This conference has been produced by a partnership of nine organisations.

Its purpose is to promote "what has worked best" over the last four years in improving public services. And also to draw up a new agenda for further improvement of the public services, by the public services.

Your priorities are the Government’s priorities. We too want to learn what works best, to make services better. We too put delivery of better public services at the top of our post-election agenda. We too will work in partnership.

The priority that this Government has given to the partnership approach seems to me much greater than under previous administrations. Partnership across the board: between the public, voluntary and private sectors; between central and local government; and between managers and staff.

Indeed I have worked in close partnership with some of the Conference sponsors in my previous Ministerial roles:

• with the GMB in the defence of manufacturing jobs as industry Minister in Scotland;

• with the LGA on ambitious Local Transport Plans in my time at the DETR.

In my new role as Minister for the Cabinet Office you have asked me:

• firstly to outline the Government’s strategy for public service improvement;

• secondly, to suggest how we can share best practice across the public sector;

• thirdly, to describe the role of the Prime Minister’s new Delivery Unit in improving public services.

You have also asked how will this help to establish a new approach to improvement which is driven from within the public sector.

How will it help attract, retain and train the highest calibre staff of the kind that we need to drive reform.

How will it help persuade the public that Government and the public sector are sincere when we promise:

• to put their needs before all others;

• to listen and act on their opinions;

• and to deliver best value for the taxes we take from members of the public to pay for our public services.

Just three months ago, this Government was given a clear mandate for a second term to:

• deliver economic stability;

• promote opportunity for all;

• to invest more in the improvement and reform of our public services, especially our schools, our hospitals, our transport, and in tackling crime.

The Prime Minister made it clear that while extra investment is essential, so too is reform, as we rebuild our public services around the needs of our citizens. More specifically, our pupils, our patients, our passengers, and the victims of crime.

We have also made clear our belief that to deliver real and radical change we must work in partnership with public sector staff, the majority of whom, we believe, are also committed to reform and improvement.

We know that excellence cannot be achieved by directing everything from the centre.

We also have to unleash the creativity, focus the commitment of front line staff and encourage diversity of provision at local level.

Our Election Manifesto stated it pretty plainly. I quote:

"Since 1997 there has been investment with reform. Thanks to committed public servants, we have shown that rapid progress is possible. Now is the time to move forward. We promise reform to match. We will decentralise power within a clear framework of national standards and diversity of public services to meet the challenge of rising expectations."

"In all our public services, the key is to devolve and decentralise power to give freedom to frontline staff who perform well, and to change things where there are problems. Services need to be highly responsive to the demands of users. Where the quality is not improving quickly enough, alternative providers should be brought in. Where private sector providers can support public endeavour, we should use them."

"Each service needs the right structure and incentives at local level – decentralisation of power with strong incentives for high performance."

Our Manifesto. I believe that one of the reasons we won that Election was because we rejected short term tax cuts in favour of long-term investment in better public services.

Our core values of social justice and opportunity for all prevailed, based as they are on our core beliefs in society, in community and in partnership.

So we stated our position plainly to all the people before the polls just 3 months ago. And as the Prime Minister said last week, please don’t misrepresent what we were saying or what we are doing in the public sector.

• Education spending is rising at more than 5% a year in real terms, more than in any major EU country.

• Indeed we are the only economy in the world this year that will increase public spending on health and education as a percentage of national income.

• This year public sector salaries are growing at a faster rate than private sector salaries for the first time in years.

And if anyone misrepresents this Government’s commitment to boosting public services, tell them that since 1997 an extra 150,000 staff have been employed in the public sector.

In parallel with that extra investment, the principles for reform were restated by the Prime Minister last week in the text of his speech handed out at the TUC.

• National frameworks of standards and accountability
  
• Within that framework, devolution of power to the local level with the ability to innovate and develop new services in the hands of local leaders.
  
• Better and more flexible rewards and conditions of employment for front-line staff.
  
• More choice for the citizen or the customer. And the ability if provision is poor, for people to have an alternative provider.

Yet again the Prime Minister said bluntly: nobody is talking about privatising the NHS or schools. Nobody has said the private sector is a panacea to sort out our public services.

The key test is, what works best – and sometimes the voluntary or private sector will have a role. Sometimes they won’t. We are in the biggest rebuilding programme in the lifetime of the NHS but clearly the patients treated in the new hospitals and GP premises will be NHS patients. Just as the pupils of the new City Academies will be state school pupils.

Again we set out in the NHS Plan the limited role of the private sector. And the Education White Paper outlines its distinctive approach.

And, plainly, our education and health services are to be run by publicly accountable authorities and delivered by public servants.

