Author: abuaro01

Reclaiming Local Democracy: Ines Newman

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In this post Ines Newman describes the argument of her recent book “Reclaiming local democracy: a progressive future for local government“. Ines argues against the market fundamentalism informing the changes in British local government since the 1980’s, outlines an ethical framework to guide decision making by local politicians and argues for a vibrant, and genuine, participatory democracy.

Local government has become increasingly dominated by what George Soros, Joseph Stiglitz and others have called ‘market fundamentalism’. It was Nicholas Ridley (then Environment Secretary with responsibility for local government) who proposed in 1988 that the local state should be an ‘enabler’. Councillors should meet once a year to hand out contracts to the private sector. New Labour furthered this approach, suggesting that ‘community leadership’ and ‘place-shaping’ were the new roles and local authorities should not get distracted by service delivery. This could be left to managers with pressure to perform to targets set by central government. Finally, the Coalition Government has argued that local government should not deliver any services directly but should ‘be excellent and open commissioners of those services which cannot be devolved to individuals and communities.’

In my book, Reclaiming Local Democracy: A progressive future for local government, I argue that the impact of all this has been negative in three ways.   Firstly there is a confused focus on ‘what works’, with limited consideration of the question ‘works for whom?’ The focus is usually on symptoms rather than causes and decision-making is technocratic, concentrating on efficiency and cost.

Secondly, there has been increased marketisation of public services. Michael Sandel has argued that in the USA you can currently buy most things, from prison-cell upgrades to your doctor’s mobile phone number. Market values have come to play a greater and greater role in social life, corroding the way we value public goods, and increasing inequality.

These consequences lead to the third problem:  a growing lack of trust in representative democracy. If decision-making is technocratic and public goods no different from private goods, what is the role of the councillor? ‘Politics’ becomes a dirty word. Instead we are taught to value ‘hard working’ individuals or volunteers, ‘ordinary people’ who do not need public services.

To turn this around, I have argued that local government needs to reignite an interest in political and ethical questions and support participative democracy.

In the book, I draw on political philosophy to argue that local authorities have an obligation to tackle injustice. I develop an ethical framework in the form of a set of eight principles that can be used to interrogate a policy to see if it would shift society from’ how things are ‘to how they ought to be’. The book contains many examples- from fairness commissions to support for new universal free school meals- showing the way local authorities can operationalise these principles.

Localism is a hollow concept. You will always need strong central government to tackle inequality. So the issue is not about devolving minor powers with limited funding. It is about opening up central government to the influence of joint campaigns run by local councillors with their constituents. This would help to reclaim democracy. It requires councillors to promote active citizens and participative democracy and, with their communities, to seek to influence the national agenda, so as to achieve progressive change.

These are profoundly different approaches to local government and have many implications which are discussed further in the book. The enabling council sees its role as ‘smart commissioning’ and reducing cost and in this process undermines an understanding of public goods, community and democracy. The ethical and democratic local authority is focussed outwards, listening to the voices of those who are usually not heard and discussing with their constituents how to make a better world. These processes cement an understanding of citizenship and the common good and make it possible to start to struggle to reclaim local democracy.

Ines Newman is an Honorary Visiting Senior Research Associate at the Department for Politics and Public Policy at DMU and a core member of the CURA team. Ines is a leading expert in local government and public policy and a trustee of the Paddington Development Trust. 

The Visible Hand: George Osborne and the Labour Market

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CURA’s Professor Phil Almond writes about contradictions in  labour market policy that are apparent in the government’s March 2016 budget.

George Osborne’s Budget appears to have been a much less successful exercise in fostering hegemony than his immediate post-election efforts. This is perhaps unsurprising given the contradictions involved in the joint pursuit of austerian governance, traditional Conservative clientelism, and the attempt to manage Conservative Party tensions on Europe through the mechanism of a referendum on European Union membership at a juncture where populist anti-elite pressures of varying political stripes are widespread and growing.

To an employment relations researcher like myself, contradictions are particularly evident in the labour market sphere. In particular, it is worth thinking about the relations between the legislative attack on trade union freedom of the Trade Union Bill (which coincidentally sustained non-fundamental, but non-trivial damage in the House of Lords on the the day of the budget), the National Living Wage, the continued confusion around the introduction of an Apprenticeship Levy, and the wider approach to political economy of the current government.

Of these, the Trade Union Bill is the simplest to decipher, representing as it does a straightforward continuity with Thatcherism. Nobody with experience of the 1980s and 1990s history of regulation of industrial relations would be particularly surprised that a Conservative government would pursue such policies. In industrial relations terms – ignoring for the time being the obvious partisan attack on Labour Party funding – most commentary seems to have concentrated on the increased balloting thresholds for strike action, and to a lesser extent on the issue of trade union facility time. Important as these are, it is regrettable that the proposal to lift the ban on using agency workers to replace permanent staff during strikes, which represents a fundamental challenge to the right to strike as understood in ILO conventions, has not taken greater prominence in the debates on and opposition to the Bill.

