Why public service
reform hasn’t
worked
Both Labour and the Conservatives have failed to give
people the education system and health service they
want. Matthew Taylor argues that political posturing is
undermining the public service reform process.
T
he processes of public serv-
ice reform can be described
as a messy dialectic. This
unfolds in a changing con-
text of economic (primarily
fiscal), social and political pressures. Public
service strategies are responses to these pres-
sures, but also reflect the dynamic by which
reform itself generates not only intended
changes but also counter-reactions and
unintended consequences.
Political debate about public service
reform is characterised by generalisation
and hyperbole. More objective analyses
suggest the ingredients of reform reflect
inherently different perspectives on social
relations. Instead of exaggerated narratives
of reform, the goal of service improvement
is best served by, on the one hand, recog-
nising the complex, messy, reflexive nature
of change and the inherently different per-
spectives of different public service actors
while, on the other, attending to changes in
the context for public services. The key to
the long-term viability of universal collec-
tive provision therefore lies in the context
of public service reform, rather than in the
process of reform itself.
Thoughtless dismantling
and messy reconstructing
In its recent public service strategy Excellence
and Fairness: achieving world class public services
the Labour Government describes three
public policy research – September-November 2008
stages of its reform journey. These can be
characterised as the centralised reconstruc-
tion phase, the system reform phase and
the capacity building phase.
Phase one: centralised reconstruction
• Role of centre: command and control
• Means of reform: investment, targets,
inspection
• Overarching objective: reconstruction,
driving up standards
Phase two: system reform
• Role of centre: system architect, market
maker
• Means of reform: markets, contestability,
choice
• Overarching objective: creation of
dynamic ‘self-improving’ system
Phase three: capacity building
• Role of centre: strategic enabler
• Means of reform: devolving power
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 ippr
• Overarching objective: empowerment
and equity
The Excellence and Fairness report implies
that its strategy is the end point of a proc-
ess. But were Labour to stay in power
long enough we could safely assume
that new, currently unheralded, phases
would emerge. A further problem with
the Government’s account is shared with
most descriptions of generic public service
reform; by their very nature they understate
137
 differences between sectors. This is com-
pounded when the Government’s narrative
invariably ignores efforts at reform before
1997. This is understandable politics but
bad history. In fact, the best starting point
for an analysis of the modern era of public
service reform is probably the Thatcher
government of the late 1980s and the schools
reforms instigated by two Kenneths: Baker
in schools and Clarke in the NHS.
... the current emphasis on
personalisation and the use of
customer satisfaction as a key
performance indicator can be
seen as a reaction to the focus
on system reform in Blair’s
final years
While New Labour largely preserved
the schools reform framework set out in
what was popularly known at the time as
GERBIL (the Great Education Reform
Bill), its unimpressive first term stewardship
of the NHS saw it dismantle Conservative
policies such as greater hospital independ-
ence, GP budget holding and the internal
market only to reconstruct them at great
financial and political cost in its second
term. As for policing, arguably the third
most visible locally delivered public service,
it was not until the recent Green Paper that
we have seen a willingness to address what
both Conservatives and New Labour lead-
ers had previously seen as a ‘third rail’ issue.
When reform is seen over a 20-year peri-
od alternatives emerge to the generalising,
evolutionary framing offered by Excellence
and Fairness. As well as major differences
between public services, cyclical patterns
can also be traced. For example, the current
emphasis on personalisation and the use
of customer satisfaction as a key perform-
ance indicator can be seen as a reaction to
the focus on system reform in Blair’s final
years. This has parallels with John Major’s
138 public policy research – September-November 2008
championing of the Citizens Charter after
the late Thatcherite system-reform phase.
Other discernable cycles include the
changing temperature of the relationship
between government and public service
employees (with the Conservatives now
reprising their resistance to the creation of
the NHS by becoming again the doctor’s
friend!) and the ebb and flow of localism.
While a cyclical analysis may be more
credible than the Government’s post-hoc
rationalisations, the greatest potential for a
useful learning may lie in recognising the
inevitable co-existence of different strands
of reform. If any foreseeable future reform
will involve combining top-down systems
of control and scrutiny, quasi-market
mechanisms, local accountability and the
cultivation of a modern public service
ethos, that is as much about responsiveness
and innovation as protecting the interests
of professionals and workers.
