The big question about Gordon Brown’s end of term report Building Britain’s future produced this week is – who is it for?

The answer is that it is firstly for the benefit of ministers and mandarins, who have forgotten precisely what they are supposed to be doing, so buffeted have they been by recent events.

Second, it is for the benefit of Labour MPs, wondering if the Government has a clue in which direction it is heading, and third, for the Labour Party, being a manifesto for the next general election.

Fourth, it is aimed at the Conservatives, attempting to paint them into the corner as the nasty party should they then oppose the motherhood and apple pie elements of the report.

Fifth, it might come in useful for historians writing an account of the Brown Government and in need of a sense that ministers were actually trying to initiate rather than put out raging fires. Then sixth – and way behind – comes the public.

The 127-page report on public services is mostly a rehash of old policy statements and initiatives, topped and tailed with references to current events. Even Hazel Blears’ favourite phrase ‘devolution to your doorstep’ has been kept in.

And the Budget reference to 0.7% ‘real terms growth’ in public spending after 2011 remains, despite scepticism about the deteriorating state of finances.
Local government certainly gets a look-in, but with little suggestion there has been any further thinking. Most of it reiterates what is already happening, such as more city-regions, more MAAs, more directly-elected mayors, and the duty to involve. The Total Place initiative, currently the one big idea in central and local government, gets a mere paragraph, as if the civil servants drafting the report had never quite grasped its implications.

Despite hopes that the MPs’ expenses scandal might create an opportunity for local government, there is little evidence, among the platitudes, of any major shift to more localism. A reference to the use of wellbeing ignores the LAML case.

Apart from the housing announcements – funding of which remains a question – there is little new for local government. But then, since this report is mainly an off-the-shelf package, this should come as no surprise.

Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ

Councillors meeting next week at the annual LGA conference in Harrogate will have some reason to feel that, notwithstanding the bitter winds of recession and the black hole in public finances, the wind is morally in their favour. The problem is, how do they capitalise on it?

There has been much talk about how the Parliamentary expenses row has so alienated the public from their national representatives that local government needs to fill the democratic deficit. All very well, but in practice, how?

And the recent proactive role of councils in helping to alleviate the effect of the recession on their places has made it clear to national politicians that councils are part of the solution so long as they have real powers to be innovative. Then, along came the recent High Court case over LAML rejecting wellbeing
powers, and councils face tumbling back down the ladder again, reduced to being reactive instruments of Whitehall.

Politically, too, the wind is in local government’s favour. After all the Government – and the national parties – desperately need councils, both for moral support and to help them tackle the recession. On the one hand the new CLG secretary of state, John Denham, a former councillor, is making sympathetic noises about giving councils more responsibility.

On the other, the Conservatives, at national level, are striving to prove that they, too, are devolutionists, anti-regulation and pro-localism. Both politicians – and, of course, the Lib Dems – will next week, at the LGA conference, press the right buttons about giving local government a greater role.

Words are fine, but action is better. There may never be as good a time as now for local government to press home its case for more real, devolved powers, a clear steer on using wellbeing powers without being fouled up in the courts and a power of general competence – for starters.

We could even put it in writing. It’s time to take out of the cupboard the almost forgotten 2007 Concordat between Hazel Blears and Sir Simon Milton, and get Mr Denham and Margaret Eaton to update and sign it. And this time give it some real teeth.

Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ

The current spat between Labour and the Tories over which will be bringing in more cuts in public services after 2010, and whether they will be 7%, 10% or 15% is conducted, as usual, in that unreal ether known as national politics.

In this make-believe world, where the electorate must never be upset, the word ‘cuts’ is deemed too sensitive. Politicians swap euphemisms about how they will handle the public sector deficit as if it will simply be a matter of cutting councillors’ biscuit allowances.

In the real world, public sector managers have already factored in grant cuts and are preparing for worst-case scenarios. The pages of The MJ and the agendas of numerous conferences are filled with the dire warnings of looming funding crises, post-2010.

 The more savvy chief executives are grasping the ‘Total place’ agenda or seeking genuine strategic partnerships such as the Buckinghamshire two-tier pathfinder. There is general acceptance that back-office costs – for which, read staff – must be cut, that there should be more pan-public sector management teams and that serious savings must be made.

The CIPD this week predicted 350,000 job cuts in the next five years.The real debate that should, therefore, be occurring among national politicians is not whether or not there will be ‘cuts’ but the extent that public finances can be restored without crippling a fragile economy just emerging from a recession.

Whatever the views of such lobbyists as the Taxpayers’ Alliance, councils and the rest of the public sector are generally the biggest employers in their areas, a huge resource to local businesses and the economy. In the case of poorer areas, their impact is even greater.

If these public sector engines of employment stutter, if jobs and spending are cut, then the consequence is that many areas, emerging from the recession, face being knocked back down again.

National politicians need to be asked, not whether their government will make cuts because we know anyone in Number 10 this time next year will do just that, but how they will judge that these cuts do not cause another dip in the economy. That is the real world.

Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