The National Living Wage and Apprenticeship Levy, however, need somewhat more thinking about. Having worked as a researcher on wage protection at the time that the National Minimum Wage was proposed and introduced by the first Blair government, and witnessed the extent of Thatcherite-Conservative opposition to the “interference” in the labour market that statutory wage protection represents, it is clear that Osborne represents something of a departure here from Keith Joseph.

Readers of this blog presumably do not require an employment relations academic to point out that the current upgrading of the minimum wage does not represent a progressive policy, coming as it does in the context of a shrinking of the benefits system that of course is profoundly regressive. It is also worth noting in passing the “National Living Wage” is nothing of the kind – any basic or minimum income level, however calculated, clearly has to be expressed on a weekly or monthly basis. Very obviously, if sustenance comes from waged labour, then an hourly rate is only as good as the multiplier of how many hours of work are paid for. Given those at the bottom of the labour market are generally on marginal part-time or zero-hours contracts, a vocabulary of “living” wage is not appropriate. That George Osborne is prepared to use this language as part of a hegemonic strategy is one thing, but those in favour of redistribution to the working poor should not.

Nonetheless, proposing non-trivial increases to minimum wages, in the context of austerian governance, does represent something of a change of thinking as to how the right goes about shrinking the state. The Thatcherite position of avoiding ‘constraints’ on employers in order to encourage the free market to clear has morphed into a position where the over-riding imperative is that the poor are not sustained by the state, even if this involves what a previous generation of Conservatives would have termed “interference” in labour markets. Whether George Osborne is a convert to established social democratic arguments that increasing minimum wages has positive effects on productivity is unclear. Still, to some extent, austerity seems to have trumped the “old school” brand of neo-liberalism of the Thatcher/Major era.

This is also the case with the apprenticeship levy; essentially, a pay-bill tax on large employers to be dedicated to apprenticeship training, sweetened in the Budget by a government top-up. How this will work, in particular what the resources raised will be used for in an, at-best, confusing system of initial vocational training, is unclear. However, some of the motives are not dissimilar to the minimum wage increase; vocational training needs to be improved, and the state does not want to bear the financial or coordination costs, notwithstanding the exceptionally poor degree of coordination between firms on skills and training in the UK. It is worth noting that in my conversations with practitioners aiming to attract foreign direct investment to the UK, it is clear that the idea of a levy has a substantial degree of opposition from mobile firms, including many that do require advanced skills. Again, while individual labour market policies need to be looked at within the context of the overall political economy and distributional policies of the government, it remains interesting that the Osborne strategy does in places require a fairly visible hand.

Phil Almond is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at DMU, a member of CURA and CROWE, a DMU-based research group on organisations, work and employment.

Book Review: What a Waste – Outsourcing and how it Goes Wrong

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In this book review, CURAs Dr. Heather Connolly shares her thoughts on the recent book by Researchers at Manchester Capitalism “What a Waste”. This blog was originally published on the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute’s website.

With increasing numbers of failures and fiascos of outsourced contracts hitting the headlines, the question ‘when will governments ever learn?’ springs readily to mind.  A hard-hitting new book, by researchers at CRESC/Manchester Capitalism, entitled What a Waste: Outsourcing and how it goes wrong have criticised the ‘disastrous’ practice of UK government outsourcing, but argue that the failures and fiascos are effectively pre-designed.  The authors state that ‘there is an overall logic to the process which costs citizens because outsourcing is what happens at the intersection between the political convenience of the (central state) and the opportunism of outsourcing companies and investors’. Outsourcing allows the shift of blame to private sector providers, and government abdicates responsibility for providing underfunded services and ‘toxic activities’ (border control, for example) in favour of private firms with poor management control.

‘The franchise state which exists to award and monitor contracts at the same time strips itself of institutional resources and intelligence previously used to deliver goods and services.  As outsourcing proceeds, the (central and local) state is increasingly disabled in that it no longer has the capability to deliver public services.’

This situation means that giant contractors and the state become bound together in a form of co-dependence and when it goes wrong the blame can easily be laid on outsourcing contractors or the individual public servants who wrote the contract, rather than the government.  Contracts typically cover mundane activities which too often allow profit taking at the expense of the tax payer and the workforce by outsourcers who do not make capital investment or take market risk.

In the last few months there have been a number of failures and fiascos in public sector outsourcing contracts.  In December 2015 a £160m contract between Cornwall County Council and corporate giant BT was scrapped following a High Court ruling.  The 10-year deal, signed in March 2013, was for BT to run IT, human resources and other services for the council. BT tried to fight the Council’s decision to end the contract after only two years but a ruling was made against them stating BT did not provide ‘the service it had promised to the standard it had promised’.  Again in December 2015 an £800million older people’s care contract in Cambridgeshire ended after just eight months because it was ‘no longer financially sustainable’.  These are some of the more ‘mundane’ failures that tend to slip under the radar, not to mention some of the more controversial outsourcing fiascos such as the recent G4S ‘red doors’ for refugees in Middlesbrough or the Clearsprings ‘coloured bands’ for asylum seekers in Cardiff.

