Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-493)
PROFESSOR GERRY
STOKER AND
MR JOHN
WILLIAMS
THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2001
480. So, you take an authority like my own,
Milton Keynes, and just choose one department, which is the learning
and development department, when it inherited children's social
services from Buckinghamshire it was probably the worst in the
country, and over four years they have turned it into one of the
best. But, at the same time, because they concentrated on that,
they took their eye off some of the education provisions, so they
did not improve those education provisions that they had taken
up. So how do you judge, where it has got very good youth provision,
very good children's social services, and quite poor education
provision, in the same department?
(Professor Stoker) In a way, the question hits on
a dilemma that we face, which is, quite frankly, we should not
be sitting round here making a judgement about Milton Keynes,
the people of Milton Keynes should be making a judgement about
Milton Keynes. And one of the problems we have got in our political
system is that the level of local political accountability is
not as strong as it should be, which is why we have seen this
enormous growth of inspections and audits, and so on and so forth.
My feeling is that I would like to see the system go in a way
that we streamline dramatically the amount of inspection and audit
and oversight of public organisations and make it a more streamlined
inspection service, but we then also, much more than we do at
the moment, promote information to the public about what levels
of public service standard their institutions are providing. And
then, quite honestly, it would be, as far as I am concerned, a
local political debate about whether the priority that they gave
to social services was the right priority, whether now they have
got plans in place to deal with any tailback they have got on
education. But it seems to me that the whole thing has got crazy,
we think all of these decisions have to be made by somebody in
Westminster and Whitehall; we want to drive a system back so that
the choice rests with people in Milton Keynes.
481. So the Public Service Agreements that have
been signed, are they a good or a bad thing, and how do they determine
the level of public service, do you think?
(Mr Williams) I think the jury is certainly out on
the effectiveness of Public Service Agreements. What I think it
has given is the Treasury and Government at large is a greater,
a more enhanced performance management tool across Government
Departments and through local government as well. But you have
got to ask yourself the extent to which the public is involved
in the debate about local Public Service Agreements; from what
I have seen so far, the public are very rarely involved in those
conversations, what takes place is a civil servant to chief executive
conversation in local government. So they might be effective,
as a useful performance management tool, but I do not think they
generate any greater accountability or involvement of the public,
in particular, in service delivery.
482. You talked about management and about delivery
of service; is not one of the reasons that we get poor public
service management that people take the safe option, they are
scared of the Public Accounts Committee, they are scared of the
National Audit Office, and, therefore, it used to be true, when
I was working in computers, that buying IBM you did not get sacked
for it, and that people take the safe option rather than the right
option, in public services, and that is part of the problem?
(Mr Williams) I think you are absolutely right, in
that if you do not get it 100 per cent right in the public sector
you are come down on very heavily. In the private sector, in the
good elements of the private sector, people are supported when
things do not always work out well, and people are expected to
try to experiment with new things; but, at the same time as well,
there is a bit of a fallacy that the private sector goes around
taking risks all the time, willy-nilly, it does not really care
about this, and the public sector just do not take risks. I think
what the private sector does, and some of the skills that it might
be able to help bring to public service delivery is that they
are better at managing and assessing risk and they are more careful
with the management and assessment of risk than parts of the public
sector.
483. I tend to disagree with that, I spent a
very good living telling private companies where they were getting
their management wrong. Can I just take you on; we talked very
much about the individual contracts, what about the longer-term
social and political consequences of taking decisions on individual
services? I will give you an example. British Gas, when they became
privatised, stopped training gas engineers, which means that a
whole lot of gas engineers are going to retire over the next five
to ten years and we are going to have a crisis of a lack of gas
engineers in the country; because, when it was in the public service,
that training was considered part of the social contract, the
private company did not see it as part of the social contract.
So how do you actually deal with those longer-term consequences?
