinder future. Blackwell and Seabrook saw these 'forces of conservatism' being the centrepiece of a left project. They were ignored. Instead, they are David Cameron's secret weapon. Labour take note.

Choice is not power

One of the more bewildering aspects of the language of New Labour is its penchant for picking two irreconcilable concepts and saying that Labour is neither, yet is also both - simultaneously. This is what happens in Blair's defence of choice.

It is more subtly stated here but is present none the less. The first phase of public sector reform is described by Blair as being based on "strong central direction and public targets". The current phase is now, apparently, a process of "transfer of power from providers to citizens". Note the language here; it is a transfer of power from providers not government. Implicit in this is a view that the public sector behaves as a monopoly with, at best, complacency, and, at worst, an intrinsically hostile attitude towards its users. In this way there is a supposed unity of interest between government and citizens against the recalcitrant providers of public services. The circle is squared. Centralised government direction can happily co-exist with the devolution of power to citizens whereas I had always assumed that increasing the ability of people to decide for themselves had to result in a reduction of central power.

This analysis would be fine if it were true. Those of us in Adult Education, which has long operated in a genuine market with provision solely driven and determined by consumer choice, are acutely aware that there is currently a shared interest between providers and users against the government as it uses its powers of funding to effectively impose a narrow model of instrumental education to be delivered at NVQ level 2, regardless of the choices of citizens. A swathe of popular adult education provision is disappearing across the country because it does not match the government's funding criteria.

In reality, choice is a very limited form of power compared to ownership, control and democratic governance. This is even more so in a model based on central direction and targets. What results is not a choice of provision, which will remain centrally directed, but a choice of provider. In other words, "you can have any colour as long as it is black - but you can choose from all these showrooms where you buy it". This is hardly, "Power to the People".

Peter Ryley works at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Hull. He blogs at Fat Man at a Keyboard.

trackedback on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

trackedback — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:05:13 +0000

Jon Rogers

Tony Blair blogs badly

I note with great interest that the world of blogging has been joined by no less a personage than our Prime Minister! Albeit he is posting over at the Euston Manifesto site (that's the modern day home of "send a gunboat" liberal imperialism for those not in the know).

Tony is blogging to tell us all the case for "reform" of our public services.

If I think his views are worth noting (bearing in mind he is thankfully on the way out) I may have a proper look.

In the meantime I am amused by his introductory paragraph which states that:

"There is always a progressive case for reform. What progressive case is there for the status quo, except in utopia?"

This is a wonderful example of Bair's (mis)use of language. As I have observed here previously he thinks that reform of public services means privatisation. However his actual words are a statement to which no one could possibly object. And one sure thing about statements with which no one can disagree are that they are pointless. Indeed he nowhere defines what he means by "reform" in any rigorous way.

He goes on to argue (at unnecessary length) that society has changed and therefore public services need to change. Doh! Come and do a real job for once in your life Tony and you would find that public service workers are pretty much used to constant change.

The next paragraph of Tony's irritating dross that is probably worth picking out is this one:

"The driving idea behind reform is to transfer power from providers to citizens. To give power to the people---it is as traditional a left-of-centre slogan as there is."

Again he manages to utilise a platitude you would have to agree with in order to advance policies with which most people disagree. Because he goes on to say:

"If the citizen has a choice they have a power. The service is likely to be more responsive to their needs. Their voice is a lot more likely to be heard and acted on. The service has a stimulus to improve."

This begs so many questions. Can we have an informed choice about every public service. Should I, as an individual, choose whether to have my tonsils out or instead to have a vasectomy? Should my children choose whether to study literacy or numeracy?

There is an alternative stimulus to improve public services in the public service ethos to which so many public servants are committed---an ethos which Tony will never understand.

This ethos is continually undermined by a "choice" agenda which is invariably about "choosing" between providers but almost never on a level playing field for the public sector.

Tony then claims that "reform works" and quotes some of those interminable New Labour statistics that so fail to persuade the electorate just now.

All in all, a disappointing little essay from someone who has been running the country for nearly a decade. He can't see the difference between changing and improving public services on the one hand and opening up opportunities for people to take profits out of them on the other.

Few blog posts I have read so well make the case for a change of policies as well as personalities as soon as possible.

Perhaps it is all a spoof and the Euston Manifesto people are just having a laugh at Tony Blair?

trackedback on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

trackedback — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:59:32 +0000

Daniel Finkelstein
A totally incoherent post

The Prime Minister has posted a most interesting article about public service reform on the Euston Manifesto site. I think it demonstrates the confusion that has bedevilled his public service reform programme.

Here, for instance, is the way he describes the phases of his policy:

"Our strategy for public services has been through three phases. The first phase was a zero tolerance approach to failure, with strong central direction and public targets, to ensure that under-investment could not be used as an excuse for endemic failure. This was then followed by a correction of the long period of under-investment. We are now into the third phase: progressive reform."