What a Waste points out that there have been various experiments around outsourcing in local councils, notably in Birmingham and Barnet.  Barnet was labelled ‘easyCouncil’ by critics that complained services resembled low-cost, no frills airlines such as easyJet.  Other councils, such as Essex, Southampton City, Suffolk and Staffordshire have also taken up the outsourcing model.  However, as they allude to in the book, Northampton County Council (NCC) is taking the process a step further by transferring 3,850 of its 4,000 employees to 4 new dividend-paying service providers which would deliver all the council’s services, including social care for the elderly.  The Chief Executive is pushing through with plans to begin outsourcing the services in a move which he says will make a £148m saving by 2020, though some fear the plan is a step towards privatisation.  Under EU Procurement Law these contracts will have to go out to tender after 3 years, so fears of effective privatisation are well-founded.

The ‘commission-only’ model being adopted by NCC is likely to be increasingly replicated in Conservative-controlled shires and urban areas.  The fact that there is no real reflection as to how these activities will function under this ‘next generation’ council model is evidence to support many of the arguments in What a Waste.

‘The democratic tragedy of the franchise state is that today’s mainstream politicians are not protesting (or even examining) the outcomes of outsourcing but are planning to grant ever more local monopolies from which organised money can take profits (in many cases without the capital investment or revenue risk which legitimate capitalist profit)’.

In a context of austerity, TINA (There Is No Alternative) is brought to the fore in discussions around the need for cuts to local services, and therefore resistance feels muted.  The authors argue that there is an urgent need for resistance around outsourcing as it is spreading though to sectors which should remain under some form of state control:

‘the failure of politicians and policy makers to protest outsourcing has become an urgent matter because the state has outsourced or is now outsourcing services which are part of what we call the ‘foundational economy’ in health, adult care, welfare and security.  Many of these services are or will be used by most families or individuals because the foundational economy is the basis of material security and the infrastructure of civilised life for the whole population’.

The authors of What a Waste argue that government outsourcing should be curbed by politically agreed prohibitions on outsourcing which is not in the public interest.  In an interview for the book one of the authors, Professor Karel Williams, put forward three principles for public sector outsourcing: firstly, no large scale outsourcing in local government where officers and members do not have the expertise to negotiate contracts; secondly, no outsourcing of ‘politically toxic’ services like border controls because government should take responsibility for what it does; and thirdly, no total outsourcing of any important service like provision of care homes because the public sector needs its own expertise.  It seems unlikely that the current government will take heed of any of these principles.

What this book does not offer is a comprehensive strategy for resistance and the ways in which organised groups against outsourcing can fight the plans.  Past experience shows that even where campaigns have had wide levels of support and have made small gains, they have not been sufficient to block major outsourcing plans from going ahead.  A strategy of resistance needs a co-ordinated approach involving multiple groups which means drawing on the different sources of power both in and outside workplaces, organising in the community and through media campaigning and political lobbying.  Two key challenges for building resistance are first, the willingness to act, particularly among local government workers, where a culture of fear may be developed around whose job is ‘at risk’ as a result of outsourcing.  Second, with such campaigns comes the question about the alternatives to outsourcing.  Labour branded its approach to running Lambeth as the ‘John Lewis’ council operating on the basis of mutual and co-operative values. Is this the ‘least worst’ alternative that could be fought for at a local level?

Dr Heather Connolly is Senior Lecturer at the Leicester Business School at DMU, and a core member of the CURA team.

The London Communities Commission: Building Local Capacity

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CURAs Ines Newman writes about the independent London Communities Commission (LCC), which is tasked with looking into how citizens and communities in London’s most deprived areas might be strengthened and supported in these times of austerity.

The LCC was set up in September 2015, with eleven Commissioners from the private, public and voluntary sectors, convened by the Paddington Development Trust and supported by London Funders and City Bridge. Its set up is in response to growing concerns that, without external support and the active engagement of local people, the quality of life there may continue to deteriorate to levels that not only destroy the well-being of tens of thousands of citizens, but pose a threat to the social and economic sustainability of the whole capital.

Local authorities are facing a challenging period with a reduction of central Government grant of 44% in London from 2010-2015. The Spending Review announced further cuts and by the end of this Parliament local authority spending capacity will be lower that of any time since 1948. Not only has this led to a decline in services and under-investment in social housing but research has shown that in areas of greatest need the public sector cuts have led to a decline in bidding for foundation funding and a decline in volunteering. This is because austerity has resulted in a decline in the number of small voluntary and community organisations as well as in a reduction in the capacity of those that survive.

