Martin Sime is director of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, and writes a monthly column for The Caledonian Mercury.
For devolution’s first decade, it seemed as though Scotland had it made. We made tuition free for Scottish students, introduced free personal care for the elderly and improved public health with the smoking ban. Of course, with 5 per cent annual growth in the Scottish budget, we didn’t have to think very hard about whether all the measures introduced by the new Scottish parliament were achieving all the outcomes we had hoped for.
But the crash, the bail-out and the ensuing recession exacerbated the underlying problems we’ve long grappled with in Scotland.
Alongside a decade of growth in public spending, inequalities have grown, too. Between the highest and lowest achievers at school, between the life expectancy and health of the richest and the poorest, and between the static wages of the lowest paid and the booming bonuses of the highest, our public services have somehow failed to make our country fairer.
This week, the report from the
Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services – chaired by Dr Campbell Christie – put it rather well: “irrespective of the current economic challenges, a radical change in the design and delivery of public services is necessary to tackle the deep-rooted social problems that persist in communities across the country … unless Scotland embraces a radical, new, collaborative culture throughout our public services, both budgets and provision will buckle under the strain.”
It would be easy to underestimate the importance of the commission’s report. There is no single easily repeatable, simple headline that would act as a magic wand to fix our public services.
But for years now, even before the crash, we have been putting off the tough decisions on public services and the way we design, deliver and fund them. In the good times we didn’t have to think about it. In the crash there were more immediate concerns. And over the last year-and-a-half our politicians have put off any meaningful discussion until after the Westminster election, until after the report of Crawford Beveridge’s
Independent Budget Review, and until the Holyrood election was out of the way.
The sheer urgency of the crisis facing Scotland’s public services has been conveniently ignored by many of our politicians. But the Christie report makes it clear that there can be no more excuses – we must change the way we meet the needs of Scotland’s people and we must start changing now.
The commission identified a rapid growth in demand, particularly for older people’s care, as a key factor in driving reform. It highlights that between 2008 and 2033, the number of people aged over 75 will increase by 84 per cent and that there will be a 20 per cent increase in prisoner numbers by 2020. The report estimates that additional demands on social care and justice services will cost more than £27 billion over the next 15 years.
To tackle this demand in a context of a £39 billion shortfall due to government spending cuts, the commission sets out a range of recommendations including a new set of statutory powers and duties for all public service bodies. These would focus on outcomes, as well as reforms to commissioning processes and a revamped concordat between local and national government to clarify roles and responsibilities.
Let’s be clear – now is the time to make change happen. To put people and communities at the heart of public services, to support the most vulnerable and prevent need from arising. The third sector is instrumental to tackling the causes rather than symptoms of social ills, doing things with people not to them and focusing on outcomes rather than structures. This report provides the building blocks – now the Scottish government must act to build a better future and reform our public services.
–
SCVO’s convener, Alison Elliot, was one of the commissioners involved in taking evidence and creating the report. The SCVO chief executive, Martin Sime, was also one of three expert advisers to the commission.
Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
Related posts:
- Opinion: Time for inaction and excuses about cuts is over
- Up to 60,000 public sector jobs to go – budget review
- Shetland Islands Council hit by damning Accounts Commission report