(Professor Stoker) The trouble is that, if we are
going to have a competition between who takes long-term interests
into account better, the public or the private sector, I think
it would be a very embarrassing competition for both of them really,
because, just as all of us are perhaps aware of your example,
we are equally aware of the example within the NHS, one of our
problems at the moment is a shortage of both trained doctors and
nurses. If you think about some of the long-term consequences
of underinvestment in infrastructure taken by public sector, indeed,
politicians, of all the parties, then you could argue that that
has had a detrimental effect. I do not think that, in that particular
measuring yardstick, anyone comes out particularly well, I think
that there is an enormous pressure on almost everyone to think
short term rather than long term.
484. But the point I was trying to get at is
that the current models, including the ones that you are suggesting,
still only look at individual contracts, they do not take the
wider consequences into account; now how do you do that in the
new models that you are putting forward?
(Professor Stoker) I think that, in a way, you are
partly right but you are partly wrong, because I think the current
model within local government, which is the Best Value regime,
means that you can take into account, I think, much broader issues
than simple establishment of one contract, and, indeed, can develop
both a long-term strategic partnership with elements of the private
sector and, at the same time, develop a long-term set of aspirations
and commitments, in terms of what you are trying to achieve overall
within your community. So I think that the constraints that you
are talking about were constraints under the previous compulsory
competitive tendering legislation, which, to a large extent, in
the local government world, have been overcome by the introduction
of a much more flexible, and I think much more worthwhile, Best
Value regime.
(Mr Williams) Could I just provide one specific example.
I do not know whether you are aware of the partnership that has
been formed between Middlesbrough Borough Council and Hyder Business
Services; what is interesting about that partnership is that there
is a mixture of objectives that the Council had, but all underpinned,
interestingly, by its attempt to fit into the regeneration strategy
of Middlesbrough, as a town. That, actually, when you talk to
the politicians and you talk to the senior managers there, is
the overarching objective of that partnership for the generation
of 1,000 new jobs in Middlesbrough, the investment of £20
million in a derelict council building; those other objectives
are being met within the terms of that agreement with the private
sector. I think that is one practical example where the two things
can come together.
Mr Wright
485. Just really on the public sector ethos.
What motivates somebody to work in the public sector is something
different from what motivates a private company to want to bid
for a public sector contract, for instance; would you not agree
with that?
(Mr Williams) The example that we gave in our evidence
was, look at the market that has developed in education, education
support services, LEAs, in the last couple of years. Recently,
there has been a large number of senior managers from the public
sector who have moved across to the private sector. I do not believe
that they are motivated with a certain set of goals and aspirations
on day one, and lose all of those motivations, those goals and
aspirations, and are motivated by something completely different
when they join the private sector organisation. That just does
not stand up to any scrutiny when you actually talk to these people.
Why have they decided to join the private sector organisation?
Well, I think, as we said in the evidence, perhaps what they do
have is a real vision of how educational attainment should be
pursued, and they use the leverage of that organisation to be
able to project and deliver their vision across a wider platform.
But I do not think they are motivated on day one by something,
and then day two by something completely different.
486. That is an example of somebody that works
in the public sector moving across to the private sector, doing
a similar job. I am talking about a private sector company that
comes in and takes over a contract, with private sector employees,
on the basis of the public service ethos?
(Professor Stoker) First of all, how they are motivated,
to some extent, depends on how the contract is set up. So if the
contract is aimed at trying to save the most amount of money then,
oddly, they are going to be motivated by the commitment to saving
money. But this is the great virtue of the Best Value regime,
it has got us out of that impasse, where the only way we could
bring the private sector in is by telling them to do it cheap;
we now can have a real conversation with the private sector, or
any other sector, for that matter, and say, "this is what
we want in terms of outcomes, this is what we want in terms of
performance, and this is what we are going to hold you to account
for, in terms of our management systems." Their motivation
then is achieving those outcomes and performances, because unless
they do that they are not going to get paid and they are not going
to stand any chance of having their contract renewed in the future.
So the motivation is driven by what we, sorry, you, as politicians,
tell them you want out of publicly-funded services.