The Commission has highlighted the crucial role of citizens within deprived local London communities. Without local residents being involved in designing the services, which are meant to meet their needs, unsatisfactory solutions will be developed. In this time of austerity, it is essential to draw on potential resources that local communities offer in terms of knowledge, relationships, skills, and their passion and enthusiasm about making a difference to the area in which they live. Citizens are the key assets to healthier social and economic outcomes across London.

With strong leadership, citizens in neighbourhoods can influence new ways of working which not only reduce isolation and ensure access to services but also further develop self-management skills and capacity to increase personal and collective independence. These ways of working can also deal with problems before they become severe: they are the fences on the cliff not the ambulances at the bottom. By identifying and intervening early costs can be saved later. The Commission gathered evidence around new, community-led, ways of working, illustrated in our Report of Evidence. The Commission were excited about these positive initiatives which clearly show how power can be devolved to citizens in areas where there is some sense of belonging and how effective this can be if the devolution is supported by the funders, public, private, and voluntary sector.

However, individual citizens have limited power to change the world. In order to achieve real empowerment, they need to be able to build local support structures through which they can work together and release the value of individual and collective creativity. New citizen-led ways of working also require changes in the way local communities are funded and the terms by which resources get to the acute areas of growing poverty in London.

Commissioning, for example, needs to be radically reconfigured. More than 50 per cent of council spending is on goods and services bought from the private and community and voluntary sectors. Billions of pounds are invested in procurement by councils. In an attempt to save money on commissioning, councils are joining up with other local authorities and contracts are getting bigger and more complex. The result is that only very large organisations have the capacity and financial security to enable them to bid for such contracts. Four major government suppliers – Atos, Capita, G4S and Serco – between them held government contracts worth around £4 billion in 2012-13. The voluntary sector holds only 9 per cent of local contracts by value and 5.6 per cent of central contracts.

The large companies and national voluntary groups who get these contracts sub-contract to smaller voluntary organisation with tight numeric targets on outputs and little money to cover any overheads. Money is paid to the small organisations on results creating cash flow problems and transferring risk. The small organisations have no ability to alter the contract and outputs according to local needs. The funding does not give them the opportunity to build community capacity. They inevitably seek to fulfil their targets by first dealing with cases where they know they can achieve success- picking the low hanging fruit. Those with complex needs are only offered standard services and little time is invested in addressing their needs. Trust and relationships between service providers and those whose needs they are trying to address is broken down.

But commissioning does not need to be like this and there is plenty of evidence of better practice which we discuss in our report. We have amassed a wealth of evidence and are in a position to make recommendations to various bodies and institutions to tackle priority unmet needs and disadvantage in London’s most stressed neighbourhoods. In our recommendations for the Mayoral candidates we suggest that the new Mayor sets out a clear vision and ambition for the future of London to tackle poverty, deprivation, poor health and the increasing polarisation that threatens London’s sustainability. In particular we are recommending that the Mayor, working with the London Boroughs, defines a number of priority areas on the basis of need (Community Action Neighbourhoods). In each neighbourhood, the Mayor would assist the local community in establishing a citizen-led local Joint Action Board (JAB) with partners which would agree the local priority unmet needs together with the actions and outcomes to be achieved over a 5-7 year programme; it would administer, deliver, monitor and be publicly accountable for the programme in a way that ensured the involvement of smaller voluntary organisations. The Mayor would also realise new and imaginative funding mechanisms to support this new approach. Papers for the statutory providers, the corporate sector and the voluntary and community sector itself will follow shortly.

Ines Newman is an Honorary Visiting Senior Research Associate at the Department for Politics and Public Policy at DMU and a core member of the CURA team. Ines is a leading expert in local government and public policy and a trustee of the Paddington Development Trust. Her recent book ‘Reclaiming Local Democracy‘ sets out the principles to inform a progressive future for local government.

 

Taking Power Back: Review by CURA

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Professor Jonathan Davies and Dr Adrian Bua from CURA respond to Simon Parker’s  previous  blog where he explained the argument of his recent book ‘Taking Power Back‘. This blog will be followed over the next few weeks with a reply by Simon.

Taking Power Back is written as a provocation – a manifesto for change – at a moment when the ruthlessly centralising tradition of British politics is under greater critical scrutiny than ever before. As Simon Parker explains in his blog post, current levels of centralisation in British politics are unsustainable and the call for radical decentralisation, driven by the social action of place-based individuals and communities is timely.  Moreover, Simon argues that with the end of austerity nowhere in sight, the halcyon days of the welfare state are in any case well and truly over. Something has to be done.

Simon’s alternative is encapsulated in the idea of ‘commonism’, a new kind of society based on self-help and mutual aid enabled by a more local, relational and supportive state, rather than the over-bearing centralised behemoth developed since the post war era. Simon thinks that we are moving into a conjuncture more favourable to commonism, as experiments proliferate and the state slowly and reluctantly begins to show awareness of its limitations. In his analysis, the push for devolution and localism is more than a mere straw in the wind.   The wave of city deals, with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority at the forefront (which Simon discusses at length) signals an opportunity to develop the ‘commonist’ agenda and forge a path to a more decentralised and democratic polity.  Taking Power Back is at once resolutely pragmatic and visionary.  Commonism is not communism, a system that envisions the entire system of production, distribution and exchange socialised and democratised.  Rather, the practices of commoning sit in a nebulous and uneasy relationship with state and market.  It rests tacitly on re-working the classic state-market-civil society triad.

