Christie Commission - Ten Years On.

Next week is the tenth anniversary of the report of the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services, known as the Christie Commission. I spent six months working as an expert advisor to the Commission. Sadly, while the principles of the Christie Commission are widely quoted, the delivery has been patchy at best.

 The Commission’s key conclusions were that Scotland’s public services require comprehensive reform by empowering communities, integrating service provision, preventing negative social outcomes and becoming more efficient. 

 

At the time, the Commission's public finance predictions were regarded as pretty grim. However, due to the political choices by the UK Government, which we now call austerity, the cuts were even more severe in practice. The long-term trends around the demand for public services and the impact of demographic change have proved all too accurate. Equally important to the Commission was growing inequality between the top and the bottom 20% in income, employment, and health outcomes. The consequences of disadvantage impose financial costs on public services, estimated at 40%+ of local public service spending. They also recognised the crucial contribution public services made to the Scottish economy and tackled the myth that public services are a drag on economic progress. Sadly forgotten during austerity with consequential damage to the Scottish economy.

 

The Commission identified problems with public service delivery, including fragmented authority and operational duplication, coupled with a top-down approach that designs services for individuals rather than with them. The recommended solutions focused on allowing services and communities to work together to decide what needs to be done, making the best use of all the resources available - taking an integrated long term, preventative approach. Staff should be empowered by leaders to actively seek innovative solutions with a strengthened public service ethos and common training for all staff based on enabling and empowering the lives of people and communities.

 

Ten years on, public service challenges look pretty similar, with the obvious addition of pandemic recovery following on from austerity economics, which created the longest recovery from recession on record. Scotland’s deep-seated inequalities remain largely untouched, and child poverty has increased. Demographic change has only partially been alleviated by increased migration, even that is under threat from Brexit and UK Government immigration policies. Austerity has savagely reduced the public service workforce, particularly in local government, forcing staff to abandon the critical Christie approach of prevention and revert to the statutory minimum at best.  

 

Integration has been limited, even in the vital area of social care. The idea that all public service organisations operating in a local authority area should view themselves as part of a common framework hasn’t happened. The silos that Christie sought to bring down are very much in place. Instead of a bottom-up approach based on empowerment, we have seen the centralisation of services. 

 

Five years after Christie, I wrote a paper for the Reid Foundation on public service reform. This built on the Christie principles with a call to build integrated public services around recognisable communities, based on the principle of subsidiarity with service delivery at the lowest practical level. I argued that the role of the central government should be to set the strategic direction based on outcomes – rather than trying to direct services from Edinburgh. Government should agree on frameworks that allow the local to focus on what matters. This should include a public sector ethos and fair work principles embodied in a national workforce framework. The single public service worker could minimise organisational and professional barriers and provide confidence for staff to engage in service redesign. 

 

As we look to build back better after the pandemic, the principles of integration, prevention empowerment and subsidiarity look as relevant as ever. The question as ever is the political will to make the necessary changes. I hope I won’t be writing a similar blog in 2031, but I wouldn't bet on it! 

The future of work

I have been helping to review the HR policies of a charity as it considers a return to normal operations after the pandemic. We had a false start last year, although the return to work arrangements are still broadly relevant. I did an HR review a couple of years ago, and there was significant opposition from middle managers to the flexible working proposals. Almost all of which subsequently proved to be doable during the pandemic!

 

This is a charity that wants to be viewed as a progressive employer. Sadly, as the recent TUC survey shows, one in ten staff have been put under pressure to return to the workplace contrary to current government guidance. As they say, it is "the tip of the iceberg" of employers ignoring their health and safety responsibilities.  A recent survey found that out of 4,553 office workers in five different countries, every single person reported feeling anxious about the idea of returning to in-person work. A Scottish study also found a wide range of concerns. Official figures show that nearly one in five adults in employment experienced depression at the start of this year. The top causes of return-to-work stress included being exposed to COVID-19, the loss of work flexibility, the added commute, wearing a mask while in the office, and a need for childcare. 56% of respondents reported that their organisation hadn't asked for their opinions about return-to-work policies and procedures. That was the number one priority in the plans we put in place.

 

The UK Government is creating a one-stop-shop watchdog for enforcing employment rights. Responsibility for tackling modern slavery, enforcing the minimum wage and protecting agency workers, currently spread across three different bodies, will be brought under one roof. As the TUC says, the new body looks "heavy and spin, but light on action" as there are no plans to legislate or make new funding available. The TUC action plan offers a more credible enforcement approach. The Scottish Government has made another bid to have employment law devolved as part of its new poverty strategy. This would have more credibility if they used the powers they currently have, including procurement. NHS Education for Scotland recently awarded a contract to Amazon. They confirmed to my FoI request that the Scottish Government Fair Work criteria were NOT applied to the evaluation of bids for this contract. This reinforces the criticisms of Fair Work in the recent Reid Foundation paper.

The return to something approaching normal after the pandemic is an opportunity to think about the future of work as part of a Build Back Better approach. I was pleased to see that Angela Rayner will be looking at this as part of the UK Labour policy review. This has been widely welcomed in recognition of the changes the pandemic will bring, not least a hybrid model of working. It wasn't that long ago when I was making at least a monthly trek from Glasgow to London for meetings, but that world is thankfully gone.

