Public services will not recover until the 2030s even under a Labour government, and it will take a decade to clear the backlog in the NHS and the courts, a report says.
The study from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a progressive thinktank, outlines the challenges an incoming Labour government would face, with voters impatient for change within a first term.
“The next government will inherit one of the most challenging contexts in terms of public services of any new government since the second world war,” said Harry Quilter-Pinner, an IPPR director, warning that reform and higher spending would be necessary.
Some of the IPPR’s ideas include rolling out AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to the public sector to save an estimated £24bn a year, with a “right to retrain” for workers whose jobs are affected.
Labour is expected to fight the next election with a promise to change public services, but the party will have little money to promise a major spending programme.
In the paper, titled Great government, the IPPR says it will take nearly 10 years to get NHS waiting lists down to 2010 levels.
Its analysis of the court service is equally sobering, with a prediction that it will take until 2033 for case backlogs to fall to pre-pandemic levels.
In education, the IPPR found it would take more than one parliamentary term for secondary schools to reduce the attainment gap between richer and poorer students to 2017 levels.
In polling in the report, a majority of people said many public services were getting worse but they had not abandoned their belief in state-run services, with half of the public willing to pay more tax if the money is spent on areas such as hospitals.
The IPPR, whose work has previously been drawn on by Labour for inspiration, sets out a prescription of “prevention, personalisation and productivity” as the key to improving public services.
It says previous attempts to change public services focused on targets and outcomes, choice and competition, without paying enough attention to “intrinsic motivation”, which can be found with a better trained, more trusted and more autonomous workforce.
Its blueprint for changing public services is likely to be closely examined by Labour. One of its core recommendations is legislating for new missions or overarching goals for the country, such as making the UK the healthiest country, the safest country, and the country with the best start in life. Each mission would have its own independent body, based on the Climate Change Commission, to hold the government to account.
Starmer has already set out his ambition for a mission-led government, including getting Britain building again, taking back the streets from crime, getting the NHS back on its feet, switching on more British energy, and breaking down barriers to opportunity.
The FT…
2023-12-29 17:00:15
Article from www.theguardian.com
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