Former prime minister Tony Blair claims that New Labour's approach to reforming Britain's public services was "bunkum" in its early days of government.
In his much anticipated memoir, A Journey, which is published today, the former prime minister says that his government fell behind in the early stages of leadership because they focused on "standards not structures".
One of the areas where the fledgling government applied this approach was on NHS reform, Blair writes.
"We talked about it and agreed that we would work over the coming months to produce a proper, fully-fledged plan of transformation for the NHS. The aim should be to change fundamentally the way the NHS was run: to break up the monolith; to introduce a new relationship with the private sector; to import concepts of choice and competition; and to renegotiate the basic contracts of the professionals."
But he adds: "We were saying, forget about complex, institutional structural reforms; what counts is what works, and by that we meant outputs. This was fine as a piece of rhetoric; and positively beneficial as a piece of politics. Unfortunately, as I began to realise when experience started to shape our thinking, it was a bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How service is configured affects outcomes."
While the ConservativeHome website says Blair's view on handling the deficit, spending and public service reform shows a backing for prime minister David Cameron's polices (and poses huge problems for the next Labour leadership), Guy Aitchison, co-editor of openDemocracy's UK blog, OurKingdom, calls Blair's claims that Gordon Brown failed to continue the market reforms of public services and stopped being New Labour as "nonsense."
"Although voters may think public services could do with "reform", they largely do not want private companies taking over provision," Aitchison says. "As has been noted in the leadership contest, between 1997 and 2010 Labour lost 5m votes, with only 1m going to the Tories. So the idea that not carrying out enough privatisation is what did it for Brown just doesn't add up."
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
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