However, preoccupation with the critique of statism means the triad is never adequately discussed.  For example, Simon is very reticent about markets, corporations and economic crises. Contemporary political economy tells us that states and markets are deeply inter-dependent. Much of what states do in the 21st century is about extending the reach of the profit economy.  Take austerity, a policy regime Simon tends to take for granted: it undermines the resources of localism in ways that seem destined to shrivel the commons.  First, we know that cuts in state funding drive local community organisations to the wall.  Second, government contracts are deeply biased towards corporate contractors and large extra-local civil society organisations (the so-called “primes”), and against local organisations.  Third, austerity welfare and its extraordinarily punitive sanctioning regime so envelops and bureaucratises the lives of millions of unemployed and working poor citizens, that it is hard to envisage them finding the time or cognitive space to do any volunteering or commoning.

These deeply reactionary trends arguably diminish the space for commoning, but perhaps more importantly they point to a huge oversight in Simon’s analysis.  Taking Power Back will not be accomplished by going with the flow, it can only be a deeply conflictual process oriented to reversing malign trends in our society – the expansion of markets and corporations, the boa-constrictor of state regulation and the predatory character of civil society “primes”, all of which conspire to corrode the local and the democratic. Simon’s call for a universal wage (or basic income) to unlock commoning capacity is an acceptance that sharpening inequalities need to be addressed.  Yet, it is hard to see how this can be accomplished without, at the very least, reversing austerity and in the process taking on recalcitrant interests throughout the state, market and corporatised civil society sectors.

Viewed through this lens, the current devolution and localism agendas are deeply problematic, accentuating anti-democratic developments antithetical to ‘commonism’.

Simon acknowledges the anti-democratic manner in which “Devo Manc” was accomplished – a deal struck between local and central state elites. Moreover, greater local responsibility for allocating a shrinking budget presided over by boosterist metro-mayors is no basis for a flourishing municipal commons, particularly under a grossly punitive benefits regime over which the centre exercises an iron grip. This is compounded by declining standards in what researchers at ‘Manchester Capitalism’ have called the ‘foundational economy’. This consists precisely of those businesses and services to meet the basic needs that are the bread and butter of ‘commonism’, yet, the foundational is increasingly beset by casualised work, and operates as a cash cow for big business.

As Simon recognises, under capitalism, technological innovation and productivity do not usher in a world of leisure. They rather concentrate power in the hands of techno-elites and shrink the labour market.  Nowhere is the dystopian character of the digital age clearer than in San Francisco, where the predatory elites of Silicon Valley make the city unliveable for working class people and complain at having to look at the human refuse left in their wake.

We live in a world of confected scarcity (austerity) and ever-rising inequality in a highly precarious global economic conjuncture. Simon is right that a flourishing commons depends on greater equality, in a world of plenty.  But there is a vast gap between our world and the world of the Morrisonian commons.  Taking Power Back offers a welcome stimulus to those thinking about how a better world might come into being. Simon’s wager is that examples of commoning in action can be pedagogic in the sense of showcasing the virtues of “commonism” to all, at a time when elites seem a little more aware of their limitations.  Our concern is that these are not the most powerful trends in our society. It is hard to see the pursuit of social justice as anything other than an elemental struggle in the 21st century, without which new political economies of solidarity will remain confined to the margins.

Professor Jonathan Davies is director and Dr Adrian Bua a core member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity

Taking Power Back: Simon Parker

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We are pleased to launch our book debates series with this blog by Simon Parker. Simon sets out the argument of his recent book ‘Taking Power Back’, where he makes the case for ‘commonism’ – a radical form of democratic decentralisation. Following this post, CURA members Professor Jonathan Davies and Dr Adrian Bua will share their thoughts on Simon’s work, after which Simon will publish a reply to our team’s commentary.

The British state stands poised at a moment of profound change. Caught between the demands of an ageing population and a limited public willingness to pay more tax, public services are under pressure as never before. Institutions from local government to the NHS are finding that their existing models of provision cannot cope with the strain. Something has to give.

Despite our self-image as swashbuckling Anglo-Saxon capitalists, the British are actually fairly statist. Until recently we had a large, highly centralised government machine which we expected to deliver the same outcomes to everyone across the country. We tend to see the world in terms of the market and state, without very much in between. The fact that both of these leviathans have let us down very badly in the recent past explains our national distrust of institutions.

