Conservatives express support for 'mutual public services' plan
The shadow chancellor George Osborne has said that a future Conservative government would enable public sector workers to establish mutually-operated organisations to run taxpayer-funded public services.
He said that mutual structures would not be imposed on public sector workers and would only be established in response to employee demands for a change of structure. Osborne cited primary schools, job centres and community nursing teams as examples of organisations which could be run as co-operatives or social enterprises in this way. As independent bodies, they would be subject to quality controls demanded by the contracting authorites such as local authorities or the National Health Service.
He told Radio 4's Today programme: “This is a power shift to public sector workers so that they take control of their own working environment and get away from these top-down bureaucracies that have made life a misery for so many people in the public sector.”
The Conservatives' announcement is evidence of growing politcial support for the principle of mutualism in the delivery of public services.
In December last year, the Minister for the Cabinet Offce Tessa Jowell said that mutuals – such as staff and user-owned co-operatives – announced the creation of an independent Commission on Ownership, chaired by Will Hutton, to investigate the issue. She also announced she was to meet ministers responsible for housing, social care and Sure Start, to investigate a larger role for mutualism.
Funded by Co-Operative Financial Services, the commission will be asked to investigate how to create a level playing field for mutuals to run public services and how to extend the right to ownership for communities.
Tessa Jowell said the public sector could learn “important lessons” from private co-operative services such as John Lewis. Mutuals, co-ops and social enterprises offer the opportunity to forge a new relationship between citizen and state and redefine the notion of public ownership, she said, adding that mutualism has a particular contribution to make in social housing, social care and Sure Start. “Mututalism is not only right for the public mood, it also helps to deliver the accountability, individual empowerment, and community responsibility that the public more widely both wants and needs.”
The minister said there had been a shift in public support towards organisations with values, and those in which long-term social returns are put ahead of short-term gains. “In the post-banking crisis, post-expenses Britain, people want to feel a sense of ownership and control: something which both free market fundamentalism and remote and centralised statism are unable to meet. And public services are not immune from this mood.”
Jowell said models of co-ownership could allow communities to effect genuine change and deliver enhanced performance, pointing to initiatives such as the 390 members of the Reddish Vale Co-Operative Trust, who have taken over ownership of their school, and the staff at Leicester City Primary Care Trust, who have taken over general medical and substance misuse services for homeless people.
“When a public service is mutually owned, we know staff feel that they are leading the reform process, rather than having it imposed upon them,” she said. “This turns them into champions of improvement and reform, enhances feelings of solidarity and responsibility and makes staff more willing to co-operate for the common goal.”
The minister argued that mutualism cannot be prescribed by government and must remain essentially community-driven, but that government could sponsor and provide a legal framework that makes it a practical proposition in the delivery of public service.
