For the Liberal Democrats, the founding principles of the public services - universal access to high quality, first class provision, regardless of wealth or where in the country you live - are as relevant today as they were 60 years ago.
It is vital that, as we politicians try to find the right mechanisms for pushing up standards, those principles are kept firmly in mind.
It was an acknowledgement of the investment made by the Government in our public services after decades of underfunding, that the argument at the General Election from all three major parties was not about vast sums of extra money was but how wisely existing money is spent.
Of course, all the new money has not been well spent. That is why the Liberal Democrat spending plans concentrated on freeing up money for investment in specific priorities -the police, early years education, pensions - by cutting low priority programmes and downsizing central Government.
It has been the micromanaging centralism of Gordon Brown's target based system that has distorted local priorities and retarded the improvements in our public services. It is no longer a question of taxing more to deliver investment, but of taxing differently and more fairly, delivering real power and accountability to local communities to address the specific problems in their area. It is this theme of community based public services that sets the Liberal Democrats apart.
This requires a twin pronged approach - first liberating public service professionals to get on with their jobs - and second to make public services responsive to the priorities of the communities they serve.
The furore about 'choice' in public services misses the most obvious point. People don't want to have to travel hundreds of miles to find a hospital that can treat them more quickly, they want quality public services on their doorstep. And without spare capacity in the system, choice becomes meaningless.
Let's not be dogmatic about this. Informed choice can be an important tool for driving up quality. But the public services are not 'ordinary markets' and they do not and cannot operate wholly at the whim of such forces.
That is also why the current debate on the level of private provision in our public services again misses the point. Again, let's get rid of the dogma. I have no ideological problem with the private sector supplying public services as long as the principles I set out at the beginning are maintained.
For instance, we support the use of the private sector to augment NHS services where extra capacity is needed, and if it provides value for money. However, we reject a Government approach which forces hospitals to use private providers when they have spare capacity within the NHS.
PFI projects can be a useful mechanism to help provide better services for the public and Liberal Democrats in powers have been responsible for commissioning PFI projects in areas as diverse as health, education and prisons. But we must recognise that such innovations are not a wonder cure for our public services. Private sector involvement by itself does not increase funding for public services - indeed the true public sector debt may well be disguised by off-balance sheet funding. Nor does the use of the private money guarantee better quality services as has been shown by the patchy performance of the city academy scheme.
I believe that quality in our public services can only be assured by wise investment, sufficient professional staff freed to concentrate on their core tasks, and services made responsive to the priorities of the communities they serve. That is the Liberal Democrat reform agenda.
Return to September Articles & Speeches.
Return to Articles & Speeches.