487. This is where the difference lies, because,
just to quote a very quick example, okay, it is going back to
compulsory competitive tendering, which is completely different
from the Best Value, and I accept that, but it is the gardening
service goes out from the local authority's control into a private
company, the day that it was in the public service's control the
gardener may well do extra service, he might cut the elderly person's
branch that is tapping against the window; the following day,
in the private sector, the employee says, "sorry, I can't
do that because it's not in the detail." Now you would not
expect the people who procure that particular contract to put
all of those details in. What I am talking about, the public service
ethos, is that that employee, under the public service, would
say, "yes, I will do those little jobs, those little bits
and pieces," which you can put in there; and this is all
about the public's perception of where the public sector comes
in?
(Professor Stoker) Can I just counter with an anecdote
of my own, provided to me by somebody who shared a platform with
me, from the Transport & General Workers' Union, from Liverpool,
and he was saying that one of the things that finally made him
think that perhaps public sector provision was not always entirely
what it was cracked up to be was when he watched a documentary
done on the way in which municipal workers operated in Liverpool,
this was about 20 years ago, and there was a particular picture
of somebody clearing up litter, and their job was to clear up
litter on the street, and the commentator came up and pointed
out an amount of litter on the grass over there, and they said,
"no, that's not my litter, that's somebody else's litter,
that they've got to clear up." So I am afraid that if you
have poor management and you set contracts which are inappropriate
you will get that sort of daft, inappropriate behaviour, whether
somebody is working in the public sector or working in the private
sector. The reality is that it is a question of political and
managerial leadership. Politicians have got to be clear what it
is that they want in terms of outcomes and they have got to make
it clear that if they said "do it cheaply" people will
do it cheaply, but if they are prepared to bite the bullet and
point out to the public that if they want a quality service they
have got to pay for it, then I think you can then get the managerial
leadership, whether it is in the public or the private sector,
to actually deliver that.
488. So do you think Best Value is the way forward
then?
(Professor Stoker) I think that Best Value, in practice,
needs some tweaking, that is, I think it is subject to a too intense
oversight and inspection, but, I think, as a fundamental rationale
for procuring services, yes, I think it captures, for me, the
essence of the way in which I would like the procurers of services
to make decisions, which would ask them to reflect on (a) whether
the service was needed, and (b), if it is needed, who out there
can provide that service best, is it the in-house staff, or is
it others. That, for me, captures the essence of the argument.
Chairman
489. Just on Tony's previous question there,
Jack Dromey told us about, I think he said, going the extra mile
was something that distinguished public service, and we discussed
whether that was, in fact, true; but, assuming that it is a constituent,
and it is Tony's question about doing more than you have to, surely,
there is a conflict there between that and a contractual service,
because contracts do not say, as the final clause, "and go
the extra mile"? Although you can point to examples in both
the public and the private sector where people do not do what
they should, is there not still a difficulty here though, because
you are saying to public servants, who are infused with these
values, "you should go the extra mile," but a private
contractor will not have "go the extra mile" in their
contract, and nor would you, if you were a contracted provider?
(Mr Williams) Can I give you a specific example, to
challenge that. If you look at, again, the partnership between
Islington and CEA, there was a real commitment from both the Council
and the private sector contractor to make that partnership work,
and one of the things that happened a few weeks back was that
the private sector contractor decided to set up an afternoon music
club on a Saturday. It had not been asked to do it, it was not
in the contract, it was not specified, it might be your definition
of going the extra mile, they had done that voluntarily. I think
the main reason why they have done it is because they wanted to
do whatever it took to deliver children with well-rounded education,
because those were the outcomes that they were going to be judged
by at the end of the contract life. And it was not about specifying
that they had to go and set up this music club, they decided to
do it. But I think it came out of a very different type of relationship
between the public and the private sector that existed in that
specific contract and a real maturity of the relationship, compared
with CCT days and a very adversarial bottom line, "we'll
come and monitor what you're doing, we're ticking these boxes,
if you don't do it we're going to penalise you." I just think
there has been a real sophistication in local government of the
relationship between the public and the private sector, and that
is just one tiny example of where a contractor will go the extra
mile.
