The prime minister this week managed, for at least 45 minutes, to shift his focus away from the Middle East, Iraq, global warming and his holiday in Miami to the more prosaic world of English council housing management. While this is not his usual beat, Mr Blair, gave it his full attention. An audience of some dozen heads of arm's length management organisations were invited to attend a round table discussion at Number 10 itself at 8am on Tuesday. The meeting had the fingerprints of secretary of state Ruth Kelly all over it, since the PM almost certainly knows more presidents than housing managers and indeed, she sat next to him, since the subject comes under her department. As it happened, she had graced the previous day's front pages because of revelations she was sending her son to a private school. The occasion therefore proved a useful opportunity for Mr Blair to show his solidarity with his embattled minister. But what, then, was the purpose of this high-level summit on a windy morning in January? It soon became plain, from the thrust of his questions and his eager note-taking, that the discussion fed into a bigger picture for the PM. Why, he asked more than once, were ALMOs able to provide a better service for estate tenants compared with when they were run direct by councils? And he listened carefully as speaker after speaker begged the Government to end uncertainty over the future of the four-year-old ALMO programme and confirm them as a permanent feature of housing management. It was clear from his summing up that the PM saw the issue of ALMOs as part of his ongoing struggle to reduce the power of government, central and local, in favour of ‘local people.' Or as he put it: ‘Provided you have the right strategic framework, people best able to make local decisions are local people, not surprisingly. It's best for central and local government to let go.' He also mentioned that a review was currently ‘looking at the role of the state, local and central', and that this discussion which he had ‘found very interesting' was, as a result, ‘timely.' And he added: ‘Over the next few months, I hope you'll see some product out of this.' So, even as the his last few months ebb away, Mr Blair's mind continues to dwell on public services.
