EDWINA HART has placed public service delivery at the centre of her campaign today, arguing that whether or not Wales gets further powers as a result of the All Wales Convention’s report and a referendum, devolution should go much further than Cardiff Bay.
She said: “As the devolution process continues public services cannot exist in hermetically sealed isolation,” she said. As well as protecting local government democracy from arbitrary decisions by review bodies or deliberate undermining by Labour’s political opponents, there also has to be a two way flow of decision making between local authorities and the Welsh Assembly Government.
“While it’s important that we focus on core requirements, we should also give councils greater freedom to take decisions on other local matters. That’s the quid pro quo which grown up government requires. I shall be watching very closely, for example, to see how my policy of transferring responsibility for primary and community health services in Powys to the County Council is working.
“We have to make better use of the considerable talent which exists within our public sector bodies. I would like to see fewer boundaries when it comes to staffing, so that job swaps – to put it simply – can take place where it would be clearly to the advantage of all concerned.
“The priority in all this is the delivery of services. I am not in favour of reorganising local government for its own sake. Where an authority can demonstrate success the case for change will be weak. However where failure is persistent or endemic, will it be impossible to resist.”
It seems appropriate therefore to resurrect our policy profiling feature today, and pinpoint on what the three candidates are saying in their manifestos and platforms.
Over and above today’s statement, Edwina Hart also commits the following:
We have to redesign the relationship between users of services and those who provide them. My vision for the future relies on moving the citizen centre stage, but on the basis of co-production: that users and providers of services will work together, jointly, on securing best outcomes. I believe in collaboration not competition in the provision of services;
Wales is simply too small to sustain wholly separate public services in local government, the civil service, the health service, in higher education and so on. We need a far more permeable set of boundaries between these organisations, so that workers in the Welsh public service can move between them, contributing to the Welsh way of maximising the advantage we have as a small, clever country in which we all work together for the benefit of us all;
Establish a centre for public service improvement, identifying and spreading best practice and innovation across all services;
Set up a Leadership Academy for public service leaders and managers to ensure they have the high-level leadership skills needed to deliver high quality services in Wales;
Reform of local government boundaries does not form part of the One Wales programme and, if I am First Minister, it will not do so this side of an Assembly election. Any proposal of this sort, I believe, would need to make its way into a Party Manifesto and then be endorsed in an election. More generally, while I do not believe that there is anything sacrosanct about having 22 local authorities in Wales, the onus is on those who advocate a different number to make the case for change. The test for local authorities in future must not be structures per se, but delivery of best outcomes for their local citizens. The challenge is changing culture and behaviour, not structures; and
Simplify the relationships between the Assembly Government and local authorities in Wales, focusing relentlessly on the core requirements we make of local councils, while providing greater freedom for local determination of other matters;
Carwyn Jones in his online manifesto also has a section on public services and makes the following commitments:
I have made it clear that I am opposed to privatisation of public services;
Continue to support national pay agreements and maintain our opposition to local pay variation;
Ensure full equal pay audits across the public sector and give priority to equality representatives in the same way we do health and safety reprentatives;
Learn from frontline public service workers. They have a clear view of how services can be made more responsive to citizens. They are at the sharp end and they know what works. We must involve them and service-users in ensuring the better delivery of services, looking to break down bureaucratic practices that put process before people’s needs. We need a proper social partnership across the public sector; and
Allow more flexibility so that people can move between the civil service and other public services, including health, universities and local government, encouraging secondments between the public sector and other bodies such as trades unions, the third sector and the private sector.
Wales is simply too small to sustain wholly separate public services in local government, the civil service, the health service, in higher education and so on. We need a far more permeable set of boundaries between these organisations, so that workers in the Welsh public service can move between them, contributing to the Welsh way of maximising the advantage we have as a small, clever country in which we all work together for the benefit of us all.
Establish a centre for public service improvement, identifying and spreading best practice and innovation across all services.
Set up a Leadership Academy for public service leaders and managers to ensure they have the high-level leadership skills needed to deliver high quality services in Wales.
Huw Lewis’ manifesto does not have a chapter on public services, but does contain the following commitments which have a bearing on this agenda:
Construct a codified, binding Social Partnership which brings unions, government and business together and builds on the Welsh Economic Summits; and
Commit to a renewed and relentless focus on patient outcomes and build a people’s NHS, responsive to shifting public expectations and able to adapt to the demands of a changing Wales.
Huw goes further today during a visit to meet with staff at two busy South Wales hospitals, using the opportunity to indicate how ambulance services might be improved with engagement by giving staff a say in service redesign.
He said: “We have seen absolutely massive problems both at The Royal Gwent and the Heath Hospital in terms of turn around times when ambulances are arriving at A&E and whilst we have seen some improvements, it is clear there is still a way to go. Some months ago I invited the Health Minister to sit down with ambulance crews in my constituency of Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney and I was really impressed with the solutions they were putting forward.
“Improving the ambulance service and increasing reliability and stability in performance is one of my key pledges in my manifesto for change. I think it is absolutely essential that frontline staff, crews and nurses bringing in emergency cases, are given a big say in how reform happens. What is clear to me, in Gwent and across Wales, that some crucial workers in our health system are being asked to do deliver unreasonable results with not enough support, or opportunities to progress.”
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