Annette Brooke
490. I have to declare that I am a councillor
of a unitary authority. I wanted to pick up on something which
has rather run through this morning, and that is this element
of choice. Up to this point, we have been led to believe, by rather
a lot of the people who have come to speak to us, that it is really
all about providing more choice, but, picking up on my colleague's,
over there, point about market failure, this morning I have really
been feeling very unsettled about equity and how we actually reconcile
fairness and equality of receiving the services, if you are actually
providing choice. Because the bottom line is that people's incomes
are different, their ability to travel is different; how can we
have choice in the National Health Service and have equity? It
is not like the supermarket, it just is not. And, equally, with
your school choice; some people have got a choice of school, but
there are perhaps 30 per cent of parents who have not got a choice,
in reality. How do you square this circle and put equity in it
as well?
(Professor Stoker) I think it is very difficult. I
think that, if we accept the distinction that the Chairman made
before about choice, in relation to who produces the service,
but you are talking about choice in relation to the consumption
of the service.
491. I am.
(Professor Stoker) I think that there are issues of
balance there. But I think that we can go further than we have
gone, in terms of operating greater choice at the point of consumption
than we have, and still maintain a broad commitment to publicly-funded
services available to all on the basis of need, I think we can
do that. I think the fact we do not always do it perfectly is
not an argument against it. I think that most of us would value
that commitment to fairness and equity but we would also value
a commitment to individual choice and personalisation of services
as well. So if you are dealing with an elderly person, you do
not necessarily want that elderly person just to receive a set
range of services, you want them to receive services that are
tailored and packaged to their particular needs. So it seems to
me that, in achieving the aspirations that we have for public
services, we have to find a way of balancing out that, I think,
very reasonable commitment to equity and fairness with a commitment
to allowing some options for choice and the tailoring of services
to meet the needs of individuals.
492. Would you accept that there is a real danger
that we could lose sight of equity in this whole debate?
(Professor Stoker) I think there would be, if we were
not very, very strongly committed to providing taxpayers' funding
and money to those services.
Chairman
493. As we end, let me just ask you one absurdly
big question and ask for an absurdly short answer, and this goes
to the heart of what you are, as an organisation and also what
you said a little while ago about the core problems of local government.
In a nutshell, the question is that, is not the game up for local
government? People are walking away from it in droves, 29 per
cent turnout, people just disengage from local government on a
massive scale, all your kind of ruses to get them engaged again
are not working, the whole thing is falling apart, why not just
admit that the game is up; people do not know where services come
from any more, they do not care where services come from any more;
why not wrap the whole show up, have a local prefect system and
just get on with it?
(Mr Williams) If we believed that the authorities'
core function was the delivery of services, then I will probably
agree with you, but we have been arguing very strongly, over the
last two or three years, that an authority has to think about
many more things than just being a deliverer of a service. It
is about, particularly in a global world, providing a sense of
identity, security, space for people. In a global world, locality
is actually even more important than it has ever been, and I think
we have got to work incredibly hard to reconnect people with the
political institutions if we still believe that politics at the
local level and at the national level is really important for
making choices, for rationing resources, and I still believe that
it is. The ruses that we have tried, some of them are only just
about to come into effect, so, for example, we have been really
strong advocates of the proposal to introduce directly-elected
mayors in local government, and I think they will have a significant
impact in not just reconnecting people with local government but
also rebalancing where power lies in England, in particular, a
recasting of the balance between Whitehall and local communities.
(Professor Stoker) Can I just quickly add, Tony, I
admit, freely, that, occasionally, in my darkest moments, I go
along with your scenario. Two things stop me doing it; thinking
of a world run entirely by Westminster and Whitehall, so that
is even more of a nightmare than the current system as operating,
and the second is that it simply cannot be that it is unachievable.
Because, if you look around huge parts of other western democracies
in Europe and in North America and Australia, it seems that they
find perfect space within an overall multi-level system of governance,
real opportunities for local councils to make decisions, and indeed
reflect real local choices and be connected to their local communities.
So I think what keeps me going is a feeling that if others can
do it then, ultimately, we can persuade people in Britain to do
it as well.
Chairman: It would be lovely to have you back
and talk more about all that, I think that goes to the heart of
it; probably we shall do that. But, for the moment, thank you
very much indeed for this morning and what you have said to us.
Thank you very much.
|
