By Professor Nick Bosanquet, Professor of Health Policy, Imperial College, and Consultant Director, Reform
Is there any way in which the Coalition can avoid the nerve twisting rows that have already begun over school building, children’s playgrounds and free school milk?
The changes are portrayed as once for all cuts—but this is a media stereotype. Apart from the rare cases in which programmes are being eliminated entirely, what is being recommended is a change in flow of funds over time. The size of the continuing flow should be highlighted and it should be judged against the level of funding that was happening before the pre-election period. In many case the “cut” programme will be still be receiving a level of spending greater than it was three or four years ago.
The new flow of funds should set a new direction in terms of localism. The Coalition should not plan a once for all series of cuts—it should seek to bring about a radical shift in power and responsibility away from Whitehall. Local communities should be given responsibility for getting value from the new flow of funds. They have the incentive to search for innovative and lower cost ways of delivering services. Whitehall deals in spending not in value—and the challenge of reform requires a greater focus on value.
Each of the nerve twisters points to how this could be done. In the case of school buildings the Whitehall approach encouraged a fattening up of projects which were seen as a once for all chance. There was also little sense of responsibility for management of contracts, with a quango so inefficient that it did not even have an accurate list of current projects. Yet by presenting the changes in school building as ‘cuts at schools’ the Government has caused the maximum political pain.
Instead the Coalition could have allocated a reduced budget to local communities and then given them freedom to spend it. Changes need to be seen as introducing more flexibility in how funding is spent over time. Changes also need to be seen as part of a continuous process of improvement, as this would create greater incentives to get value.
In the case of playgrounds, after 13 years of inattention the previous government announced an unfunded programme for upgrading all the playgrounds in the country. Once again the Coalition’s response should have been to give a sustainable flow of funds to local communities. They may well have been able to find lower cost solutions and to organize partnership funding. The process should create hope for the future not a sense of community betrayal.
The free milk problem is at the crossroads of political symbolism and total anachronism. In 1946 the free milk programme had bi-partisan support. Indeed, in 1943 Churchill had said “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”
In 1946 providing free milk was a way of helping the increasing numbers of babies at a time of falling food availability. The diet doctrines at that time stressed the importance of fat content, particularly given the real risk of hypothermia in cold homes with coal and blankets in short supply. It was a time when the government had to decide what everybody was eating.
Now the problem facing our children is eating too much, not too little–and this problem starts young. The idea that government should decide that every child should have a carton of milk is a bizarre anachronism—especially when many children have too much fat already. An alternative approach could be to, for instance, halve the budget and give £25 million to local groups to organize refreshments for their own toddlers.
The emphasis should be on local choice. The Coalition should take the moral offensive on empowering local communities to deliver more value than Whitehall has. This would highlight that the proposed changes are a path towards a better and local future—not as a series of local dooms.
