Some who see themselves on the Left may hope it but refreshing New Labour with the best ideas from the 1970s will not help. As part of the New Local Government Network, I think we have some genuinely new ideas to offer.
Our recent work on the Lyons inquiry into the future of local government - Pacing Lyons: a route map to localism - led us to answer questions that can contribute to reform of all public services and restoration of people's trust in politics.
Reform is not like fixing a machine; it cannot be done piecemeal. Instead it is like restoring a river valley, the connections between each part of the system are so dense that failure to address any one area will undermine and ultimately cancel out progress in all other areas.
We show how it is possible to join up public services by doing it a local level instead of in Whitehall. We show how locally joined up services can create the incentives for improvement that New Labour has delivered through its top down target regime: a regime that has now run its course. These reforms can be used to put Whitehall under external challenge, the missing ingredient in the long list of New Labour attempts to reform the core civil service.
These reforms could equip public services to meet the far more complex challenges of the 21st century. They could do so in a way that does not rely on the idea that private sector delivery is public services last hope. They offer a new model of public service with its own internal ecology of improvement.
To ensure that better local delivery was also politically legitimate, NLGN has made a range of proposals for political reform to strengthen the links between local politicians and the public. The result of these changes is to draw power out of Ministerial offices, providing Parliament's Select Committees with new authority as the umpire in arguments between central and local government. We make recommendations that will strengthen council leaderships. We also propose new powers for front line councillors. Reviving the role of councillor so that it is attractive to the next generation must be the most effective basis on which to revive Labour's active membership.
Lastly, we propose a solution to the council tax and finance reform. In doing so we show why income tax devolved is a regressive tax. Instead we create a framework to retain the revenues from existing taxes in the hands of local politicians and so free them from dependence on Whitehall.
Since 1997 Labour has transformed the landscape of public service and the debates about its future. That is why renewal is so urgent; this chapter is past its sell by date. But Labour will only move on as a party when it can answer our Prime Minister's question - so what would we do next? I believe that NLGN has some of the answers but there remains a question over whether Labour has the political will.
Dick Sorabji
Head of Policy and Research
New Local Government Network