And yet there is something in between state and market – a space for social activity that many people call ‘the commons’. Over the past decade or so we have seen this space being steadily filled by a remarkable flourishing of cooperatives and social enterprises. In my book, Taking Power Back, I argue that this vibrant realm of do-it-yourself social justice is vital to the way we should understand the future of government. We can already see examples of it in action. In my book I describe how initiatives in the UK and beyond such as Occupy Sandy, the extraordinary people-powered disaster relief operation in post-hurricane New York, are building on, and organising, people power to meet their needs and improve lives – without relying on the market or state action

The trends which the World Economic Forum bundles together in its concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will turbo-charge the commons over the next decade or two. This is partly because new technology is making it easier than ever to start to up small social organisations. The overhead costs of creating a company are falling, while the potential to create innovative networked business models is rising. The increasing automation of our jobs may create a world in which we spend less time working creating increased opportunities to transfer effort out of the realm of paid work and into the creative sphere of the commons.

It seems entirely credible that the space vacated by a retreating state could be filled at least partially by a surge in the creative commons. I the book I make the case for two very big changes that can facilitate this transition. First, we will need to support the commons by introducing a universal basic income, compensating people for the automation of work and giving them the time to contribute. Second, we need to radically devolve political power so it is closer citizens, giving individuals the opportunities and capacity they need to help build the civic commons in the places where they live.

It is a huge challenge, but the prize is a radical renewal of government and democracy, in Britain and beyond.

Simon Parker is director of the New Local Government Network and a leading expert in public policy, public services and government.

Participatory Budgeting: Shining light on the well manicured hands on the public purse.

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Jez Hall from the Participatory Budgeting Network argues that the costs are spiralling of a public service culture that is focussed on acute interventions, increasingly relies on private delivery and is driven by the interests of professionals. He argues that participatory budgeting is a tool that can deliver fiscal responsibility and make services more focussed around the needs of citizens.

Advocates for more citizen participation usually discuss Participatory Budgeting, (and similar ideas for direct democracy) as a democratic enhancement – something about fixing democracy, trusting in politics or getting involved. It is as though involvement is the aim.

But a too often undervalued dimension is the cost benefit of participation. We live in expensive bureaucratic systems, where the recurring costs of services make no sense to ordinary people. I believe we need to raise the debate when looking at the different public service choices. Because, from observing Participatory Budgeting  (PB) in action, when given a choice, and good information, and a chance to deliberate ordinary citizens back prevention over an often ridiculous status quo that wastes money and blights lives by focussing on the wrong end of the system. When there is pressure on public budgets it matters who has a say, and who sets the agenda.

Here’s an interesting set of statistics:

“It costs £65,000 to imprison a person in this country once police, court costs and all the other steps are taken into account. After that it costs a further £40,000 for each year they spend incarcerated.” £100,000 for a one year prison sentence. Once you have been into prison you are pretty likely to return. Or suffer limited employment opportunities for your whole life, and you and your family more likely to become dependent on welfare.

Private sector outsourced care for at risk young people can be much expensive and the outcomes often little better. “There are differing views amongst commissioners about the relative costs of their own children’s homes provision to those of the external providers. The DfE Children’s Homes data pack (December 2014) concluded that average unit costs are … around £2,900 per week”. A 2013 survey indicated the most common cost of high intensity outsourced care was £3,000 per week, rising in rare cases to £6,000 per week. That equates to between £150,000 to £300,000 per year.

Then, at the other end of the spectrum, it costs about £5,000 per year to provide a school place in a city like Manchester. So one year of a young person attending school costs about the same as spending 2 weeks in prison, or maybe just a week in intensive residential care.

In health the story is much the same. The unit cost of attending an A&E department is far higher than seeing a GP or community based health worker. This statistic is out of date but still relevant. In 2010 to walk through the door of an A+E department for a brief consultation cost over £125. That’s before receiving any treatment. Yet I, and probably most citizens of the UK, used to free at the point of delivery healthcare, are horrified by the prospect of paying £25 to see a GP, as proposed by the Kings Fund in a report in 2014. “An influential think-tank has recommended the Government considers charging patients up to £25 for a GP appointment, becoming the latest in a series of recent reports mooting the controversial move.”

Best keep people out of prison, hospital and children’s homes then. That requires prevention, something that can only be effectively delivered outside these expensive institutions and within communities. Neighbourliness, good employment, education, and stable families matter a lot, but sometimes it takes professional support to prevent the most at risk going off the rails.

Now, I wonder how much employing a trained youth worker costs? The answer is “around £21,000 a year” – rising to about £35k max – there will be some on-costs on that basic figure, but it gives us a perspective.

And a prison governor earns upward of £180,000 for a difficult high security prison, but more normally “salaries for qualified operational managers start at £32,000 a year, while more senior managers (including governors) can earn around £60,000 pa. It’s a professional salary, but hardly ‘riches beyond the dreams of avarice’… Of course, there are other benefits, including a civil service pension.” A judge earns £130,000 or so. And judges are most unhappy about it. “Almost a third of judges, 31%, said they would consider leaving early in the next five years. The proportion was even higher for high court and appeal court judges. Declines in pay and pensions were the main complaints. Nearly four-fifths said incomes now and after retirement do not adequately reflect the work they do and that they had suffered a loss of net earnings over the past five years.”

