According to the report ‘old age’ officially starts at 54 whilst ‘youth’ ends at 32. Most find it unacceptable to report to a line manager in their 20s, more still would feel uncomfortable taking direction from a 70 year old. Why? 

Steve Webb, Pensions minister, rightly says that these attitudes need to be seriously addressed: “People are living longer, working longer and contributing more later in their lives… It is important that our perceptions of age keep up with the reality of our increasing longevity.”   

Sound logic there, and a comment that hints at a subject that has been quietly generating press coverage over the last weeks: population longevity. 

One of the underlying causes of pension reform, the continued increase in the age that we pass away, can be attributed to high quality food production, rapid medical advancements and technological development. Our quality of life has rapidly improved to the extent that it is possible to have a boss in their 70s without their health being a major cause for concern. 

Richard Ottaway MP, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, produced a report just before Christmas exposing 10 myths about world population growth. A complex debate, the UN Population Division claims that in the next 90 years we can expect an additional 3 billion people on the planet. Ottaway asks the question: can we cope? “People notice food shortages, migration patterns and conflict in the news. But they do not connect this to the sheer volume of people and the impact the modern world is having on our planet.”  

With the British population advancing successfully in our instinctive need to  create ease in our environments, we are eliminating the historical stresses that traditionally influence mortality. But this has inevitably led to most people leaving tertiary education later in life, settling down later in life, having children later in life. It’s the last one that is causing concern. Mark Steyen of the National Review wrote recently about the relative reversal of birth rate trends: “The Baby Boomers did not have enough children to maintain the solvency of mid-20th-century welfare systems premised on mid-20th-century birth rates. The “Me Decade” turned into a Me Quarter-Century, and beyond. The “me”s are all getting a bit long in the tooth, but they never figured there might come a time when they’d need a few more “them”s still paying into the treasury.”

If the UN and academic data is correct then soon, whether we like it or not, we’ll have to start accepting 20 year old supervisors or octogenarian directors. Our habit of glancing superficially at the news headlines must stop. We must start to consider the deeper causes of humanitarian crises, economic downturns and other international issues. However hard the logical path may be to comprehend, we must be willing to discuss the impact of our long-term societal choices.

The debate around security for our elderly, provision for our young and sustainability for our way of life must be had publicly and without fear of offence. And it must happen soon. 

“There is of course some cultural inertia to overcome…we must be more creative and innovative in the way we solve problems without always resorting to the creation of new rules. We must also be prepared to take more risks. In a media environment where failure is punished much harder than success is celebrated.”

Sir Gus was referring to the prevailing culture within parts of central Government of not “rocking the boat” and of avoiding failure rather than pursuing success. This is not the first time this problem has been highlighted but there is still a long way before it is solved.

In Whitehall, upwardly mobile managers tend to spend very short periods in any given role (12 to 18 months is common) before moving onwards and upwards. The result is that they are rarely able to see through a full programme of work. During these stints the focus is often on not being seen to have failed rather than on having genuinely succeeded. This raises some key questions. Where is the motivation to challenge the status quo if you are not likely to be around to take credit for any new approach you put in place? Where is the motivation to take a tough decision if it seems clear that the current course is not right? -after all it will soon be someone else’s problem. There are fantastically talented people in the civil service but in this environment it is logical and more prudent to go with the flow and appear bureaucratically competent, rather than follow any entrepreneurial instinct.

The result is a Whitehall machine that is rigid and tends to endure long periods of stagnation (at the service delivery level) without sufficient adjustment in response to either public need or technological change. This builds to a breaking point where the only solution is a huge and risky change project – usually involving the introduction of a new IT system. These “big bang” programmes do not have a happy history – think of the various Child Support Agency system re-launches or the NHS patient records system.

On a positive note, inspiration can be taken from aspects of local service delivery. The majority of public services are delivered locally and a number of the best known innovative public service models, such as Foundation Trust Hospitals, Academy Schools and public service mutuals, are focused at the local level.  These benefit greatly from devolved decision-making which enables staff to be financially independent, to implement longer term financial and business strategies and to make ongoing service and systems adjustments. These adjustments are essential to both avoiding the stagnant build up that inevitably results in the need for a big change programme – but they are also necessary to keep services relevant and targeted at current need. These models foster innovation and create an incentive to manage budgets as efficiently as possible. Local public service staff also tend to be in place for long periods and have a genuine appreciation of and commitment to the service they provide.

