'Improve services by going mutual'

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The government is looking to change how hospitals, schools, care providers and even leisure centres deliver services by adopting a John Lewis-style mutual partnership arrangement.

The aim is to offer various public sector bodies the chance to govern themselves, although unlike the John Lewis model, workers would not have any level of ownership.

Labour has made the announcement after the Conservatives' leader David Cameron said that public services should be devolved to local groups and charities and patient care could be improved if the NHS adopted an employee partnership approach. The government is said to be privately miffed that Cameron's comments got more publicity than their plan which was originally unveiled some time ago. However, it has been pointed out that Labour got rid of mutualism in the mid 1940s after it decided that public services should be provided by large bodies like the NHS that are controlled centrally.

A 'senior Labour source' has been quoted as saying: "We are not going to concede the territory of community action and the battle against inequality to the Tories – we are reclaiming the mutual tradition for Labour."

A Labour figure involved in drawing up the party's general election manifesto said: "We have recognised the limits of both the state and markets in the light of the lessons learned from the crisis in the financial sector. We need to explore the space around voluntary and community provision and social enterprise: more bottom-up, greater devolution of power but within a clear framework of funding and guarantees for the individual citizen."

Advisers to the government are said to have pointed out that some mutuals have seen productivity go up by up to 5 per cent.

Tessa Jowell, secretary of state for the Cabinet Office, said: "Public service reform has been on a long journey over 10 years. The next stage of reform has to capture the needs and wishes of those who use public services, for them to become more reactive, sensitive and empathetic. We think mutuals have a much broader potential across the public sector, especially now where they can become an expression of the new national soul post-credit crunch."