Keir Starmer's drive to overhaul public services is failing to live up to its aims of shifting power from Whitehall to local areas, a report from the Institute for Government (IfG) has found. Last summer, the government set out three guiding principles for reform: making public services 'organised around people's lives', improving outcomes by focusing on prevention, and devolving power to local areas. However, the IfG's analysis found that none of these were on course to happen by the next election, due by summer 2029.
Stuart Hoddinott, a public services expert at the IfG who wrote the report, said: 'Our assessment is that by the end of this parliament, on the government's current trajectory, public services will be more centralised, integration will have slowed or even reversed, and a measurable shift towards prevention will not have occurred. This would be a failure on its own terms, and would add up to a historic missed opportunity for a government that has devoted so much energy to public service reform.'
Those with knowledge of Downing Street's aims said the government's ambition to make public services more local had run up against the impulse of many ministers and officials in Whitehall who wanted to keep power in the centre. The report highlighted that in health, one of the big changes had been to abolish NHS England, bringing power more directly under the control of the Department of Health. In local government, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is abolishing the lower tier of local government to bring in bigger unitary councils.
The report said: 'In three reorganisations (the police, local government and the NHS), ministers have chosen to bring smaller organisations together to create fewer bodies spread over larger areas. Rather than devolving power to services at the local level it has revealed a preference for centralisation, with control over four key services (including the NHS) being moved closer to ministers.' It added: 'Other structural changes will at best delay and at worst complicate its objectives of local integration and a shift to prevention. There is a mismatch between its stated aims and how departments are driving change.'
The IfG suggested any effort to change course should be taken by people close to the prime minister, such as his chief secretary, Darren Jones, with the public services cabinet committee as a logical forum for coordination. Jones is leading the government's move to bring in digital ID, which would integrate more public services under one platform. The aim is to deliver 'a new digital state that delivers public services directly to you, a state that can move fast and fix things'. However, it is not known when digital ID will be available for the public to access, with hopes that it will be ready before the 2029 election.
A government spokesperson said: 'People want public services that work for them. The NHS is moving in the right direction with waiting lists at their lowest level for three years and we are fixing the broken education system left by the last government. More widely, we are digitally transforming our services to put more control in the hands of the public, and shifting power away from Westminster and toward local decision-makers who understand their own communities' unique needs.'
