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Social Exclusion Unit

: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which has provided another puzzling example. The SEU's work on antisocial behaviour is impressive. At some point, it talks about early intervention, but I doubt whether, in the SEU's terms, that would include ASBOs for under-10s. I also want draw attention to the SEU document ““Improving Services, Improving Lives””, which is excellent and which provides good analysis and a starting point for action in considering the whole range of public services and how they can be arranged to help the socially excluded. The starting point for the analysis is the obvious but important point that socially excluded people are often more heavily dependent on public services than others. In yesterday's debate on local government finance, I invited the Government to answer a question that relates to ““Improving Services, Improving Lives””, where there might be another tension. If public services are important—I think they are—in improving the lives of the socially excluded, what explanation do the Government have for what appears to be a financial settlement for local government that will provide, outside the education field, an increase of only 1.5 per cent.? Surely that will put severe strain on a range of services, which ““Improving Services, Improving Lives”” considers important to the condition of many people's lives, including housing, youth services and services in relation to antisocial behaviour problems, which we have just been discussing. A below-inflation increase for local government, especially for district councils, will put pressure on the public services that need to be examined from the point of view of social exclusion. That is a short-term point. I want to return to longer-term aspects of the document. I approve of its emphasis on building communities, which is a concept familiar to many of us who were brought up in the Liberal party's community politics tradition. That was ridiculed at the time as pavement politics, but is now becoming mainstream. I am glad that the SEU is part of the mainstreaming of those ideas. The issue involves not just whether what has come to be called ““clean, green and safe”” is at the top of the list for many local communities, but creating a sense of achievement for local people so that they feel that their political priorities and campaigning can bring about change. The document takes that up. That is important because political exclusion is about not only voting, although we will have a long discussion about that next week in relation to the Electoral Administration Bill, but the extent to which people take part in protests and campaigns for change and the barriers they face in taking part in politics. They are not just resource barriers. There is a psychological barrier that is related to discouragement. The key concept is efficacy. People will take part if their experience is that previous campaigns and protests in which they were involved have worked and changed their lives. I could give examples of protests that did not change Government policy and which led to a good deal of disillusionment, although I suppose that this is not the time to mention the protests against the Iraq war. When people are consulted and when their views are taken on board as part of the process that the document describes, it is important that those carrying out the consultation bear it in mind that consulting and then ignoring—or appearing to ignore—what people say can have an adverse long-term effect. A key point about community politics—perhaps it has not quite become mainstream in the same way as other concepts, but there are hints of it in ““Improving Services, Improving Lives””—is that building a community should entail consideration of what sort of community is to be built. What sort of political values should a community use and embody? I am pleased that a key theme in the document is respect—not respect in the terms in which the Prime Minister has been talking about it, but a different sort of respect to which the key is the extent to which public officials respect all citizens in their everyday interactions. The key message in the document—I urge the Government to take this on board as much as possible—is that respect, above all, means treating everyone as a rational being and as a person capable of making their own decisions. In a sense, that is what political freedom is about. That brings me back to the theme of the tension between what the unit proposes and other aspects of Government policy. The document quotes an NHS patient as saying that their doctor puts them ““on an egg timer””. That is their experience of meeting their family practitioner and it is the experience that many people have had when using many aspects of the public service. The question is, why do people have that experience with public services? One obvious answer is the culture of targets and the Government treating public service workers and professionals as assets to be sweated, as opposed to workers and professionals in their own right. The document also talks quite rightly about the principle that public agencies should not be seen to manipulate their clients or public opinion. It is important that someone is treated as a rational person with regard to the choices they are asked to make. However, there is a clear tension with other aspects of Government policy. The obvious example is the fourth option for council housing. Providing people with only three choices, none of which is acceptable to them, is an example of manipulation and the sort of thing that the principle of non-manipulation would rule out. In fact, when councils approach such ballots by simply giving information to tenants and asking them to make up their own minds, they often find themselves criticised because the Government policy is not being pushed more. Again, that demonstrates that there is a serious tension between things that the unit proposes and other aspects of Government policy. It is not enough to consult people on how their services are to be delivered. One must also consult on which services should be delivered. In my own city, many years ago, the then Labour council piloted some of those ideas and had something called the neighbourhood community plan. People in one area of the city said that they wanted a better bus service for their neighbourhood, but the council told them they could not have a better bus service as part of the neighbourhood community plan for the simple reason that supporting public transport was against the policy of the ruling group, which thought it was somebody else's responsibility. That is precisely the approach that breeds disillusionment and disengagement, and precisely the type of political exclusion that should be the focus of the SEU's work. My point about improving services and lives relates to something the Minister said. I remember making this point in Westminster Hall before the summer break, but it bears some repetition: there is a danger in over-targeting public services. Redistribution can happen most effectively and transparently through the tax and benefits system, and we as a party have no problem doing that. However, there is a temptation for politicians who believe in redistribution and equality, as the Minister clearly does, not to want to be caught talking too much and too directly in public about that most direct form of redistribution, but to try to do redistributive politics indirectly by stealth through the differential delivery of public services. I have no problem with the SEU's approach, which ensures fair and universal access to public services. I take it that that is what ““Improving Services, Improving Lives”” is about, and it is welcomed, but I counsel against going too far down a different route. I accept that targeting is the Chancellor's favourite device, but it must not be allowed to undermine the concept of the universality of public services. Public services need consent throughout society. If they are not considered available to all, there is a danger that they will lose that consent. It is important for public services to remain popular with the whole population, and for them not to become associated with helping particular groups alone. The national health service, for example, will not survive if it is perceived merely as a social safety net. The same applies in education, including higher education, and in transport. There is still some tension in Government policy, which the Government need to recognise. They must recognise also that often the tension leads to pressure for more spending. That tension is between a desire to focus the assistance of public services on those who need them most and the desire to widen the consent for and participation in public services by maintaining levels of use in the entire population. I repeat that we as a party find much of the SEU's work to be praiseworthy, and beyond that to be excellent and inspiring. The question for us is the extent to which the Government are committed throughout government to that view.