Davy Jones Consultancy

Political meltdown hits local public services.

Blears has gone ! The champion of PB and advocate of the "empowerment" agenda has been ousted over her expenses claims and the failed Blairite plot against Brown. In comes former councillor and left of centre MP John Denham to replace her.

And John Healey has been shifted from local government to Housing, with Rosie Winterton replacing him with a brief of local government and regional economies, reporting jointly to the Department for Business Innovation & Skills and to DCLG.

What's the damage?
Many people who are passionate about citizen involvement are worried about Blears' departure. On balance, I would say: "don't be". It has been an advantage having a champion for PB in the Cabinet for getting action from (some) sections of the civil service. But in the country as a whole, the strong association of PB with Blears has been a double-edged sword. For many, it has been a red rag to a blue bull. It may actually be easier to push PB in Conservative areas now that she has gone. And John Denham was a strong supporter of the PB pilot in his local Southampton Thornhill area.

And the fact is that the underlying drivers for the citizen involvement agenda are much more powerful than individual Ministers. The need for more public involvement and transparency in decision-making has never been on so many people's lips, especially since the MPs' expenses scandal. The power of the internet driving the choice and voice agenda has not gone away. Citizen involvement is here to stay - the real argument in the next few years will be about how significant it should be in determining important local choices.

Business takes over
But hang on, what's this about local government reporting jointly to Mandelson and John Denham !!! Some commentators have welcomed this as a sign of how important Government is taking the need to stimulate local economies. This is naive nonsense. It is utterly retrograde that local government should be seen as in some ways subordinate to business, especially to the wretched ("intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich") Peter Mandelson. Has New Labour learned nothing about the public mood in the last few weeks?

And of course it follows a sinister pattern. Higher eduction too now reports to Mandelson's Business Innovation & Skills Department. This formalises in structural terms what has been going on for the past two decades, as colleges and Universities have been transformed into arms of business, rather than seats of learning.

Is there a contradiction?
Nothing exemplifies better the contradiction between the Government's policies for local public services than this structural reporting line. On the one hand, Government wants local services to be much more responsive to local people. On the other it wants them (and higher education) to be subordinate to business. The interests of business and those of local people are NOT the same - frequently they conflict, as the experience of privatisation and PFI over the past decade clearly demonstrates.

Take the post office debate - while local places need post offices and local authorities fight to keep them, the Business Secretary closes them or sells them off to the private sector. Which way will the local government minister jump when faced with that contradiction?

Local public services should be driven by the needs and views of their local citizens, not by those of big business, whose shareholders have no interest in their local areas.