In order to transfer some of this public service entrepreneurialism to Whitehall the right incentives need to be in place. Central Government must foster an environment where controlled experimentation is encouraged. This means rewarding success more effectively. Well-intention and carefully thought through innovative ideas which don’t work out should not be allowed to hold back creative staff. These are the staff who, more than ever, must be encouraged to experiment so public services stand a chance of weathering the perfect storm of reducing budgets and increasing public expectations.

Andrew Laird is a director of Mutual Ventures, a social enterprise which supports frontline staff to set up mutuals

News values are one reason. Innovations which don’t work out (however carefully managed) will attract media attention while those which are successful often go unnoticed. Also pivotal are the incentives and performance measurement models which apply to civil servants, as the downside risk too often far outweighs any upside reward. Francis Maude has spoken throughout the Coalition’s time in office about the need to change pay and reward mechanisms in order to free civil servants to innovate.

But one factor often ignored is the vital importance of strong political leadership. Ministers have often been too quick to criticise civil servants as stale and risk-averse, but have not led by example. Encouraging innovation from officials requires political leadership based on bold, long term vision and not political pragmatism. As Fraser Nelson observes, Michael Gove has demonstrated this, although even his reforming instincts are tempered by the political climate in which he operates – most notably the peculiar demands of Coalition politics.

Both Ministers and officials are vulnerable to longstanding cultural trends which hamper innovation and reform. Pay and promotions are ill-designed for civil servants while political expediency and media values can dampen the zeal of Ministers. But for both, the economic and fiscal imperative (along with rising expectations among service users) must remain paramount. Innovation, reform and renewal are vital across government if these are to be met. The role of Ministers must not only be to re-align civil servants formal roles and objectives, but to show the bold, unrelenting leadership that is needed to drive change from the top.

Michael Gove rightly defines Conservatives as people who believe in the positive power of relationships, human to human interaction:

“What we believe in is the primacy of relationships, the isolated individual on their own can never achieve in a political system built around the rights of the individual and nothing else, descends into selfishness, hedonism and atomisation.  A political system built around the state may appeal to our patriotism but sometimes it calcifies into authoritarianism and distance.  But a politics that is based on relationship understands that the most important and enriching things in all our lives are the intimate human relations that we have with others, with figures of authority and those whom we have authority over, with those whom we elect and those whom we serve…. 

That one of the things that’s drawn us, whatever our backgrounds, into service to others, is our belief that deepening the quality of relationships and strengthening the number of relationships that each of us has, is the way to generate a greater sense of well being, of opportunity and of fulfilment.”

Gove also called time on judging the success of the Department of Education by the yearly grade inflation. What counts is how our children are doing compared to the rest of the world.

“The children are benefiting from improved examination grades but the most critical test is not how we are doing compared to a generation ago or five years ago, the most instructive test with our education system is how are we doing relative to other nations?  Because increasingly our world is one world.  The jobs of the future are capable of being transported, exported from this country elsewhere.

 In the last ten years, the international measures of how well we are doing as a country tell a melancholy story.  We have fallen from fourth in the world for the quality of our science education to sixteenth.  We have fallen from seventh in the world for quality of our children’s literacy to twenty-fifth and from eighth in the world for the quality of mathematics to twenty eighth.”

The Autumn Statement contained an extra dose of tough medicine. On top of the £80bn already being taken out of public spending, there will be a further £15bn between 2015 and 2016-17. There is now absolutely no doubt (there was never much) that we are set for a substantial period of increasingly contracted spending on public services. Many are griping (and indeed striking) – but it won’t change the fact that this is the situation which all of us who work at delivering and supporting public services must face up to. How public sector leaders and managers react will decide whether public services continue to evolve and improve or regress back to a command and control model.

When resources are tight, the natural inclination of many managers is to grab control of delivery and to micro-manage resources. Following a traditional economies of scale model, functions such as training budgets, IT budgets and even administration resources are centralised so managers can report that savings have been achieved. This may deliver nominal savings but it creates a dangerous false economy. The knock-on effect of such centralisation on front line services can be reduced responsiveness, slower decision making and the stifling of any desire to innovate as time and effort is taken up fighting the bureaucracy in order to get anything done. A front line team that has to fill out a form to get a stamp or submit detailed reasoning to justify a request for admin support is not going to be happy and motivated! Any good children’s social worker will emphasise the importance of being able to take quick and effective resource decisions and they will lament how bureaucratic delays can have negative effects on the child, which often leads to increased public cost in the long run. The same can be said for numerous areas of public service.

I believe the only way to genuinely build in sustainable efficiency is to push resources as far towards the front line as possible to empower front line staff. Make them responsible and accountable for the effective use of their limited resources. The most effective and cleanest way to do this is to allow staff to group together and form a public service mutual. This creates an environment where it is in the staff’s interests to innovate at a micro level and find better and more efficient ways of doing things.

