3 March 2007
In an interview with the BBC recorded ahead of the Policy Review seminar, the Prime Minister spelled out the aims and objectives of the review, and revealed how the public are becoming decision-makers.
Read the interview
Interviewer:
Prime Minister, there have been attempts to gauge what the public really think and what they really want from government before. Why is this different, how important is it and what are the chances of what you hear today actually forming or becoming government policy?
Prime Minister:
What is somewhat different about this process is that we are not just asking people what they think, but we are also trying to put them in the position of the decision makers and get some clear sense of choices and priorities. And you know ten years into one government is quite a good point in time to say well look this is what the last ten years have meant, but what do the next ten years hold and how do we go about it? And I think a lot of the things that they are talking about will inform our policy-making for the future and in perhaps a more fundamental way than people think.
Interviewer:
And what have you heard so far? Well two things really: one, how is the policy review going, is there anything that has been really surprising come out of that; and in terms of asking the public about it, what are they saying to you?
Prime Minister:
I think the things that are surprising are the degree to which, one, the public’s expectations for their public services have risen significantly. People want, expect and demand an awful lot more, and that is perfectly natural incidentally, they are paying their taxes for them, but that is an interesting thing that has come out. I think there is a bigger understanding in a way than I expected of the limits to government and also people’s sense that they have a responsibility as well. So for example in terms of health there is an increasing understanding by people that they have to take some responsibility for their own health if we are all to make our healthcare system work for the future.
And the third thing is that I think we are learning how to try and communicate the necessity for change better, because part of the problem in all this is that the world is changing very, very fast, and in the private sector and in business and where people are making their individual choices in the normal way, they are kind of very used to that change happening and they are assimilating it very easily. When it comes to public services they find it harder to make that continual process of adaptation. And one of the things we are finding in this is that people actually once they get to grips with the complexities of the issues and the choices that are available, they are prepared in fact to come out with quite radical solutions provided they are ones that they think are fair and that work.
Interviewer:
What sort of things?
Prime Minister:
Well for example if you take something like antisocial behaviour, there is a real acceptance of the fact that you are going to need to do different types of things as a community, you know you are going to need to provide a whole range of different services for your young people, but actually there is a very, very slow degree of tolerance for people who are stepping out of line and showing disrespect for the community at large, and a desire for the community itself to have a greater sense of ownership and a greater power to hold to account, whether it is the police, or government, or local authorities and what they are doing. So I think it is an interesting way in which people are both demanding more, accepting a greater sense of responsibility, but also a sort of urgent desire to get on with it.
Interviewer:
And critics inevitably will say well this isn’t so much about listening to the public as being seen to listen to the public, and they will also claim that this is a sign that the government has run out of ideas. What do you say to that? And is there any chance of this helping form government policy?
Prime Minister:
It certainly will help form government policy, and as for the general cynicism about policy, you see the important thing about a dialogue with people, and as I say getting them to sit in the decision-maker’s chair, as well as in the chair of grievance or demand as it were, is that people then understand that politics, you know it isn’t about a whole lot of very bad people who somehow have found their way to positions of public responsibility, kind of doing their own thing, saying no to people for completely perverse reasons, just trying to make a hash of things for the sake of it, you know which is almost the way I think that the public debate, certainly media debate, tends to go at times.
They understand you are making choices, you know there are difficult things. If you decide that you are going to go down this particular path, some people may benefit but some people will feel aggrieved and angry about it. Now what do you then do? Look, you take the debate recently over road pricing and all the rest of it, which is literally just at the start of having a debate about the issue, once you say to people well hang on a minute there are 6 million more cars on the road just in the last 10 years and there are going to be millions more in the next few, and you know how do we make all this work, both in congestion, in terms of fairness in taxation and all the rest of it, you know you find you get into a different debate. Whereas when you are dealing with it just at the level of headlines people kind of, oooh, what are you thinking about that for? You know so you get to the point where you also, particularly in relation to tax and spending, because everyone wants more spending and everyone wants less tax, and at some point you have to say to people well I am sorry but here are the choices, and I think that helps cure some of that idea that politicians you know aren’t prepared to listen.
Politicians are in the listening business because they end up standing for election, but when they are in government they are also in the deciding business, and that is when life gets more difficult. And I think that we do politics a power of good in a way if you are able to have a far more profound dialogue and conversation with people where at least if they still disagreed with the decision-maker, the politician, at the end of it they at least understood why they were doing it and didn’t end up thinking they were doing it for reasons of sort of whimsy or just sheer bloody-mindedness.
Interviewer:
And how is the policy review going? Has it thrown up anything particularly surprising?
Prime Minister:
Yes I think as I said before, I think in respect of the issues to do with public health and people taking more responsibility for their own healthcare, I think there are a lot of issues around that. I think increasingly too that we are reaching a situation where we understand that even though the general burden of government policy may help a lot of people or help a lot of families, that there are groups of people and families, children sometimes, who are really shut out of society as a mainstream and for whom the traditional anti-poverty strategies or equality strategies don’t really work.
Interviewer:
So what are you going to do?
Prime Minister:
I think what you have to do is you have to target measures specifically on those families so that you are realising they have a multiplicity of problems, a very different set of circumstances and you are saying to them look we will give you support, but we also insist that there is something back from you, some responsibility back, and we are prepared to be you know quite tough and rigorous about putting structure and discipline around families or kids who are going off the rails.