An inherently clumsy
process
To get a fuller insight into the inevitabil-
ity of alternative models of change, public
service analysts need to look beyond the
conventional boundaries of their debates.
The major public service reform strate-
gies can be linked to broader typologies of
social action. One in particular has a pow-
erful resonance. In a recent collection of
essays entitled Clumsy Solutions for a Complex
World, Mary Douglas and colleagues
describe four basic ways of thinking about
and conducting social relations: the hier-
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 ippr
archical, the individualist, the egalitarian
and the fatalist. These ways of thinking are
ubiquitous and interdependent:
Each way of organising and perceiving
provides a clear expression of the way in
which a significant portion of the populace
feels we should live with one another and
with nature. Each one needs all the others
in order to be sustainable. (Verweij et al
2006: 6)
This typology maps neatly on to the
various elements of public service reform.
 Hierarchy is reflected in the view that
a powerful expert centre must provide
leadership, discipline and scrutiny.
Individualism is the perspective that
underlies the use of market mechanisms,
assuming that the goal of reform is to cre-
ate a system in which the pursuit by all
actors of self interest will result in continu-
ous improvement. Egalitarianism reflects
the view that sustainable improvement
must come from the bottom up, driven by
a shared commitment to public service
values. Fatalism can be seen to reflect
the sceptical attitude to reform of public
service employees and the low expecta-
tions and disengagement among citizens.
Reformers may regret the existence of
fatalism but arguably it is vital to avoid the
public sector being overwhelmed either
by the demands of individualism or the
inherent conflict between, for example,
hierarchy and egalitarianism.
The point here is that public service
reform will always be a ‘clumsy’ process
and that we should accept:
... the realization that people are arguing
from different premises and that, since these
premises are anchored in different forms of
solidarity, they will never agree. (ibid)
Public service learning is hampered by an
attempt to impose a simple story of evolu-
tion on what is in fact an ever shifting inter-
play of different perspectives and modes of
action.
Alternative approaches will always exist
with the predominance of one or other
depending on the interplay of three drivers
of change:
• The ‘messy dialectic’ of the reform proc-
ess, for example centralisation giving
way to localism, top-down system reform
giving way to bottom-up responsiveness,
partially successful performance meas-
urement and reward systems inevitably
generating perverse outcomes.
• Changes in context, for example fiscal
circumstances leading to expansion
or retrenchment, population ageing
pressures, changing political priorities
and fashions.
public policy research – September-November 2008
• Technology and innovation, for exam-
ple in the fifties and sixties much of the
bureaucratic model for public services
was imported from large private cor-
porations. Now, public services are
seeking to adopt best-practice private-
sector customer care and communica-
tion techniques, and the current enthu-
siasm for ‘user-driven’ innovation may
develop solutions which strengthen
either the individualistic or egalitarian
models of change.
We must depoliticise
the process
Learning is vital to continued public
service improvement, but learning needs
to be grounded in an awareness of the
complex nature of change. This is why
the over-politicisation of the processes of
public service reform – a peculiarly British
phenomenon – is deeply problematic. The
simple morality tales of political narrative
encourage polarisation and simplification in
debate over reform and can lead to policy
over-reactions that end up wasting money
and letting down citizens. This was the
case with Labour’s thoughtless dismantling
of the Conservatives’ NHS reforms and it
threatens to be the case if the Conservatives
act out their current exaggerated critique of
the centre and championing of public sector
professionalism as a sufficient driver
of improvement.
The politics of public service reform
should be externalised; instead of simplistic
narratives about the reform process, the
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 ippr
focus should be on the aims of public serv-
ices and the context necessary for meeting
those aims. The final section of this essay
will briefly explore three ways of changing
the way in which debate about public serv-
ice improvement is framed.
The first of these concerns the context
for reform set by party politics, media
representation and interest group mobilisa-
tion. The adverse impact of overlaying the
messy complexity of public service reform
with the adversarial narratives of party pol-
itics has already been described. Another
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 example is the oft-cited difficulty of recon-
ciling strategies of devolving power with
the propensity of the media to demand
that ministers and national officials be held
responsible for local service failures. The
power of some interest groups to mobilise
media interest and public sympathy is also
problematic. So for example, the British
Medical Association continues to succeed
in disguising producer interest as impartial
professional concern. The failure of teacher
representation to move beyond a narrative
of victimhood was illustrated some years
ago by survey evidence that the occupa-
tional group which most systematically
understated the public esteem of teachers
was… teachers! Yet we still lack a powerful
voice representing the interests of parents
and school students. Together these factors
make it more difficult to have an informed
and realistic discussion about public serv-
ices, which in turn makes it more difficult to
win legitimacy for the kinds of clumsy solu-
tions that might be best in the real world of
public services.
