Five big ideas to achieve the Big Society

Cameron is aiming in the right place with the big society.  Jonty Olliff-Cooper of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos highlights some of the exciting new thinking which could help him achieve it.

I just can not understand the criticism of David Cameron sometimes.  So often he is portrayed as a vacuous, empty vessel spouting sophistry without substance. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Tories closest to Cameron are deadly serious about effecting a massive cultural change in Britain – recession or no recession -  and it is far more radical and all consuming than The Guardian, the Labour party or the public yet realise.

To be fair to the Tory leader, this is not for lack of trying.  Cameron has been quite open about his ambition for a different culture.  His magnum opus, a collection of his ‘huskie era’ speeches, makes it clear where he stands in the title: “Social Responsibility: the Big Idea”.  So progressive conservatives should be delighted that he went out of a limb to state his vision even more clearly, playing a blinder in his Big Society speech on Monday.

Predictably commentators snootily dismissed the speech as another example of fine rhetoric without any policy.  Certainly I stifled a yawn when he started relying on Gove’s rather over-mentioned Tory Swedish schools policy.  [It is a good policy, but he quotes it in every speech, whatever the context]. 

However, the critics missed the point.  They attacked the speech for the wrong reasons.  The Conservative position has real weaknesses.  The public sense of an erosion of values, traditions and trust that the Conservatives have so astutely picked up on is as much the fault of corporations and mass-marketed popular culture as it is of a Fabian state.  Cameron should be quoting Naomi Klein as often as Ronald Reagan.

Further there are plenty of other cases for big government action – finding a replacement for Kyoto for instance.  It is a stunning sleight of hand that Cameron is able to convincingly attack big government at the very moment when big government that is keeping the economy alive.  In the words of civic republican Dan Leighton “what about the economy, stupid?”

Moreover, by anthropomorphising ‘Big Government’ as some sort of autonomous force contending with business and the individual, Cameron cedes an important conservative argument: that government should be something we own.  Conservatives should not reject the idea of a state, but rather work to create government people feel that they control, have on their side and at their finger tips to help achieve what they want to achieve.  That is a strong aspiration.  Progressive conservatives should not be pushed off this ground so easily just because government is not like that at present.

However, overall, progressive conservatives should be delighted with the speech.  David Cameron is making a genuine attempt to move on from stale binary debates between the state or the individual. 

Yes, arguments about taxation, privatisation and the unions were very important in the Seventies, but for many voters, they were the concerns of their parents’ generation.  They are not the most important issues today.

For instance, climate change is well publicised, but its scale is little understood.  In 2006 The Stern Review outlined the economic necessity of tackling carbon emissions now, not later.  However, the fears of 2006 are now out of date.  The risk has been underestimated.  In February the author of the latest report by the global expert body, the UN IPCC warned that future temperatures “will be beyond anything” predicted.  At home, demographic and behavioural changes are creating tremendous new demand for more government.  Obesity alone could cost half of the current NHS budget by 2050 on present trends, some £49.9 billion.  One in four babies born today will live to 100.  The combined costs of an ageing society – assuming no significant reform or innovation – can be estimated at more than £300 billion in fifteen years time.  To put this in context, this is around three times what we currently spend on the NHS. On top of this, we are now in so much debt that you could win the lottery every week from now to the days of Caesar and still not pay off the national debt.

So the next stage for the Conservatives is to admit that faced with these challenges for now, the size of the state is a red herring.  It is the shape of the state that counts now.

For instance, recent research demonstrated that only 11% of staff in the Department of Health feel that change is well managed in their department.  So we could make the DH smaller.  Would that solve the problem?  Or we could get a grip on the problem of why changes are being mishandled in the first place.

There is no point in taking a bad system and making it smaller.  What conservatives need to offer is a better system which can tackle problems at their root.  For progressive conservatives, the only path to lasting smaller government is to reduce the need for the state, not the state itself – the demand not the supply. It is great to see a party that understands this on its way to power.

So where next?  If David Cameron wants to prove he is serious the creating a big society does not mean no government, here are five flagship policies he could announce to enable a bigger society.

1. Create personal, local services to galvanise civil society.  Progressive conservatism is all about finding the 5% that the state can do that unlocks a further 95% more in time, energy and enthusiasm from others.  A prime example is the Cotswold Village Agent scheme.  Village agents are local part-time community workers who help older people to set up new clubs and support groups.  That can be as simple as distributing a call sheet of people who are housebound and would like to make new friends.  When you receive a call, you agree to make another.  This could not happen without the Village Agents’ initial involvement, but from then on it is something which runs itself without continuing state involvement.

