Some specific observations:
No such thing as the Big Society? – considering that at one stage this was supposed to give policy substance to the Big Society, it is striking how absent the Big Society is from the White Paper. That’s one cut it didn’t make. I did a control search and only came across one Big Society reference in the whole report, and this was not to the idea but to the Big Society bank. So this leaves an obvious question about how central the Big Society now will be to the Government? One practical effect of there being no Big Society strand is that the tenor of the White Paper is much more consumerist, gone appears to be the emphasis on social citizenship and responsibility. This leaves a big gap because, as our Commission on 2020 Public Services argued, the big challenges of the future will need to be met through citizens and the state working together to create better social outcomes.
Very few concrete proposals – This is about direction of travel, rather than specific proposals. In fact, there are very few concrete proposals. Instead this is much more like a Green Paper in which general propositions are put out for consultation, with the question being what specific policy changes would these require? This is clearly a long way from what some of the Big Society evangelists had originally wanted to see.
No short term wins for the voluntary sector – Earlier in the year there had been speculation that the White Paper might contain some specific guarantees for the voluntary sector to help offset the consequences of Council grant cuts. But, whilst there are warm words for the role of the voluntary sector, and some new development money and support to help develop social social enterprises, there is no specific commitment to, for example, a quota of Council services to be subject to voluntary sector right to bid.
Diversity of provision – the boldest statement in the White Paper is that there is no case for monopoly state provision of services, except for the special cases of defence, criminal justice and policing. The case is made for all public services to be run on the basis of autonomous institutions such as Academies and Foundation Trusts, which could be run by businesses, mutuals or social enterprises. However, there are no specific proposals to apply this to any particular service area.
Local government is the big winner – this is the most pro-local government policy paper to have been published by the Coalition. Whereas, the distinct impression in previous policy developments on public service reform has been that local government was being sidestepped, now it is much more central to the Coalition’s plans for decentralisation. The principle of decentralisation which is set out in the white paper bears some similarity with the subsidiarity principle developed in the 1990s by the European Union, under which decisions should be devolved to the lowest possible level of government. The new twist to this is the emphasis in the white paper on establishing neighbourhood councils in urban areas to mirror parishes and to be responsible for the same types of very local, community and public space services. But the White Paper also makes the case for more powers and greater financial autonomy for local authorities and, in one of its few specific proposals, also recommends that skills funding should pass to some Councils, something which cities like Manchester have been strongly pushing for.