Any use of the private sector will not be at the expense of the proper working conditions for staff – which is why we have published proposals to strengthen the TUPE regulations. As Patricia Hewitt stated last week, workers won’t be left in limbo when a public service contract transfers from one company to another. There is an interesting article by Stephen Ward in The Financial Times today on TUPE which you might want to read. Pensions provision is a real concern. It is often complex and costly, from PFI deals to police forces. Again we will consult and consider thoroughly in partnership with the public sector.

We also accept that the way public servants are employed, the inflexibility of their working arrangements, particularly for women with family pressures, needs radical change in some areas.

All this we strive to do in partnership. Through consultation and constructive discussion. A transparent process which should, where possible, also engage our citizens in the cause of civic renewal.

It is important that more people explore choices and express opinions. I read with interest the conclusions of the research which informs our discussions today – and ponder of course the apparent contradictions.

Why do 67% of the stakeholders involved believe public services have got better. And indeed 85% of providers claim they have got better. Yet only 20% of the public shares our belief that things have got better.

I am encouraged that the majority of public sector managers are so positive about the improvements they are delivering. I share their optimism. They have a comprehensive view of what is going on within their own organisations, week in and week out. It is perhaps inevitable that the users of those services, who are unlikely to have that level and consistency of contact, will be slower to recognise the improvements. Therefore we have to work together to highlight the improvements that undoubtedly are being made. And make our public services noticeably better.

Local authorities are central to the achievement of the Government’s ambitions for the public services. It is councils who have the responsibility so often for the delivery of key services – services which make all the difference to people’s day-to-day lives.

Local government – as Stephen Byers pointed out when he spoke to the LGA in July – is a true tier of government.

The White Paper which Stephen Byers is preparing will set out the major agenda of reform and modernisation which we are pursuing. We want to work in partnership with local government to give them the flexibility and the tools they need to develop imaginative new ways of delivering services. Best Value encourages councils to challenge why services are needed, to compare their performance with others, to consult on improvements and to embrace fair competition as a means of securing better services.

We have introduced legislation to give councils a stronger framework to support community leadership, and to modernise their constitutions.

National standards with local delivery - designed around the customer. These are commitments which the best authorities have been making a reality. Strategic partnerships for service delivery are being pioneered by places like Middlesborough, Lincolnshire and Liverpool.

Local Public Service Agreements are another innovation which has been

developed in partnership between local and central government. Twenty pilot agreements have been signed and plans are well advanced in government to roll out these agreements to all first tier authorities within the next two years. This will be a challenge for us as well as individual authorities but represents an opportunity to deliver on national commitments as well as local priorities.

But of course we recognise that more needs to be done.

There are areas where we can do away with unnecessary bureaucracy. When Stephen Byers addressed the LGA he identified issues on which progress was needed – including scaling back the current requirements on councils to produce some 70 separate plans, sorting out consent regimes and reviewing inspection regimes.

We are open to constructive change - perhaps simplifying what has been introduced. We can all identify parts of the agenda where we now need to consolidate, and parts where we need to build on what’s been done with further new measures.

But what I can say is that I am confident that local government supports our aim of continuing over the next four years to give councils the tools, the frameworks, the freedoms, the incentives – so that citizens will receive the local services they deserve.

Let me give you some examples of local government’s contribution to improvements - in our priority areas of delivery:

• In education - LEAs have responded enthusiastically to the new Key Stage 3 (11-14 year olds) programme and to the Excellence in Cities programme and their contribution will be crucial.

• In crime - the local authority role in Crime Reduction Partnerships is vital and will again be critical to delivery.

• In health - social services collaboration with the NHS is important to tackle bed-blocking.
  
• In transport - as I know well from my previous Ministerial job - local transport plans are hugely important to people’s day to day travel.

We are, as promised, delegating investment decisions to local leaders and managers. For instance 75% of NHS resources will be controlled by Primary Care Trusts. Our target for schools is to delegate 90% of funding direct to Head Teachers.

We are also looking at wider reforms of systems across the public sector. Developing the potential of the public workforce through investment in training – leadership colleges for Head Teachers. An NHS university for all staff. A new police training body. Job enrichment and multi-skilling to lift people out of bureaucratic ruts. Further motivated by financial incentives to make a change, and make a difference.

And let me turn to here to the changes at the centre of Government, in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office which we believe will make a difference.

As Minister for the Cabinet Office, I report to the PM and supervise his new Delivery Unit. The Unit, with a staff of about 30, is based in the Cabinet Office. It is led by the PM’s Chief Adviser on Delivery, Professor Michael Barber – who did excellent work in our first term on education. He contributed not only to the improvement in the performance of primary schools, but also, through the Excellence in Cities programme, provided real, practical support to secondary schools in challenging circumstances.