2. Reward neighbourhoods that take action to improve.  A Tory government should support neighbourhood organisations tackling poverty and crime (saving the Exchequer billions in the process) by allowing them to retain a fraction of the fiscal savings their work engenders.  At present groups like the Balhall Heath Forum which have transformed their areas struggle to stay afloat for want of a few thousand pounds a year.  We are arguing that new budget mechanisms should be introduced allow these communities to get back some of what they are saving the rest of us.

 

3. Find new ways to simplify the state.  The state is now so complex, it is actually regressive. just look at the mess of clawing back overpaid tax credits, a major cause of loan shark debt.  This must be addressed.  But in a Tory utopia of decentralisation, local innovation and third sector provision there is one problem: it is jolly complicated.  Os there is a pressing need for new services like a UK 311 that can unscramble the state.  

For example in the UK, if you see a burst water pipe flooding the street, you know you ought to let someone know, but it is hard to think who.  Is it the water company?  Is there a government phone line for this sort of thing?  Offwat?  Or the council?  Which borough are you in anyway?  And which department would they class this as?  In the end, you probably would not bother.  

 

In New York, you would know exactly what to do.  41,000 New Yorkers call 311 a day.  311 started out as a simple directory enquiries number – a sort of 118 for government.  However, since its inception in 2002, 311 has rapidly evolved to become much more sophisticated and helpful.  311 covers everything from debt to dentistry, via video, audio, online and text channels, in over 170 languages twenty four hours a day.  311 does not just handle specific enquiries like the number for the dog catcher, or the deadline for tax returns.  They can answer open-ended questions too, like “I want to lose weight – what should I do?”  311 operators will tie together all the relevant services for you.  311 now includes charities and private sector provision too.  For instance if you want to know about childcare in your area, they can tell you about private and voluntary nurseries, and grants to help pay for them, as well as state provision.  If you have an idea or a complaint, you can report it to the authorities via 311, who will see that your idea gets through to the right person.  311 is so ubiquitous that New Yorkers now use it as a verb – “just 311 that”.  311 might sound like the state nannying individuals.  It is not.  Because it is so easy to report problems or suggest solutions to the City, 311 is incredibly empowering.  It puts people in control of what they pay for as surely as any senator does.  311 gives people the power they need to address problems when they see them, not walk on by. It is not a switchboard.  It is a power grab by the ordinary man in the street that helps people exercise ownership over what they pay for, and could provide a vital adjunct to allow mass participation in The Big Society. 

4. Free data and Launch a ‘crowd sourcing’ prize.  Cameron does not realise how right he is when he talks about this being the age of civil society.  Thanks to the internet, civil society is now a million times bigger and more influential that it was ten years ago.  In John Major’s day we had the Mothers’ Union.  Now we have mumsnet, with hundreds of thousands of users a day.  Government should draw on this new world – or rather put its resources at online society’s disposal.  If the Conservatives are serious about developing power and transparency, Francis Maude should enact a Swedish-style Open Data Act, which would free all public sector data by default, unless specifically censored. 

This data can then be combined with prizes to produce powerful results for tiny cost.  Hundrs of cutting edge businesses (and some governments) are saving billions by tapping into the ingenuity of frontline staff and the public.  Examples include Dell, the CIA, the Mayor of Seoul and miners.  A US data prize costing $50,000 found $2 million in efficiencies, and groups like the Social Innovation Camp show what can be done here.  On a smaller scale, the new discipline of ‘social co-design’ is having stunning results integrating real people’s views into policy making in Kent and elsewhere.

 

5. End the closed-shop Civil Service.  These reforms require a much more skilled, specialist, innovative Civil Service.  Open recruitment – where staff can move freely between departments and from the private sector – is an essential prerequisite to achieve the Big Society revolution. An incoming Conservative government should sweep away the sclerotic restrictions that prevent staff from moving easily between departments and place all policy staff within a common non-departmental pool.  Managers would hire in staff on temporary contracts to work on specific assignments that might last weeks, months or years. 

 

Such a scheme is already being trialled in DEFRA and the West Midlands.  Defra’s Kate Hoskin describes herself as a “passionate” fan.  “It is a very quick process compared to a standard recruitment, which can take months and months,” she says.  “You can have someone in [place in] a matter of weeks.”  Defra says 70 per cent of assignments are now filled within 10 days, compared to a Civil Service average of sixteen weeks, and this means that the number of unassigned staff is never more than 10.Not only does open recruitment allow staff to shape their own career, reduce waiting times to fill posts, end the scandal of £132 million a year spent on unassigned staff and breakdown silos, it also makes it easier for staff with new skills to join the Civil Service mid-career, bringing new perspectives, new experience and reducing the reliance on consultants, potentially saving millions.

This is not a comprehensive list, but together these five directions provide a fresh, progressive, conservative road map for opening up government and enabling the Big Society.