The Cabinet Office wants to see 1 million public service staff working in mutuals by 2015. However, as public sector funds continue to be squeezed many public sector managers are reverting to the old fashioned centralising model – and many consultants are advising it! This is not only a leap in exactly the wrong direction but makes it harder for teams to gain their freedom through mutualisation in the future as they are inextricably caught up in the central bureaucracy.

It is critical that public sector managers resist the urge to play it safe and grip the reigns of delivery. If they don’t, the 1m mutualisation target will seem even further away than it looks today.

Andrew Laird is a director of Mutual Ventures, a social enterprise which supports frontline staff to set up mutuals

The argument is quite simple and is summed up by the first line. “There is nothing right wing about fiscal conservatism”.

It makes the sensible (and I believe correct) argument that the only way to ensure that we poverty and ensure social justice is if the public books are balanced and that any funding isn’t just here today, gone tomorrow. It needs a sustainable and targeted investment over the long term, not just a few years of boom followed by a ten-year fiscal headache.

The paper highlights that Labour could produce concrete plans for the lifetime of a single Parliament, and potentially set firms goals on levels of tax, spending and borrowing over these cycles – this would be bold and brave and would certainly give an air of economic credibility that Labour presently lacks.

However this is paper also highlights the danger for the Conservative Party and the “conservative” (that is to say, cautious) caucus within the top levels of the leadership. Many of them think that providing we get through the present economic situation and that there are jobs and growth in 2015, we will get re-elected either with a Tory majority or a new five year Con-Lib Dem Coalition. Focus on the bread and butter, drop the Big Society and all that time consuming reform and we’ll win. It’s the economy, stupid.

It all very much smacks of that tried and tested (and failed) tactic of 1997 which is “ok, you might not trust us on public services, welfare reform, education or much else, but do you trust Labour with the economy?”

They expect the answer to be “No”, particularly given the way that the two Eds have participated in the economic debate so far. But Labour has another tactic which it can pull from 1997 – when they countered the Tory “economic competency” card.

All it would take for Labour to do, in the run up to the General Election 2015, is to promise to follow the Coalition’s spending plans till 2016-17 when they plan to eliminate the structural deficit and balance the books. Just like when in 1997, when Gordon Brown and Ed Balls promised to follow the Conservative’s spending plans up to 1999 to take away the idea that Labour was going to trash the public finances on taking office. Remember good old prudence?

At a stroke, Ed Balls can claim economic competency (after all, the Government’s attacks would be hollow if Labour merely promised to do the same thing) and move the debate to public services, welfare, education etc. where they are on much stronger ground and where the Government is presently incredibly weak.

Of course there are risks for Labour – will people believe them given their record over the past thirteen years? However it would certainly be music to the ears of many voters who don’t trust Labour on the economy, but would prefer the rest of their package to what the Conservatives are offering and might give them the chance to make a credible case for Government – something which they have not yet been able to do.

The only way for the Coalition and particularly the Conservative Party to prevent this is not to slow down on public service reform but to speed it up. Only successful reform of our public services with better schools and hospitals, less welfare dependency and more engaged communities will provide the ammunition to defeat Labour in 2015.

Moreover what if the economy goes wrong? The Government will need to have something else to defend itself with.

And time is running out; any changes that are not enacted in the next 12 to 18 months will probably not take effect by 2015 and leave the Government doing all the hard work with none of the credit for the results.

Worryingly, a usually reliable source, has posted that we are effectively back to square one.

This isn’t a terribly bad thing, if it means that we end up with more radical and transformative proposals but it does mean that the Government will need to seriously ramp up the timescales if they are to be electorally significant.

This isn’t a very popular message with a Government still smarting from the scars of trying to reform the NHS, but the truth hurts.

Francis Maude was very clear that reform of the Civil Service needed to happen, and indeed was happening. For Maude the Civil Service is an “unnecessarily unique” entity. When people are recruited in from outside they often feel that they have landed on another planet. His time in office will have been a success if the Civil Service become paceier, less process driven, and ultimately focussed on outcomes.

Experience tells us that many Governments aspire to reforming the Civil Service but few are successful. Jonathan Powell stated, in a very Civil servicey way, that Britain has one of the best government administrations in the world, but because it is good – and thinks that it is so good – the Civil Service is often against reform. Lord Patrick Hennessey added that Whitehall has a history smothering reforms through the power of paper and politeness.