The role of the Delivery Unit is to ensure that during this Parliament the Government achieves its most challenging objectives across four areas of public service – health, education, law and order and transport.

The unit’s work will be carried out by a team of staff with practical experience of delivery, drawn from the public and private sectors.

Our job is to report regularly to the PM on progress towards the achievements targeted in our Public Service Agreements between Departments and the Treasury – with whom we work closely.

Any problems emerging with delivery will be flagged up and tackled in partnership with the Departments at the earliest possible stage.

None of us in the Cabinet Office has a perfect blueprint. We will try to avoid bureaucratic process or trying to micro-manage. We are concerned about outcomes and not just better processes.

We know that one size won’t fit all.

We will try to ensure that what we do is based on best practice in the public or private sectors in the UK or indeed overseas.

Among the issues that Departments’ delivery plans will address are:

• Leadership and accountability;

• levers for change;

• risks and constraints;

• timetable for implementation; and

• interdepartmental co-operation. And with the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor’s cross-cutting teams we will work to join up at all levels, from all directions, to achieve change - witness the Social Exclusion Unit and the related initiatives.

We will be building on the work done in our first term. Many of you will be familiar with the themes in the Modernising Government White Paper and the vision we set out for the modernisation of our public services. A great deal was achieved in four years. As well as the introduction of Public Service Agreements in central and local government and the roll out of Best Value in local authorities, the police and other areas, we have, for example:

• created the Commission for Health Improvement, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence and the NHS modernisation agency;
  
• we have introduced a radical Civil Service reform agenda and launched the Centre for Management and Policy Studies;
  
• made progress towards the 2005 target for roll out of e-services across the public sector;
  
• developed better access to public services – through longer opening hours, online services, call centres.

We have initiated rigorous analysis through the Performance and Innovation Unit in the Cabinet Office. We at the centre will seek wherever possible to spread best practice. Given the size and breadth of the public sector - some 5m people, and around 100,000 delivery units – it is a real challenge for the partnership approach. But the effective identification, dissemination, and, most importantly, adoption of best practice is essential if we are to bring about the first-class public services that users expect and staff want to deliver.

The Cabinet Office has an important role to play alongside organisations such as the Improvement and Development Agency in supporting knowledge transfer. We made a start through, for example, the best practice database on the Cabinet Office web site. And, in partnership with Customs and Excise, the Public Sector Benchmarking Service. But there is more to do which is why we are bringing together our best practice activities in the Centre for Management and Policy Studies to ensure that they are deployed to best effect in support of our delivery agenda.

We also continue to look at new ways to involve front-line staff in tackling red tape and improving service delivery. We have worked recently with the Improvement and Development Agency and a number of local authorities and central government agencies to develop the idea of learning labs. In these labs, staff have been able to develop and implement new ideas leading in many cases to radical improvements in service delivery. We are currently considering with our partners how best to apply these lessons more widely across the public sector.

My other responsibilities in the Cabinet Office include oversight of the Regulatory Impact Unit with its Better Regulation Task Force and e-Government with the e-Envoy, Andrew Pinder.

Lord Haskins' Better Regulation Task Force and the Cabinet Office's Regulatory Impact Unit have already done some excellent work in helping to cut red tape for headteachers, for police and for doctors. And they will continue to do more such valuable work in our four key delivery areas.

Similarly the e-Envoy’s Public Sector Team will work towards the maximum impact on delivery of services from new IT systems, while the Office of Government Commerce, under Peter Gershon, and the Treasury works to professionalise the procurement of big public projects.

Joined up Government in the Cabinet Office mean my units working closely with others in the centres such as the Performance and Innovation Unit and Forward Strategy Unit, the DPM’s Social Exclusion and Regional Co-ordination Units, and Sally Morgan’s work with the Women and Equality Unit. All with a more intense focus on delivery. In addition, Wendy Thomson, who will be known to many of you from her local government experience, is heading the newly set up Office of Public Services Reform, based in the Cabinet Office and reporting to the Prime Minister. Wendy will work for that renaissance in quality and status of public services that we all want.

This Office of Public Services Reform’s wider remit will cover the full range of services including central and local government and public bodies. Working with the Civil Service Corporate Management team and others, Wendy will look more fundamentally at current structures, systems, incentives, skills, and how we measure customer satisfaction.

These will be lean units, built largely with existing Cabinet Office resources, but they will strengthen the centre in the major challenge of this term – how to drive and deliver change.

Our public services symbolise the spirit of community. Collective provision, not the market, is the best way to ensure that the majority gets the opportunity and security that the few at the top take for granted. We all accept that change is essential. But all know it won’t be easy. We will certainly need your help in our second term in office. So from the start, let us work in partnership to ensure a bright future for the public services in Britain.