This is a good description, but a terrible strategy.

Surely the right way to reform, would have been the other way round entirely. You start with the reform, put the money in as the reforms begin to bite and finish by correcting any serious political problems caused by deregulation.

The piece also contains an important contradiction. Mr Blair advocates much greater consumer choice (that is what he means by progressive reform) and then says:

"A service can and must be designed to ensure that access is equitable. The content of what is provided, the ways that staff work, the outcomes expected for citizens: all these are subject to stringent regulation. These regulations apply to all sectors and the claims that the reforms lead to two-tier services are quite wrong."

But if all these things are going to be equal, what would consumers be choosing between? You would be imposing a cost (making a choice) without providing a benefit (the access to a better service).

Altogether, I thought this article very important. It illustrates that the Blair public service reform agenda (which I'd always rather unthinkingly supported because it seemed to point in the right direction) is totally incoherent.

counsell on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

counsell — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:14:51 +0000

How apt that Benjamin Mackie, banned from comment boxes all over the Web, should be the first commenter here. I'll answer your question about Euston Manifesto Group funding because a) it's got nothing to do with Tony Blair's arguments for the reform of public services and b) I run the bank account. But the next time you make an irrelevant comment, Benji, you'll be banned here as well.

It's ironic that you of all people should be so excited about our funding when you have spent so much time dismissing us as inconsequential. The truth is exactly what we've always said: a bunch of Lefties met in a pub, wrote a declaration, and signed it. That it's turned into something bigger has been more by accident than design. We asked people for donations, not to fund a private army or a network of hunter-killer satellites, but so we could hire a bigger room for our launch and get some printing done---pamphleteers are like that. The money is also for the Website; I paid for that personally up front.

The vast bulk of the EM's funding comes from ten and twenty pound donations made by signatories and supporters around the World to our (my) PayPal account. We've also received a few larger cheques from private individuals, by far the largest of which was from a well-known writer rather than the CIA or the Illuminati.

The party conference season has cleaned us out and, if it hadn't been for a generous cheque from one of our founder members, we'd be well into the red. (One of our members is still substantially out of pocket.) Right now we probably have enough for a pizza.

I would love for the EMG to be put on a more formal financial footing and publish proper accounts, but if you've ever tried to get a bunch of Lefties in a pub to agree on a constitution in the middle of a change in charity law you'll know why we're still winging it.

Redcarpet on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

Redcarpet — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:00:28 +0000

"Thatcherism cloaked in warm words." Hear, hear!

"Society has changed" Oh right, so inequality has ended, there's no Establishment, no monarchy, private property gone at last, popular control of the economy and state? Tony is full of untruthful propoganda and probably even beleives it.

Benjamin on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

Benjamin — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:29:51 +0000

Perhaps its to be expected that the Euston Manifesto group would become a forum for the higher echelons of the political class - mainly of the Labour Party - to outline their continuing policies of high taxation and privatisation. Thatcherism cloaked in warm words.

Seperately, I wonder if it's now time for full disclosure on the Euston Group website: ie. sources of funding. That's normal and accepted practice.

counsell on "The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform"

counsell — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:51:05 +0000

In the summer a number of Labour ministers posted articles setting out the progressive case for the next stage of public service reform. With the first meeting of the cabinet's policy review taking place on Monday---on public services---this article outlines the Prime Minister’s thinking on this crucial issue.

As an experiment with the Euston Manifesto site you are invited to create your own user account on our new forum, login, and respond the to the Prime Minister. Below is the full text of his submission.

The Progressive Case For Public Service Reform by Tony Blair, Prime Minister

There is always a progressive case for reform. What progressive case is there for the status quo, except in utopia?

One of the original aspirations for universal public services was that they would help to equalise British society. Education would make for fair life chances. The NHS would equalise life expectancy. We still have a long way to travel.

It is not just that the results are unfair. Access to services is not yet fair either. There is a wealth of evidence that lower-income, less educated and unemployed people do not use health services as much relative to need as their richer, better educated peers.

And remember: there has been a progressive dividend in the very fact that public services today are so healthy. A decade ago it was seriously being debated whether or not tax-funded public services could survive. The long period of under-investment had taken its toll. People had become fatalistic about the mortality of their services. Now, the argument is no longer about whether there should be public services provided publicly at all. It is about how they might best be managed.

Society has changed and its demands along with it. Universal public services were established in something like their current form in the 1940s. They offered a service to a society that was ethnically homogeneous, socially patriarchal, economically industrial and recovering from the experience of large-scale unemployment and rationing at a time of war.

We are a much older people than we were. Our lifestyles have changed. The tides of global markets wash up on our shores. Migration is now more extensive than ever before. The competition from other nations is more intense. The ways in which we deliver services are changing all the time, powered by new technologies.