The biggest problem is that lack of people turn-over, not just in the Civil Service as a whole, but even between departments. Maude felt that this stagnation encouraged Civil Servants to be loyal to ‘their’ department, rather than Government. Terms and Conditions were described as being “eccentric”. Jonathan Powell told a story about trying to performance manage a Civil Servant only to be told that the best way to solve the problem would be to promote them out of their role! The Civil Service has created a structure that encourages loyalty to the Civil Service, and protects senior Civil Servants from the whims of political masters. The pensions act as golden-hand cuffs, the rules make it almost prohibitive to fire someone, Patrick Hennessy pointed out that intelligent young people become institutionalised, and Jonathan Powel describe the whole system as being monastical. 

Francis Maude made the interesting observation that there is a clear class divide in the Civil Service between white-collar (policy) and blue-collar (operational) staff. There needs to be parity of esteem. Maude was very proud that the new Head of the Civil Service was an outsider to Whitehall (though a veteran of town halls) and that the successful candidates background was in operational delivery rather than “pointy headed policy”.

Powell highlighted that a problem for the Civil Service is that they are offered a “one-way bet”. You do not get praise when things go well, but are open to criticism when something goes wrong. This makes the whole institution risk adverse. Maude agreed with this. The best organisations know that they learn more from trying things that don’t work, but this mentality does not exist in politics as a whole.

A really interesting event. What was telling though was that while the panel of politicians all agreed the Civil Service voice was silent during the debate.

Before I go on it’s important to clear up one thing first. There are those who believe that the private sector only get involved in public services when they can cream skim and take on the easy jobs in order to achieve a decent margin. In this case, the Hichingbrooke hospital is running a £5m annual deficit and has debts of £40m – so this will be a massive challenge for Circle and they will be providing a tremendous public service if they can succeed.

I’m not applauding this development because I think private is better than public. Both public and private sector providers can do well and can also get into trouble. Too often the debate around public service reform and delivery is approached from the ideological extremes – either the state is best placed to deliver and safeguard services or they should be outsourced wholesale to the independent sector.

It is a mistake to argue that there is a single model of service delivery that is better by default.  Only through a mixed market of different models of provision will balanced service improvement be achieved. By mixed market I don’t just mean some services delivered by the state and others privatised, I mean a genuine mix which also includes substantial numbers of mutuals and social enterprises. Each model has its particular strengths:

• State delivery tends to be free from external financial motives and as such is generally protected from unplanned financial failure (although the hospital in question here proves that this is not always the case!).
• Private provision can create scale, efficiency and system level innovation and can attract much needed external investment.
• Mutuals and social enterprises are usually smaller scale and focused on social value and innovation at a local level.

It shouldn’t be the Government’s job to pick a winning model but it should strive to create a level playing field where a balanced mix of provision can exist and influence each other through their relative strengths. E.g. the existence of state provision in a balanced market place should force the others to have financial safeguards in place, the existence of privately outsourced provision should ensure the others keep improving their efficiency, and the existence of mutuals should put social value (and its measurement) at the top of the others’ agendas.

There was much disappointment recently, which I shared, when the trailblazing public service mutual Central Surrey Health was unsuccessful in bidding for a large contract, which would have enabled them to expand their excellent service. However, Central Surrey Health’s presence in the market as a socially focused competitor would have undoubtedly influenced the proposition put forward by Assure Medical, the private group backed by Virgin Healthcare who ultimately won the contract. This is how a mixed market can work.

When in power Labour saw the benefit of such a mixed market so it’s a shame that they now choose to play politics with this. Although it’s a bit incredible when the person leading the attack on what is essentially the rescue of a hospital is Andy Burnham, the Labour Minister who initiated the process! Our memories aren’t that short Andy!

Andrew Laird is a Director of Mutual Ventures, a social enterprise which supports front -line staff to set up mutuals

Yet while Conservatives have been willing (although progress has been slow in Government) to support employee-ownership models in the public sector, there is less talk about it in the private sector. This is disappointing.

Not only is there a clear economic case as employee-owned businesses (EOBs), according to research by the Cass Business School, given that they survived the recession pretty well (eager job creating commentators should note that EOBs have increased employment numbers by more than 12.9% compared with 2.7% for non-EOBs after the recession) – but there is also a clear political case, which I hope to detail here.

Firstly, EOBs breed greater levels of responsibility in their staff – they have to. If employees are to own their businesses they have to understand how they work, the essential structures that make them successful and the painful decisions that need to be made to keep them going (whether that be pay freezes or job cuts). This greater understanding of the challenges of business would be useful as it would help people to understand the similar challenges of government.