 

Having said that, we should be careful about how we manage this change. The pandemic measures were hastily put in place in most organisations. There has been minimal discussion around what day-to-day working lives might look like, how the benefits of flexibility might be successfully realised, and the longer-term challenges. There is good evidence that employees are more productive, but there are also additional costs. Another study found that only half of the workers felt their employers had adequately supported them in this additional outlay. There are also concerns about a two-tier workforce developing and fears of insecurity and outsourcing. As someone who worked from home before the pandemic, I have some sympathy with the view of anthropologists who have been telling us that it's often the informal, unplanned interactions and rituals that matter most in any work environment. According to a 2017 Co-op and New Economics Foundation report, the cost of loneliness to UK employers was estimated at £2.5bn every year. A guide published by the UK Government identifies five key themes in addressing loneliness at work. 

 

The future of work also has to address other fundamental changes like artificial intelligence and 'spy' technologies at work. The loss of old-style supervision in the workplace is being replaced in some organisations by technologies that allow managers to track workers' keystrokes, mouse movements and the websites they visit. They can take screenshots of employees to check whether they are at their screens and looking attentive, or even use webcam monitoring software that measures eye movements, facial expressions and body language. The organisation I have been working with decided to adopt an 'ethics of care' approach that reviews their surveillance practices and opens a dialogue with workers and their trade unions about the impact. Through collective organising in trade unions, workers can help shape how technological change is implemented in their workplace, and there are some positive examples of this. There is also a need to update the regulatory standards.

 

While we can take some short-term actions to manage a good work approach to the post-pandemic working environment, the future of work needs a long-term approach by governments, employers and trade unions.

Paint Your Town Red

Community Wealth Building is a new kind of economy. It offers a way of addressing the major divides in wealth and opportunity by focusing on local economies. This new book by Matthew Brown and Rhian Jones looks at how the UK’s leading exponent, Preston, took back control of their local economy and how others could do the same. The leading exponent of Community Wealth Building in Scotland is Labour North Ayrshire Council, and the Scottish Government has also announced its intention to develop a country-wide programme.

 At the heart of Community Wealth Building is the belief that ordinary individuals and groups can take ownership, direction, and control of their own resources to improve their own lives. When there is little prospect of economic transformation coming from Westminster, local action is a critical source of hope and change.

 

The book has three parts.

 

Part One looks at the history and thinking behind Community Wealth Building. It makes the political case against austerity economics and the case for a radical alternative. The pandemic has also highlighted the failure of global supply chains and precarious work. Community Wealth Building has its roots in cooperative and other self-governing movements worldwide, and these are explored from the Mondragon cooperative in Spain to the Democracy Collaborative in Cleveland, Ohio. And finally, to Preston and their work with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). The book recognises the importance of local leadership, including Jamie Driscoll in North of Tyne and Joe Cullinane in North Ayrshire, who bring in new ideas tailored to local circumstances.

 

Part Two looks at how the ideas were applied in Preston, not as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ blueprint; instead, it shows how the concept has been used in practice. It has taken Preston from being one of the country’s most deprived and disadvantaged, hit by deindustrialisation, austerity and government funding cuts, to seeing significant economic improvement through shifting spending and investment from external suppliers to local producers and businesses. This chapter shows how it was done, bringing on board the anchor institutions in the city and using the power of public procurement, using case studies to illustrate the mechanisms.

 

Part Three looks at how Community Wealth Building is being applied in different ways across the UK. Devolution has been an important driver, as it allows the nations and regions of the UK to take a different approach from the UK Government’s centralism. North Ayrshire is used as a case study to illustrate how the concept has been applied to reflect the needs of that local authority area. Although welcoming the Scottish Government’s interest, Joe Cullinane emphasises the need for it to be accompanied by a commitment to a transformative agenda, to avoid diluting its potential when scaled-up and to get beyond abstract political platitudes on “inclusive growth” or “well-being”.

 

One aspect of Community Wealth Building that can seem challenging is creating alternative financial institutions after the 2008 financial crisis exposed the failings of the current banking model. The book highlights the role of credit unions and how to establish a mutual ‘people’s bank’. I also liked the chapter that urged less consultancy and more “Let’s do something and see what happens”! 

 

The book’s final part is a guide on ‘How to Paint Your Town Red’. It starts with local government and how it can still offer radical and positive change. Then develops how you can use the council to establish progressive procurement and engage with the trade unions and the pension fund. This includes a useful guide to further resources. This book doesn’t duck the challenges in adopting this model. In particular, it isn’t always easy to evaluate the outcomes, and public engagement is never simple. In Scotland, we have tried a wide range of initiatives, but none have fully achieved citizen buy-in, particularly in disadvantaged areas. 

 

It also recognises some of the political challenges in getting councils to think radically. The recent elections show that the electorate has rewarded councils like Preston. These ideas featured in the Scottish Labour manifesto, but community didn’t feature as strongly as it might have done in the campaign. However, It’s encouraging that Labour’s devolved leaders are to meet regularly to develop ideas like Community Wealth Building. Labour’s electoral path to recovery should be built on localism, not centralisation. 

 

This isn’t an academic evaluation of Community Wealth Building. It aims to explain the concept and help those councillors who want to break away from simply administering the council towards painting their own town red.