We live in an age of expanding opportunity in which rapid technological advances are transforming the world at a speed and scale not witnessed since the industrial revolution.
This allows us to give citizens what they now demand: public services responsive to their needs and driven by them. At the same time it provides us with the means to deliver public services in a way that maintains their quality but brings down their cost. This will be essential to help meet our commitment to halve the public deficit within four years.
In meeting this inescapable fiscal challenge we must ensure that we do not damage the public services on which so many depend. These services embody our deepest values of fairness and responsibility. They are the proud expression of the collective endeavour of the British people over many generations to secure for each other the foundations of a fair and decent society. These ideals are now expressed in the desire for a bigger say and more accountability in the decisions that affect daily lives, and for truly excellent services that are universal to all but personal to each. Just as importantly, as we move from recession to recovery, the British people more than ever insist that state spending is underscored by the same principle of value for money by which they manage their own finances.
This plan for reforming government sets out how we will meet these new challenges by strengthening the role of citizens and civic society; recasting the relationships between the centre and the frontline and between the citizen and the State; and streamlining government. I believe that a strong and flourishing civic society goes hand-in-hand with an active and effective government. When we work together, our communities are stronger.
This plan is the culmination of work carried out across the public sector over the past year – learning from the insights of professionals on the frontline, who know what is needed to improve standards even further. And we are grateful for the vision and advice we have received from industry leaders and distinguished public sector thinkers:
The proposals for smarter, more efficient government that we are setting out in this plan will release in excess of £12 billion a year over and above the £26.5 billion a year of savings which government departments have already made since 2004 through the Gershon review and the further £35 billion a year to which we are already committed by 2011. They include £3 billion of new efficiency savings identified since Budget 2009 – of which over £1.3 billion will come from streamlining central government. So Putting the frontline first also shows how, by making the necessary savings and taking tough choices on spending priorities, we can both protect frontline services and help meet our commitment to halve the public deficit within four years.
Our plans include:
But restructuring government must be based on our enduring beliefs in equality of opportunity and a fairer society, in which government gives people the tools to shape their own lives and protection from those forces they cannot handle alone.
Over the last year, active government has shielded people from the worst effects of the global financial crisis; and over the last decade it has helped deliver landmark social and economic reforms.
But the time has come to change the way government delivers. Historic underinvestment has been corrected and once-ambitious goals are increasingly seen as the norm thanks to a rigorous regime of targets and central direction. It is precisely because of the success of this approach that we can now embark on a radical dispersal of power, where people will have enforceable guarantees over the services they receive, and frontline staff will have greater freedom over the services they give.
This diffusion of power is the next stage of public service reform. We will embrace new technology to better inform the public; give citizens new rights to information; create a new dialogue between people and public service professionals; and reduce bureaucratic burdens. Public services will improve as they become more personal and more cost-effective, and at the same time they will strengthen democratic deliberation and control in local communities.
Neighbourhood policing teams will respond to local priorities set in beat meetings rather than national targets; Heads will have more powers and teachers liberated to focus on their pupils; and nurses and doctors will be freed to respond to the needs of individual patients.
This redirection of power from Whitehall to citizens and public servants allows for a leaner central government. So we will merge back office functions; relocate staff and reduce Civil Service overhead costs; and sell off or mutualise assets that the Government does not need to own.
Government must change for the new era – and change for good. This is the starting point for this plan. Today, people don’t want a government that tells them what to do, but nor do they want one that leaves them isolated. They recognise that when government has too much power they are rendered powerless, but that when government has too little power they are left helpless. Having demonstrated the value of government action, our task now is to develop government to work in partnership with individuals and communities to deliver the services people want in the way they want them, and to preserve them in the face of all the challenges this new era presents.
Gordon Brown Prime Minister