At present, many people do not understand the difficult decisions that are being made by the Government such as on deficit reduction, because usually they are not given the authority to do so in their own lives such as through their work. Giving people more responsibility in one sphere will spill over into others, making them vote for more responsible governments and not be so easily seduced by those with flashier but less credible messages.

Secondly, for the “tax cutting” Tories, EOBs are more likely to create workers who appreciate the need to make business as competitive as possible and are likely to want to create tax environments which champion those principles. If you own a business and are trying to compete at home and across the world, then you don’t want to see your business paying buckets of tax away to the Government which could be re-invested into the business (or put back in your pocket).

Often because people see business tax cuts only go back into the pockets of shareholders or in the bonus payments of a privileged few, they do not see why they should support a competitive business tax policy. After all, they only see the benefits indirectly (if at all sometimes). A greater level of EOBs is thus likely to create amore pro-business electorate.

Thirdly, for pro-Localism Tories, EOBs would help to encourage more people to support the localism agenda. If you help to take decisions within your business or are part of a participatory environment at work, then you are more likely to support decentralisation of powers because you have seen work, at work.

Moreover, knowing that getting more people involved can work, you are more likely to participate outside of work in your local neighbourhood or at council level to ensure it does work.

Because in so many businesses decisions are taken only by a few at the very top, this has created a culture in which people do not have direct experiences of participatory decision making. This is a barrier to the Localism agenda which the current make up the private sector supports.

These are just some of the political reasons why the Conservative Party should be embracing the EOBs agenda. In the future, I would like to come back to some of the economic arguments, but for now, it is important to make the political case.

David Cameron has a fantastic opportunity in the wake of the economic crisis to champion new forms of business such as social enterprises and EOBs – he should seize it and with it, help to sow the seeds for future electoral victories to come.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) protects 15 fundamental rights and freedoms, including amongst others, the right to free speech, protest, and the protection from torture.  Many have appeared in British Common law for centuries, and I would challenge any right thinking person to object to the protection of such rights.  The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which the HRA implemented, was the brainchild of Churchill, with English lawyers at the heart of its drafting.  For me, the essence of being a Conservative is support for individual liberty, and a suspicion of the state.  Any individual can fall foul of its intrusive prying eyes, desire for control, or its potential for arbitrary decision making.  I very much hope that you or I never need to rely upon the act – but one day, we all may.

This is not to say that such rights are absolute, and despite a common misconception, the HRA does not suggest they are.  It explicitly allows the restriction of most of the freedoms it protects, when this is necessary and proportionate.  For example, the rights to freedom, speech, protest, and liberty can all be restricted when national security in under threat.  In the vast majority of cases, we are able to deport dangerous foreigners who pose a threat to us, unless they will face torture – a practice that we rightly condemn.  However, as an aside, deporting a dangerous terrorist makes little sense to me.  Surely we are better to try them under British law, and keep those found guilty safely locked up in prison rather than releasing them to try and harm us again.

The suggestion that we should repeal the HRA is also flawed on a purely practical level.  There was no suggestion that we should leave the ECHR, an act which would see us required to leave the Council of Europe, alongside Belarus as the only European country not a signatory.  Therefore, repeal of the HRA would mean cases brought under the Convention would go straight to Strasbourg, bypassing British judges and their ability to interpret rights in a way which is right for Britain, and infinitely increasing the cost and delay.

This is not to say I am an uncritical friend of the HRA and ECHR.  There have been a number of cases where decisions appear to be unreasonable.  The Strasbourg court could be improved if more rigorous standards were applied to all judicial appointments, it is outrageously inefficient and I believe greater levels of flexibility should be available to domestic courts.  However, one does not have to agree with every judgement or process to see the HRA and ECHR as a good thing, and the improvements are at most minor adjustments, not wholesale change.

A British Bill of Rights may be the right way to go, and I think the government is travelling in the right direction with its Commission.  Yet for me, fundamental support for the HRA is required for such a position.  A British Bill of Rights could in my understanding only be a ‘Human Rights Act Plus’, protecting all of the same rights and freedoms and more.  It would not be able to take rights away, and I believe that many who talk of it as a solution to what they see as the problems of the HRA are under the misapprehension this is what it would do.

The Conservative Party has been at the forefront of protecting civil liberties, and we should be rightly proud of our record whether it be scrapping Labour’s ID cards, resisting 42 days detention or passing the recent Protection of Freedoms Bill.  What we need now is a sensible discussion around reform of Human Rights Legislation in the UK, and the possibility of a British Bill of Rights, stripped of the tabloid hyperbole.  I for one know that as a Conservative I will be on the side of freedom in that debate.