It’s tough looking down on society from the top. If the people involved in commissioning services are the people already managing, running or benefiting, there is an obvious bias to backing their own professional approach. That isn’t corruption. It’s human nature. Yet, however well intentioned and informed they may be, it is a capturing of the system by those already benefiting most from it. As a leading public health manager for a big city once said to me “prisons exist to pay for prison staff pensions, and hospitals to pay for consultants golf club memberships”.

This might be a little unfair. But if you care, and professionals in the public sector do care, without a robust process of challenge there is no strong incentive to reduce one’s own role. We have become wedded to expensive sticking plasters that may contain but don’t prevent problems. This was clearly identified in a 2011 report on the future of Scottish public services that raised the problem of ‘producer dominance’. Basically public sector commissioners, left to their own devices, prioritise existing approaches, and de-prioritise prevention. “Government remains the dominant architect and provider of public services. This often results in ‘top-down’, producer- and institution-focussed approaches where the interests of organisations and professional groups come before those of the public.”

Maybe PB can shine a light on that problem – and save taxpayers a bit of money. Putting one less person in prison for a year could pay for at least 3 youth work posts – and who knows how many hundreds of hours of volunteer time at a community based youth club. Each youth worker, properly supported, could prevent a young person being abused, or going to jail. If they stopped just one conviction or referral per year each, then prevention is still a great investment.

Of course there may be lots of solutions, like funding voluntary and community sector providers. Though we need to be careful. The lesson of the Kids Company is that these decisions can’t just be left to politicians either. “Despite lacking robust evidence about the quality of the charity’s outcomes, value for money or governance, Kids Company attracted high profile support from senior Ministers throughout successive Governments, and tens of millions of pounds of public money have been handed to the charity over the course of its existence”.[1]

Whilst I believe in high quality, preventative public spending, that doesn’t mean the money can’t go outside the public sector. But when it does, either to ‘not for profits’, or private sector provision citizens need to be aware of the cost and benefit of that choice. If they were, I doubt that private financing would be as widespread as it is, given its costly nature.

Participation is not just about validating pre-determined choices of so called experts. It is about deliberating between options, suggesting new approaches and making more informed choices. So let’s have a better approach than tick box consultations. Let’s shine a light on some of these costs. Open up how we make these decisions and let the people decide?

Jez Hall is a founding member of Shared Futures. Jez helped found the PB Unit in 2006 and has since then remained a committed advocate of Participatory Budgeting.

PhD Opportunity at CURA: Securitisation in Urban Policy Making

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CURA are delighted to offer a PhD scholarship on Securitisation in Urban Policy Making. The scholarship is available for up to three years full-time study starting October 2016 and provides a bursary of £14,296 PA in addition to University tuition fees. It is available to UK or EU students who are suitably qualified and have outstanding potential as a researcher. Deadline for applications is 29th March 2016.

In offering this scholarship the University aims to further develop its proven research strengths in urban governance, austerity and crises. It is an excellent opportunity for a candidate of exceptional promise to contribute to a stimulating, world-class research environment. The post holder will be contributing to CURA’s interest in crisis and securitisaton in urban policy-making. Interested candidates need to submit a 1500-word proposal addressing one or more of the following issues:

• Are subnational levels of government impacted by national security policy and what are the implications for urban governance?

• How do different ‘modes of governance’ incorporate coercive strategies in urban policy-making process?

• What power relations are developed between state and non-state actors in the securitisation of urban public policy?

• To what extent do community cultural practices infuse meaning to government practices in contexts of violence and insecurity?

Proposals with a focus on countries in Europe and/or the Americas will be preferred, but proposals conducting research in other world regions will be considered.

For a more detailed description of the scholarship, the subject area at DMU and an application pack follow this link. Completed applications should be returned by 29th March 2016 with two supporting references and an academic transcript. Applications are invited from UK or EU students with a Master’s degree or a good first degree (First, 2:1 or equivalent) in a relevant subject. Please quote ref: DMU Research Scholarships 2016: BAL FB1.

Please direct academic queries to Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza on +44 (0)116 2577038 or by email on valeria.guarneros@dmu.ac.uk. For administrative queries contact Morgan Erdlenbruch at Morgan.Erdlenbruch@dmu.ac.uk

Application deadlinePlease quote ref: DMU Research Scholarships 2016: BAL FB1.

Workshop on Resistance and Alternatives to Austerity

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The new Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) at De Montfort University (Leicester) is holding a workshop on Wednesday 18th May 2016 (9.30am-4.30pm) to discuss strategies for resistance and alternatives to austerity in urban settings across the globe. See registration details at the end of the post, for a copy of the programme see here.

