Politics

21 July 2007

Beneath the dynamic surface, Brown is dismantling Blair’s public service reforms

Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust, for example, has cancelled the contract for BUPA’s clinic without any convincing explanation. This was not at Mr Brown’s behest. But the Trust (itself beset by financial and quality problems) correctly sensed that central government will no longer protect these treatment centres. The BUPA clinic in question was recognised as one of the best, so its fate serves as a warning to any other private firm thinking of committing. There were similar moves in Cumbria last week.

Mr Brown may well rewrite the NHS script in its entirety. One of Alan Johnson’s first acts as Health Secretary was to announce a ‘once-in-a-generation review’ of the NHS. The FESC system which Mr Blair hoped would provide a functioning purchaser-provider split in the NHS has been mysteriously been put on hold by the Treasury. Such acronyms mean little to the outside world (in fact FESC stands for Framework for procuring External Support for Commissioners), but the significance of such changes will be clearly understood throughout the NHS establishment. It means the Brown counter-revolution is quietly well underway.

In education, a twin-track strategy is at work. Publicly, Mr Brown has praised City Academies, the quasi-independent schools which Mr Blair hoped to see spring up. Lord Adonis, joint architect and implementer of the scheme, remains in place as schools minister. Mr Brown’s ministers have openly pledged to expand the scheme. But the new restrictions are strangling the reform into non-existence. The Academies are to lose their independent sponsor, adopt the national curriculum and — crucially — be subject to greater control by town halls.

The whole point of Mr Blair’s Academy programme was that the schools were independent, sometimes explicitly branded like the Harris Academies in south London, always empowered to develop their own ethos away from the dead hand of council officials. Local authorities disliked the idea so much that they would drag Lord Adonis to the High Court attempting to blackball these rival schools. It is not hard to work out how they will use their new powers. The name ‘City Academy’ may continue, but they will be indistinguishable from other schools. Lord Adonis is now running a ghost programme. It is over.