Dale Bassett: The Government must keep reforming public services - or risk wasting its time in office

Dale Bassett is the Research Director of Reform.

Given Andrew Lansley’s difficulties over the health reform Bill, it is unsurprising that ConservativeHome readers are taking comfort from the rest of the Government’s public service reform agenda. From welfare to education via local government, reforms are proceeding apace. Iain Duncan Smith is reforming benefits. Michael Gove is freeing schools. Eric Pickles is devolving power to councils.

But according to a new Reform report (pdf), even these Ministers may need greater support from their departments. The Department for Work and Pensions is capping benefits and getting more people into work, but the decision to link pensions to earnings rather than prices will wipe out the savings of the other reforms. The Department for Education has freed 1,500 academies from central control, but is maintaining as tight a grip as ever on the other 21,000 schools in England. The Department for Communities and Local Government is giving councils new powers while freezing their ability to vary taxes.

In a few areas, real, deep reform is happening that is revolutionising the way services are delivered. And what’s really striking is that it’s the departments that are facing significant budget reductions that are leading the change. The cuts are working.

Theresa May has implemented a consistent package of reforms which are driving better performance within tighter budgets. Police forces are saving money and improving public satisfaction at the same time; at a Reform event in 2011, the Deputy Chief Constable of West Midlands Police described his force’s financial pressure as a “burning platform” that required it to change for the better. Kenneth Clarke has made the best arguments for competition of any Minister, and has put many prisons and other justice services out to tender. The Ministry of Defence is undertaking radical civil service reform and using the private sector to jointly manage the entire defence estate (amounting to 1 per cent of the UK land mass).

Dale Bassett: OECD supports cuts and calls for more education reform

By Dale Bassett, Research Director, Reform

The OECD has just published its annual economic survey of the UK.  The top lines are its support for lower public spending and its call for education reform to go much further.

• The OECD supports the cuts, and says that fiscal consolidation should be offset by keeping interest rates low, despite inflationary pressures. “The government has embarked on an ambitious and necessary fiscal adjustment ... The planned fiscal consolidation is needed to ensure that the fiscal position will be sustainable over time ... Monetary policy should hence remain expansionary, even if headline inflation is significantly above target, to support the recovery.”
• The OECD calls for reform of VAT, along the lines that Reform proposed last year. “The United Kingdom has one of the least efficient VAT systems in the OECD, reflecting widespread application of reduced and zero rates. The VAT system became even more unbalanced when the standard rate was increased from 17.5% to 20% in January 2011 while low rates and exemptions remained unchanged. Ending exemptions and increasing lower rates would provide a more efficient system and raise more revenues, while targeted measures should be directed at compensating poorer households.”
• The OECD echoes Reform’s call for all schools to have freedom over pay and conditions. “Locally maintained schools should have the same opportunities for hiring staff and negotiating wages as academies and Free Schools.”
• The OECD calls for greater school choice to improve standards and reduce disadvantage. “User choice is also limited by low supply flexibility through entry and exit and high capacity utilisation, leaving locally maintained schools with a captive market. Entry of new schools should be encouraged even if it temporarily creates some excess capacity.”
• The OECD endorses the rise in tuition fees and calls for further reform of university funding. “In view of the high levels of public subsidies students should pay a larger share of the costs. The government’s proposal to allow universities to increase tuition fees significantly switches some of the costs of funding higher education from taxpayers to graduates. The government could pursue reforms to further lower the public share of funding, e.g. through lower grants to universities.”

Dale Bassett and Luke Tryl: A rigorous academic education must be a right, not a privilege

Dale Bassett and Luke Tryl are the senior researcher and researcher at Reform, specialising in education. They are co-authors, along with Andrew Haldenby, of Core Business, which is published today.

"The very best means of helping all realise their potential – of making opportunity more equal – is guaranteeing the best possible education for as many as possible.”

So said Michael Gove to the RSA in June, and few would argue with him. But what is the best possible education?

The last 25 years have witnessed successive governments give the same answer: taking a growing number of children out of academic study altogether. Since the introduction of the GCSE and NVQ (by a Conservative Government), the development of the British education system has been based on the assumption that an academic education should be the preserve of the few. Policymakers have determined that from the age of 14 students should be separated into those who can and those who can’t.

This “capability myth” has seeped into every aspect of education policy. Successive governments have introduced vocational qualifications for 14-16 year olds which are both “equivalent” and share a “parity of esteem” with academic qualifications. The result has been a resounding failure, with qualification after qualification being introduced only to be withdrawn after employers and students realise that they are in no way a substitute for academic study. This inconvenient truth has not prevented Ministers from weighting the system in favour of vocational qualifications, quantifying their value above that of GCSEs in school league tables.

This Government has continued the con trick played on generations of students pushed into vocational routes. The Diploma, which conflates academic and vocational learning, has further exacerbated the problem by delivering neither effectively and undermining rigorous academic study.

Dale Bassett: Robocop justice

Dale Bassett is New Media Politics Executive for Reform.

Centralised and technocratic – the shift to “Robocop justice” occurring in Britain today is the consequence of a substantial change in people’s response to crime. Citizens have become “passive bystanders”, happy to abdicate personal responsibility for criminal justice in favour of an ever-increasing role for monolithic institutions, ill-equipped to deal efficiently with crime.

Reform’s new report, published today, finds that the public who demand that “something must be done” about growing violent crime and anti-social behaviour are uninformed about crime and unlikely to participate in maintaining justice. People want to be able to blame the system, and in an attempt to retain control and appear to be tackling the problem, politicians are only too happy to help – we’ve reached the ridiculous situation where the Home Secretary seems to take personal responsibility for every assault that happens on our streets. The resulting centralisation and politicisation of the criminal justice system has made Britain the most expensive country to police in the world, with spending on law and order increasing by nearly 40% in real terms from 1997/8 to 2006/7.

Our report suggests two keys to rectifying this and improving the efficiency of our criminal justice system: decentralisation and information.

With mishaps such as the ongoing lost data scandals demonstrating the failure of the creaking centralised state, politicians from all parties are beginning to realise that a local, decentralised agenda is often the best approach in many areas of public policy. But as ever, there seems to be more lip-service than action. The so-called “colouring book” approach – with detailed targets and parameters dictated from the centre and only minimal local autonomy allowed – will mitigate the impact of decentralisation in the criminal justice system. Effective policing needs different approaches in different local areas – and local commanders know what works. Giving local police forces the freedom to focus on low-level crime and anti-social behaviour is the way to make a real difference to crime on our streets.