27 October 2009
A minister on a mission
Mark Conrad
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Both major parties claim localist credentials. But communities secretary, John Denham, is determined to present ‘sharp choices’ to voters next year. Mark Conrad reports.
After easing himself into the driving seat at Eland House, the new communities and local government secretary, John Denham, tells The MJ he is now a man in a hurry.
Following Hazel Blears’ untimely resignation from the Cabinet hours before May’s local government polls, Mr Denham took the wheel at the CLG on 5 June –almost a year to the day before the national government must hold a general election.
As the Conservatives surge ahead in opinion polls, Mr Denham and his team can waste little time communicating complex messages about a policy agenda – housing, immigration, cohesion, and the reinvigoration of recession-hit local communities – likely to occupy voters’ thoughts prior to the vote.
After a relatively quiet first few months, during which his CLG Cabinet colleague, John Healey, set about delivering Labour’s reinvigorated housing programme with gusto, the MP for Southampton Itchen is now eager to engage his Conservative counterparts in a race to next year’s chequered flag. Last week, Mr Denham delivered probably his most important policy speech since taking office, setting out an agenda which moves beyond the sensible-but-vague ‘making every pound work harder’ mantra of his first days in the job.
On the eve of his appearance at the Royal Society for the Arts on 21 October, he spoke candidly to The MJ about how he intended to put clear distance between Labour’s local government programme and that of David Cameron’s Conservatives.
To the layman, the two major parties share similar local government agendas – agreement on the need for decentralisation to community level, a joint commitment to Total Place, and to explore new funding mechanisms – and populist promises to tackle rising senior salaries.
Some town hall commentators warn this superficial policy convergence – inherited by Messrs Denham and Healey – will benefit Mr Cameron’s troops because Labour, lagging in the polls, has failed to articulate effectively how it differs from the party currently occupying pole position.
Conscious of this, Mr Healey told a Labour conference fringe in September that, on his promotion to the Cabinet, prime minister Gordon Brown, asked him to ‘make housing more political’ prior to the election – something he quickly succeeded in doing, through the return of government-funded council house-building, and criticism of leaked Conservative proposals to delay crucial developments beyond the election.
Now, Mr Denham said it was his turn to draw attention to ‘fundamental differences’ between Labour and the Conservatives.
This month provides as vital an opportunity as any.
We meet just days after the joint CLG/Home Office ‘Prevent’ programme, designed to stop vulnerable youths from being lured into extremism, came under fire amid claims it had effectively become a government-endorsed spy ring, manned by local public sector staff.
Mr Denham shook his head ruefully at the claim, and said sections of the media had misinterpreted the aims of the Prevent programme. As is standard with Eland House incumbents, he said he was a committed localist who would pitch local government as the solution to ‘one of the biggest issues facing government – how to improve frontline services at a time when budgets are so tight’.
He said Labour had initiated reforms required to deliver this.
The first key aspect, he claimed, was the roll out of Total Place, which should merge and devolve budgets for a range of public services – empowering council, health, education and criminal justice officials, for example, to join forces to deliver improvements and efficiencies.
Second, Mr Denham said he would implement ‘the explicit extension of local authority scrutiny powers to all local public service spending in each area’.
Labour, he said, wanted councils not only to scrutinise a wider range of locally-delivered services, such as policing and transport, but to hold people to account for local failures.
While local authorities already possess powers to call other service-providers to account, through overview and scrutiny committees, he claimed this ‘remains a lion that has not yet roared’.
Mr Denham said it was also incumbent on local authorities to feed back to residents improved information on local services.
He explained: ‘That shift towards much greater information about local services… will also help transform local government, because we won’t just be in a position where managers and councillors have got a view about what’s happening with local money.
It will be out there for the public to see, so it will be possible for people to put forward alternative proposals.’
This agenda, he claimed, distinguished Labour from the Conservatives through a commitment to maintain minimum standards for all public services, despite reforms which effectively transferred oversight of health, education and other key aspects of public policy to localities.
In the context of the debate over the existing ‘power of wellbeing’ – a child of New Labour – and a wider-ranging ‘power of general competence’ for local authorities – promised to town halls by Mr Cameron – Mr Denham said he feared the Conservative interpretation of the latter also meant a crucial safety net could disappear.
‘There is a very radical difference between [our] approach and that of the Conservatives. While they talk about decentralisation, they couple that with abandoning any idea of common standards or entitlements for citizens,’ he says.
‘The Conservative approach is effectively a charter for the worst kind of postcode lottery… they won’t be checking on standards because there aren’t any standards.
It’s a completely different philosophical approach.’
Mr Denham was also fiercely critical of the ‘Ryanair’ approach to town hall delivery, currently being trialled by Conservative-led Barnet LBC.
He warned such an approach meant ‘you have to pay twice to get a decent service, and the sense of value for money [becomes] a crude cost-cutting exercise rather than making best use of public money in an area’.
These factors, combined with the Conservatives ‘unashamedly top down’ – a self-imposed term used last week by shadow Treasury minister, Phillip Hammond – approach to dictating local service cuts, present to voters distinct policy programmes, despite the superficial localist policy convergence exacerbated by the recession.
‘Beneath the surface, where all parties seem to favour localism, there are some sharp choices... to be made at the next election,’ Mr Denham told the RSA.