We continue to think of
the problem of public services
being about the services
when it is more fundamentally
about what we mean
by ‘public’
Changing the narrative:
towards a new alliance
There is no easy way to improve the
quality of public service discourse. A
starting point is to forge new alliances of
public sector analysts, managers, profes-
sionals and service users, committed not
only to fostering grounded dialogue and
debate but also to developing ways of
working which represent the practical
refutation of the too often polarised,
self interested and simplistic narratives
indulged in by politicians, journalists and
pressure groups.
140 public policy research – September-November 2008
The failure of public debate also makes
it more difficult to be explicit about the
co-productive nature of public services.
While the immediate short-term fiscal
pressures on public services may lift with
a future upturn in the economic cycle, the
underlying squeeze resulting from public
demand outstripping the public’s willing-
ness to pay higher taxes seems inevitable.
The ‘high-touch’ nature of locally delivered
public services means that their relative
economic cost is likely to continue to rise.
Population ageing ensures generations of
rising demand for some of the most labour-
intensive services.
In key public services affordably sustain-
ing – let alone improving – the scope and
quality of provision demands a new con-
tract between the state and citizen. Public
service commentators and politicians pay
plenty of lip service to this principle and
the notion of some reciprocity in public
service provision has gained ground over
the last decade. However we are a long
way from a proper recognition of the neces-
sity for public services to tap into and grow
individual and collective responsibility, let
alone operationalising that recognition in
the way services are organised, managed
and delivered. We continue to think of the
problem of public services being about the
services when it is more fundamentally
about what we mean by ‘public’. There are
very serious challenges involved in creating
more reciprocal, behaviour-shaping public
services and, not withstanding the recent
fascination with behaviour change theorists
(such as Cialdini, Sunstein and Thaler),
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politicians and policymakers are as yet only
scratching the surface of these issues.
Serving society, not politics
Finally, the debate about public services
needs to be set in the context of a deeper,
more widely engaging debate about the
kind of society in which we want to live.
This means addressing fundamental issues
such as equality, sustainability, the collec-
tive versus the individual, and quality of
life. The success of public service strategies
 depends on what is happening in wider
society and on the coherence and clarity of
our account of social progress.
A characteristic of the exaggerated and
over-politicised discourse of public service
reform is the idea that public services can
deliver goals such as greater equality or
‘empowerment’ in the absence of either a
deeper public commitment to those goals
or without policies specifically designed to
achieve those objectives. This is evidenced
by the inevitable failure of strategies to
significantly reduce health and education
inequalities through public service reform
while levels of income and asset inequal-
ity remain unchanged. In this sense much
of the debate about public service reform
can be seen as a process of transference
whereby the political class avoids confront-
ing hard choices by implying that these
choices could somehow be avoided if only
we had precisely the right public service
reform strategy.
Public services have improved under
Labour. This is to be expected given
Labour’s commitment to the core values
of the post-war welfare state, the massive
increase in public investment and the abil-
ity (albeit often faltering) of public services
public policy research – September-November 2008
to draw on the productivity enhancing
potential of new technologies. However, the
underlying pressures facing public services
suggest that expensive incrementalism may
not be sufficient to sustain universal services
with public support. Within the discourse
of public service improvement, learning
and innovation would be enhanced (and
the likelihood of major blunders reduced)
by a recognition of the inherently complex,
clumsy and contested nature of reform. But
more profound change rests much less on
the internal dynamic of reform than on the
emergence of a new political framing.
The long-term viability of universal
public services depends crucially on our
ability to forge a new political discourse
that addresses substantive issues about the
alternative futures we face, the society we
want to live in, and what this means for us
as citizens.
Matthew Taylor is Director of the RSA and former
Chief of Strategy at Number 10.
Verweij M, Douglas M, Ellis R, Engel C, Hendriks F,
Lohmann S, Ney S, Rayner S and Thompson M (2006)
‘The Case for Clumsiness’ in Verweij M and Thompson M
(eds) Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World: Governance, Politics
and Plural Perceptions, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 ippr
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