Arguments have now begun over just what the Blair legacy will be from a decade in Downing Street.
Changes to local government have been tied to the big picture of increased public spending and New Labour’s mantra ‘education, education, education’. At the same time there have been significant disappointments around the attempt to devolve power to regional levels.
The deepest change was the reorganisation of council departments after Lord Laming’s 2003 report into the death of Victoria Climbie. The Government’s response, ‘Every Child Matters’, saw the introduction of area child protection committees and more importantly the creation of children’s services departments in every local authority.
The most contentious issue in local government remains attempts to devolve power out of Whitehall which has brought mixed results. There is also the question of ownership; much of the work was led by John Prescott.
In 1998 legislation established the devolved governments to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a fourth to London. The elections just days before Blair stepped down saw the SNP take power in Holyrood. There may yet be a vote on independence – the very issue that helped destroy Jim Callaghan’s Labour government in the 1970s.
Creating the Greater London Authority came at a price as Blair’s nemesis Ken Livingstone became – to paraphrase William Hague – both his day mayor and his nightmare. Enthusiasm for elected mayors has waned; the election of ‘Robocop’ Ray Mallon in Middlesbrough in spite of new Labour’s best efforts was the final nail in the coffin.
Northern Ireland is a central part of the Blair success story with a radical transformation from war zone to enterprise zone but it has been a bumpy ride. The Good Friday Agreement brought peace but the Assembly collapsed after spying allegations and direct rule returned. Yet the impossible has happened only days before Blair’s notice to quit when Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness agreed to share power.
Efforts to create regional power in England have been far less successful. The vision of a UK divided into 12 vast regional constituencies failed to find favour with the electorate. In 2004 the voters of the North East threw out the planned elected regional assembly. The idea is still being pursued through the regional development agencies.
Regeneration has been the unsung success story and many involved in thousands of community projects across the country have long given up on the hope that Blair would promote their achievements.
Big cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham have been given makeovers costing billions of pounds while London has become a global hub that could rival a small country.
The 2012 Olympics will transform East London from what has been a slum area for generations but the price will run into billions and voters have yet to be won over.
Public spending is foundation of everything done since Blair entered Downing Street; though the arguments over how well it was spent will rage on even the most vocal critics do not deny the quantities of cash that have been pumped in.
Expenditure on public services has soared. The NHS budget has almost trebled to £60bn; spending per head on primary school pupils has doubled; every department of government hands out vastly more cash than it did a decade ago.
Blair’s campaign slogan in 1997 was ‘Education, education, education’ and the issue has seen plenty of change. Spending has risen by least 50% in real terms between 1997/8 and 2004/5 and is projected to rise by even more by 2008/9.
Literacy and numeracy hours have improved standards, a school building programme has improved the core fabric. Recruitment and pay for teachers has also improved.
But the academy programme, which became embroiled in the cash-for-honours row, remains controversial.
Repeated efforts to tackle delinquent youngsters has been patchy; anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) have become a badge of honour for some and a key factor in driving up the number of teenagers in jail.
Health has seen record investment but the dismantling and then reinstating the internal market has brought confusion and financial woes that have impacted on local authorities.
Some experts claim the biggest part of the Blair legacy will be the use of public services to drive forward social justice.
Julian Le Grand of the London School of Economics said: ‘The reforms involving choice and competition that the Government of Tony Blair is introducing into public services such as health and education will make those services not only more responsive and more efficient, but also – contrary to popular belief - more equitable or socially just.’
Perhaps the verdict on Blair’s legacy could be summed up by what became his catchphrase: ‘Lot’s done, still more to do’.
But that is not to say Mr Blair has had no direct impact on housing policy. There are two areas where he has taken a very personal interest – homelessness and anti-social behaviour.
Even before entering Downing Street, Blair committed Labour to repealing parts of the Conservatives’ homelessness reforms. Once in power, he established the social exclusion unit to tackle rough sleeping. For many people, an increase in rough sleeping in the late 1980s and earlier part of the 1990s represented the most visible form of injustice inflicted by Conservative welfare reforms. The early commitment to addressing rough sleeping embodied new Labour’s commitment to social justice.
A new rough sleeper’s unit and the pursuit of reducing rough sleeping by two thirds in three years forged a new form of working partnership between the state and the third sector. The fact that Mr Blair was so closely associated with the target ensured it was a government priority.