But, having taken the reins so late in the electoral cycle, does he have sufficient time to deliver Labour’s programme and communicate these choices effectively?
After easing himself into the driving seat at Eland House, the new communities and local government secretary, John Denham, tells The MJ he is now a man in a hurry.
Following Hazel Blears’ untimely resignation from the Cabinet hours before May’s local government polls, Mr Denham took the wheel at the CLG on 5 June –almost a year to the day before the national government must hold a general election.
 |
| John Denham: Party differences 'are clear' |
As the Conservatives surge ahead in opinion polls, Mr Denham and his team can waste little time communicating complex messages about a policy agenda – housing, immigration, cohesion, and the reinvigoration of recession-hit local communities – likely to occupy voters’ thoughts prior to the vote.
After a relatively quiet first few months, during which his CLG Cabinet colleague, John Healey, set about delivering Labour’s reinvigorated housing programme with gusto, the MP for Southampton Itchen is now eager to engage his Conservative counterparts in a race to next year’s chequered flag. Last week, Mr Denham delivered probably his most important policy speech since taking office, setting out an agenda which moves beyond the sensible-but-vague ‘making every pound work harder’ mantra of his first days in the job.
On the eve of his appearance at the Royal Society for the Arts on 21 October, he spoke candidly to The MJ about how he intended to put clear distance between Labour’s local government programme and that of David Cameron’s Conservatives.
To the layman, the two major parties share similar local government agendas – agreement on the need for decentralisation to community level, a joint commitment to Total Place, and to explore new funding mechanisms – and populist promises to tackle rising senior salaries.
Some town hall commentators warn this superficial policy convergence – inherited by Messrs Denham and Healey – will benefit Mr Cameron’s troops because Labour, lagging in the polls, has failed to articulate effectively how it differs from the party currently occupying pole position.
Conscious of this, Mr Healey told a Labour conference fringe in September that, on his promotion to the Cabinet, prime minister Gordon Brown, asked him to ‘make housing more political’ prior to the election – something he quickly succeeded in doing, through the return of government-funded council house-building, and criticism of leaked Conservative proposals to delay crucial developments beyond the election.
Now, Mr Denham said it was his turn to draw attention to ‘fundamental differences’ between Labour and the Conservatives.
This month provides as vital an opportunity as any.
We meet just days after the joint CLG/Home Office ‘Prevent’ programme, designed to stop vulnerable youths from being lured into extremism, came under fire amid claims it had effectively become a government-endorsed spy ring, manned by local public sector staff.
| "There is a very radical difference between [our] approach and that of the Conservatives." John Denham, Communities Secretary |
He said Labour had initiated reforms required to deliver this.
The first key aspect, he claimed, was the roll out of Total Place, which should merge and devolve budgets for a range of public services – empowering council, health, education and criminal justice officials, for example, to join forces to deliver improvements and efficiencies.
Second, Mr Denham said he would implement ‘the explicit extension of local authority scrutiny powers to all local public service spending in each area’.
Labour, he said, wanted councils not only to scrutinise a wider range of locally-delivered services, such as policing and transport, but to hold people to account for local failures.
While local authorities already possess powers to call other service-providers to account, through overview and scrutiny committees, he claimed this ‘remains a lion that has not yet roared’.
Mr Denham said it was also incumbent on local authorities to feed back to residents improved information on local services.
He explained: ‘That shift towards much greater information about local services… will also help transform local government, because we won’t just be in a position where managers and councillors have got a view about what’s happening with local money.
It will be out there for the public to see, so it will be possible for people to put forward alternative proposals.’
This agenda, he claimed, distinguished Labour from the Conservatives through a commitment to maintain minimum standards for all public services, despite reforms which effectively transferred oversight of health, education and other key aspects of public policy to localities.
In the context of the debate over the existing ‘power of wellbeing’ – a child of New Labour – and a wider-ranging ‘power of general competence’ for local authorities – promised to town halls by Mr Cameron – Mr Denham said he feared the Conservative interpretation of the latter also meant a crucial safety net could disappear.
‘There is a very radical difference between [our] approach and that of the Conservatives. While they talk about decentralisation, they couple that with abandoning any idea of common standards or entitlements for citizens,’ he says.
‘The Conservative approach is effectively a charter for the worst kind of postcode lottery… they won’t be checking on standards because there aren’t any standards.
It’s a completely different philosophical approach.’
Mr Denham was also fiercely critical of the ‘Ryanair’ approach to town hall delivery, currently being trialled by Conservative-led Barnet LBC.
He warned such an approach meant ‘you have to pay twice to get a decent service, and the sense of value for money [becomes] a crude cost-cutting exercise rather than making best use of public money in an area’.
These factors, combined with the Conservatives ‘unashamedly top down’ – a self-imposed term used last week by shadow Treasury minister, Phillip Hammond – approach to dictating local service cuts, present to voters distinct policy programmes, despite the superficial localist policy convergence exacerbated by the recession.
‘Beneath the surface, where all parties seem to favour localism, there are some sharp choices... to be made at the next election,’ Mr Denham told the RSA.
But, having taken the reins so late in the electoral cycle, does he have sufficient time to deliver Labour’s programme and communicate these choices effectively?
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