Perhaps more important than anything else, the expectations of the public have risen. In the early days of universal services the standard of service provision, in all aspects of our lives, was poor. This is not any longer true. The standard of goods is vastly superior to what it once was. It would be naïve to suppose that these rising expectations have not been extended to public services. They have. People are now accustomed to a level of service and convenience that is new.

All of these changes have meant that services have to change too. The pattern of provision is changing quickly. Take the NHS---about 60 percent of cases were day cases in 1997, now it is 70 percent, an increase of 1.5 million. There will be 2.4m more people over 65 in 2017 than in 2007. That changes the nature of care the NHS has to offer. Chronic disease will be the biggest policy area of the future. Already, chronic care costs 80 percent of the budget of the NHS. People are eating more and exercising less---one in five adults in the UK is thought to be obese.

Advances in biotechnology and medical practice mean that infectious diseases can be tackled but the more we can do the more we face difficult funding and rationing decisions. It is now a common experience for patients to go to their GP armed with extensive knowledge of their condition.

Technological change means that we can design lessons for children more personally than ever before. Manufacturing industry has declined, meaning that the training required has changed beyond recognition in a generation. The low fertility rate means that the pressure on the working to fund pensions is greater. We need to change the pattern of housing: the number of households in Britain increased by 30 percent between 1971 and 2005 and is still rising.

So, the argument will be not whether we can resist these changes but whether we can shape them to progressive ends. The alternative to reform according to our values is not no reform at all. It is reform according to the values of another political creed.

Our strategy for public services has been through three phases. The first phase was a zero tolerance approach to failure, with strong central direction and public targets, to ensure that under-investment could not be used as an excuse for endemic failure. This was then followed by a correction of the long period of under-investment. We are now into the third phase: progressive reform.

The driving idea behind reform is to transfer power from providers to citizens. To give power to the people---it is as traditional a left-of-centre slogan as there is.

Aneurin Bevan once said that the purpose of power is to be able to give it away. That idea is our guide too. We want to put citizens in charge because it is both right in itself and it is a way of ensuring that services are tailored to their needs and that services constantly change and innovate as required. So, power to the people is both the means by which the vision will be achieved and is a progressive end in itself. It is no coincidence that the least well-off, the people with least power, consistently tell the polls that they want choices the most.

If the citizen has a choice they have a power. The service is likely to be more responsive to their needs. Their voice is a lot more likely to be heard and acted on. The service has a stimulus to improve.

It is also important sometimes that people are supported in making their choices. Expert intermediaries can be employed to act on behalf of the citizen. Sometimes the choice will in fact be made by an expert individual or body. Sometimes the choice will be made collectively. All of these things are just ways of transferring power to the citizen, to be judged on their merits in each case.

These reforms will make services more efficient. This is necessary but not sufficient. Public services have to be equitable too. We have preserved equity in three ways: the prevention of selection, collective funding and effective regulation.

First, it must be the citizen doing the choosing not the school or hospital doing the selecting. In countries that have allowed selection in schools, like New Zealand, for example, they have found that the gap between the rich and the poor grew. In countries such as Sweden, which did not allow selection but which did give the power of choice to parents, they found that the gap closed.

Second, it is important that the funding is organised progressively. We protect equity by ensuring that we defend the principle of progressive funding. Services should be free at the point of use. Essential services should not be rationed because an individual cannot pay.

Third, a service can and must be designed to ensure that access is equitable. The content of what is provided, the ways that staff work, the outcomes expected for citizens: all these are subject to stringent regulation. These regulations apply to all sectors and the claims that the reforms lead to two-tier services are quite wrong.

In the end, the best argument for reform is that it works. Waiting lists have fallen by almost 400,000; maximum waiting times for operations have been halved from 18 months in 1997 to 9 months in April 2004 and now virtually no one waits longer than 6 months, with the average much lower; there are now 5,800 more good or excellent primary and secondary schools today than in 1997. Exam results are at record levels; more young people are going to university. The biggest ever NHS hospital building programme is underway; record numbers of doctors and nurses are treating record numbers of NHS patients; deaths from cancer and heart disease are falling.

All of these objectives require intelligent government. The progressive left's belief that government can be a force for good is a major advantage. David Cameron has understood that he needs to be seen as a centrist. He is doing his level best to sound reasonable, although his various policy reviews keep giving us an unfortunate glimpse of the contradictions he falls into whenever he is actually forced to confront tough questions rather than simply pose them.

This will be critical when he is finally forced to make decisions about policy. It is all very well to talk about some of the questions that government faces. But if you put yourself in a position where you can't determine the solution, then sooner or later this will become clear to the British public. In the meantime, the serious reform, to match the profound changes to our country, goes on.