We’ve been here before: Local government and public sector reform

In this article, Professor James Mitchell explores the recent history of Scottish Government efforts to drive systemic change in public services. He finds that despite widespread support for reforms focusing on prevention, integration, and community involvement, tangible progress so far has been limited. 

Introduction

Scottish Government recently held a summit of local authorities, public and third sector bodies and businesses to pursue a ‘systemic change’ in public services. Ivan McKee, Minster for Public Service Reform (PSR) told BBC that Scottish Government was working to implement the recommendations of the Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services and that the summit’s purpose was to make sure everyone focused on a ‘common direction understood how we learn from each other’ and ‘being radical where we have to be, making big changes where it makes sense to do so’. Public services needed to be ‘efficient and effective’.

We have been here before.

Back in 2012, Scottish Government held what it then described as the first summit of its kind for fifteen years. That summit brought Scottish Government Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers, new Council Leaders, Chairs of Health Boards, NDPB’s and agencies to take stock, review and provide a common understanding of proposed changes in community planning and build a shared commitment to tackle problems together. The 2012 summit was a response to the report of the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services (Christie), itself a response to a recommendation in the 2010 report of the Independent Budget Review (IBR) group. The IBR issued a sobering report that had it been heeded would have led to significant changes that would have ensured that Scottish public services would be in a much healthier state than they are today. Christie set four key objectives which have since joined the IBR report in gathering dust:

Reforms must aim to empower individuals and communities receiving public services by involving them in the design and delivery of the services they use.
Public service providers must be required to work much more closely in partnership, to integrate service provision and thus improve the outcomes they achieve.
We must prioritise expenditure on public services which prevent negative outcomes from arising.
And our whole system of public services – public, third and private sectors – must become more efficient by reducing duplication and sharing services wherever possible.

John Swinney, then Cabinet Secretary responsible for public service reform, opened with a call for major reforms. In this and in many similar meetings he has referred to the need to increase the ‘scale and pace’ of change. What this meant and how it was to be achieved was never explained, just repetitively incanted. Scottish Cabinet’s Sub-Committee on Public Service Reform had met in Stranraer in August 2011, less than two months after the Christie Report’s publication setting out what it grandly referred to the ‘Stranraer principles’, broadly mirroring the Christie principles:

A decisive shift towards prevention

Greater integration of public services at local level, driven by better partnership, collaboration and effective local delivery
Greater investment in the people who deliver services through enhanced workforce development and effective leadership.
A sharp focus on improving performance, through greater transparency, innovation and use of digital technology.

In anticipation of the 2012 summit, preparations included notes from Scottish Government officials working on PSR on how the discussion might proceed. Two examples were provided. It was suggested that a homelessness target set for 2012 had helped shift the culture towards prevention but officials were concerned that it was unclear how positive impacts were enabling the release of savings for other purposes. Another theme was that the launch of a new Digital Public Services and Public Sector ICT strategy would be transformative. There were also claims that a new data hub connecting courts, prisons and the fiscal service allowed for data sharing and improving efficiency.

A session was held during the 2012 summit aimed to ‘facilitate wider discussion between audience members’.  Most present evidently welcomed Scottish Government’s commitment to reform. A number of council leaders contributed to the discussion and there were notable offers to lead on reform from individual authorities. Many of the proposed reforms focused on beefing up Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs). CPPs should, it was asserted in accompanying papers, put an emphasis on ‘place’, plan for and deliver improved outcomes.

At one point in the facilitation, the possibility of a single authority model was raised and whether any authorities might be interested. There was more than a little interest in the room. That interest has never abated though met with a full range of responses inside Scottish Government from outright opposition to foot dragging. There are, of course, a variety of Single Public Authority models and nobody was suggesting then that all functions of the NHS should come under local government but the scope for moving in this direction, and not just in public health, is vast.

If almost everyone claims to support reform, why has it not happened (at pace and speed or even at all)? There are a number of possibilities. Talk is cheap and committing to public service reform slips off the tongue with ease. Delivery is difficult. It may be that there never was an appetite for reform and there have certainly been Ministers and officials who have opposed moves towards Single Public Authorities but most show scant interest. PSR is hardly a vote winner but reforms would improve outcomes though they often take time to have effect and those pursuing reform are unlikely to be credited for success. Ministers are, in the words of Robin Day, ‘here today and gone tomorrow’. Except the Cabinet Secretary thirteen years ago is in 2025 now First Minister.

So, what has been learned and what has been achieved since that earlier summit?

The new PSR Minister has referred to ‘radical reforms’. If this is not just the latest re-launch of more of the same inaction then we need to see a process of re-empowering local government, with a broader range of properly funded responsibilities. Ivan McKee maybe more committed to reform and perhaps has a better grasp of the issues than any of predecessors with this responsibility but he is a junior Minister and time will tell.

It should be obvious to all by now that Community Planning Partnerships have failed to provide the necessary coordination and integration and the reasons are clear. CPPs are a good idea in theory but have been at best a disappointment in practice.  Responsibilities return to silos all too easily. Accountability is blurred.  They offer insufficient means of coordination, far less integration of services. From the citizen’s perspective, the current arrangements are a confusion of unaccountable blame shifting institutions. The best way to effect coordination and integration, clarify accountability, make efficiencies and have a more coherent means of public engagement – the Christie principles – is to bring more functions with necessary funding under local democratic control. But creating alternative sources of authority may not be welcomed by a centralising Scottish Government.

There is still no strategy, only more words, talk, strategy documents, speeches.  The Minister referred to the need for culture change.  But what culture should change and, crucially, how is this to happen?  When politicians reach for ‘cultural change’ it usually means they have no answer.  We have had exhortations aplenty on PSR,  John Swinney’s pace and scale or scale and pace have featured in many speeches on public service reform over many years, ending child poverty, the economy….Exhortation only leads to frustration.

A cabinet paper in June 2012 referring to the ‘Stranraer principles’ stated, ‘Successful reform will be measured by the extent to which priority outcomes are improved or maintained for people and communities, within existing and future budgets’.  The claimed successes back in 2012 referring to homelessness and justice sector improvements now look complacent.  Scotland has a housing emergency, National Care service plans have been abandoned and there is evidence that something is seriously amiss regarding courts, prisons services and NHS waiting times.  This speaks of a tick box exercise in policy making rather than recognising the essential need to treat challenges as ongoing.

The pace of reform has been slow and in some cases we have gone backwards.  Negative demand was estimated to constitute 40% of public spending by Christie – whatever it was then there can be no doubt that it has grown since.  The scale of reforms have been paltry, driven more by headline grabbing speeches than serious policy making.  Delivering speeches and publishing plans does not deliver improved outcomes as exemplified by the misnamed ‘National Care Service’.  The politics of noisy inaction has resulted in the management, if not mismanagement, of decline.  It needs to be replaced by properly funded institutional reforms.