“…our rage will be relentless…” Petros Constantinou (Guardian 12/11/15)

Across the globe the deepening of austerity has exposed urban populations across Europe, North America, Latin America, and beyond to worsening living and working conditions, reduced access to public services, and persistent insecurity. As these deleterious effects have become more apparent, so too has the functioning of austerity as a set of policies and practices aimed at deepening and consolidating the discipline of neoliberal capitalism.

This growing clarity – in academia and the public sphere – has led to the tentative emergence of various forms of resistance and alternatives. Mainstream political parties – and even some governments – have gained growing public support from Greece to the UK to Portugal through the adoption of anti-austerity platforms. Traditional trade unions, new social movements, and activists across countries most deeply affected by these new measures have begun to mobilise in new and increasingly combative ways. From mass strikes to everyday acts of refusal, the trend of urban resistance to austerity is growing. To offset the worst of its impact or as a means to overcome the entrenched power and privilege austerity supports, some involved in these resistance(s) have begun to discuss the possibilities of alternatives to austerity – and even to capitalism. How these are manifested and how effectively they can provide tools for thinking about and acting on post-austerity and “post-capitalism”.

It is the aim of our workshop to bring together cross-national comparisons on these themes focused on local urban settings, to explore the similarities and differences in acts of resistance by urban actors, to understand the power and innovativeness of these resistance(s), and to ask how these can offer potential alternative forms of urban governance challenging austerity.

Speakers: Lisa McKenzie (LSE), Phoebe Moore (Middlesex), David Bailey (Birmingham), Saori Shibata (Leiden), Nick Kiersey (Ohio), Lefteris Krestos (Greenwich), Desiree Fields (Sheffield), Lucia Pradella (Kings), Stuart Price, Heather Connolly, Adam Fishwick (DMU)

If you are interested in attending please send an email to Suzanne Walker (swalker@dmu.ac.uk) to register your place.

Workshop on Austerity and Local Economic Development in England: Mapping a Research Agenda

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The Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) at De Montfort University (Leicester)  is holding a two day workshop on May 16th and 17th 2016 that will bring together leading academics to discuss the future research agenda around local economic development and skills in England.

One of the main pledges of the Coalition Government and its Conservative successor has been to ‘empower’ local communities to develop bespoke initiatives that can drive local economic growth, expand employment opportunities and help address sector and regional imbalances within the UK economy. As part of this ‘new localism’, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) have been established which bring together local authorities and business leaders to take forward this agenda. Government policy has also placed ‘cities’ and ‘city-regions’ at the core of its approach, brokering a number of ‘City-Deals’. These policy initiatives come at a time of austerity, with substantial cuts to public spending and local authority budgets.

From the outset, LEPs courted controversy, with many commentators highlighting problems of ‘inadequate resources’, ‘uncertain accountability’ and ‘varying capacity’. Since then resources have been stepped up and the dust has now settled sufficiently to permit a fuller assessment. One issue concerns how LEPs might link skills with economic development. For many years, government policy in England has emphasised skills as being central to economic competitiveness, productivity growth and social inclusion. Some commentators, however, argue that narrowly formulated policy interventions aimed at boosting skills supply often fail to address problems of weak employer demand for, and usage of, skills. Indeed, evidence indicates that the UK has serious problems with ‘over-qualification’ and the under-utilisation of skills, which often have a spatial dimension. Skills policies are likely to work better where they are joined up, and integrated within, a wider suite of policies around economic development, business improvement and innovation that impact on employer demand for skill.

If an integrated approach to skills is to emerge locally, then LEPs are a key mechanism. Much is likely to depend on their ability to engage local businesses and mobilise employer action around skills, an area that has proven to be challenging in the past, as well as build constructive partnerships with education and training providers. The hope might be that this approach would not only allow skills provision to be better tailored to local economic needs but would also be able to raise employer ambition around skills by effecting change in competitive strategies and approaches to work organisation, job design and people management. With all actors – LEPs, councils, employers, education and training providers and individuals – facing austerity, there are many challenges as well as questions. Will local actors be given the resources, freedoms and flexibility to deliver on this agenda? Will employers buy into this? Will policy commitments to ‘localism’ and ‘decentralisation’ be hamstrung by cultures of centralisation within Whitehall departments? Is power really being devolved or just responsibility for cuts? Will local actors find spaces for new, innovative and creative approaches that can be extended and built upon? How all of this will play out remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that there is an exciting and important research agenda here for workshop participants to engage with.

Speakers: David Bailey (Aston University), David Beale (Sheffield University), Gill Bentley (University of Birmingham), Crispian Fuller (Cardiff University), John Harrison, (Loughborough University), Martin Jones (Sheffield University), Ewart Keep (Oxford University), Andy Pike (Newcastle University), John Shutt (Leeds Beckett University), John Tomaney (University College London), Chris Warhurst (Warwick University)

If you are interested in attending please send an email to Suzanne Walker (swalker@dmu.ac.uk) to register your place.