Commitments to addressing other aspects of homelessness followed. While Mr Blair himself was no longer so involved in this agenda, it was delegated to his closest ministerial allies – Stephen Byers and then, following Mr Byers’ resignation, Mr Blair’s ex-flatmate Lord Falconer. The latter’s relatively brief period as housing minister in 2001 heralded significant changes in homelessness policy, including new legislation with a strengthened safety net and a focus on preventing homelessness. He also allocated more central government resources to homelessness, broadening the RSU’s approach to other challenges including ending the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families.
Next came a move away from simply seeking to address the structural factors causing homelessness and tackling the problem reactively. A new, more strategic and preventative approach that also considered individual factors was developed.
The shift from structure to the individual was a key feature of the Blairite mode of social policy making. In their own terms, these have been successful initiatives. Rough sleeping has remained low. The bed and breakfast target has been achieved and sustained. The preventative approach to homelessness has reversed the trend of rising numbers of homeless households being accepted for help by local authorities, albeit with misgivings that some councils may be achieving this largely through tighter rationing. Against a background of growing pressures on housing supply, and social housing in particular, these are significant achievements.
The biggest policy challenge undertaken by the social exclusion unit while it still reported to Mr Blair was neighbourhood renewal. While the unit’s previous tasks were tightly defined, the neighbourhood renewal agenda was hugely ambitious, spanning financial inclusion to arts and sports provision in deprived areas.
Anti-social behaviour was one focus which has evolved into a significant policy agenda in its own right. The unit’s work developing the neighbourhood renewal strategy identified the significant problems created by anti-social behaviour. It recognised that while it was a symptom of wider deprivation, anti-social behaviour in itself contributed significantly to the decline of deprived areas. But the lack of a specific policy framework for addressing the problem meant that councils and social landlords were left picking up the pieces.
Belatedly recognising this, a specialist unit was set up in the Home Office at the premier’s request. While this produced some misguided policies, even critics of the housing benefit sanctions proposed for anti-social tenants would acknowledge that this focus, and that of Blair in particular, marked an important evolution in social policy and contributed to a more complete response to the problems of deprived areas.
Underpinning the neighbourhood renewal strategy was a massively ambitious goal: ‘within 10 to 20 years no one should be disadvantaged by where they live’. However, it is fairly safe to say that the neighbourhood renewal target has slipped off the radar, particularly when compared with the commitment that both Mr Blair and Mr Brown are showing to, say, tackling child poverty.
Since launching the strategy, apart from authoring the foreword to a report highlighting limited progress in meeting neighbourhood renewal goals, Mr Blair has said little on the subject.
The agenda has now been subsumed into the Treasury’s catchily monikered Sub-national review of economic development and regeneration.
Most recently Mr Blair has returned to his preferred territory of looking at the individual factors underpinning disadvantage, relaunching the social exclusion unit as a ‘task force’. The task force is very focused again, looking at specific groups deemed at greatest risk of exclusion, such as families with complex problems.
This highlights the key dichotomy of Mr Blair’s approach to social issues. He has been very forward in taking on issues where solutions lie in addressing the individual causes of social problems. Yet his approach has been authoritarian in tone; his policy making appeals to the principle of fairness, emphasising rights and responsibilities.
Many of the initiatives he has personally involved himself in have been based on co-production between the state and third sector – now becoming orthodoxy in much public services reform. His forays into social policy have, by and large, been successful.
Yet what of the big structural factors – like housing supply – which he delegated to Mr Brown? Labour committed itself to addressing the problems caused by the chronic underinvestment in public services and infrastructure that it inherited. After health and education, there has been just about enough money, stretched to the limit with private finance, to improve existing housing stock standards. But not enough for a significant recovery in social house building, even compared with the level of the mid-90s.
What the future holds for these agendas post-Blair is hard to predict. Ambitions will be constrained by the shrinking fiscal envelope. But it seems likely that Mr Brown’s priorities will continue to dominate. First, pursuing the tricky macroeconomic balancing act of keeping house prices high enough to support consumer spending while protecting labour market mobility. Second, meeting aspirations, with a continued focus on appearing to support and extend opportunities for homeownership.
But that can all wait for the succession. Some might criticise Mr Blair for choosing his battles. But there is no question that, where policies have had his attention, his legacy is undeniable and will be lasting.
