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The public have still failed to grasp realities about the enormous financial pressures facing public services. Paul Buddery and Ashish Prashar, have been meeting people to gauge opinions There has been a lot of talk during the election campaign about the pressures on public services and the need, some time soon, for big cuts. Are the public convinced? When, back in April, we published quantitative research into citizens' views, one statistic which was widely seized on was that 75% of the public agreed with the statement ‘Making public services more efficient can save enough money to help cut government spending, without damaging services the public receive'. Commentators were surprised, even shocked by what appeared to be denial or baseless optimism on a grand scale. It highlighted the massive gulf between policy circles, in which the need for urgent, fundamental and potentially-uncomfortable reform was openly acknowledged, and citizens in general, who were apparently expecting efficiency savings to maintain their services much as before. The public do not seem to have been brought into a frank, adult discussion about the choices ahead. Although the election campaign has probably brought home the scale of the budgetary challenges more widely than before, the political call for ‘change' has remained notably thin on detail, as regards public services. The 2020 Public Services Trust wants to explore in detail what the public really want, expect and will accept from their services, so we have undertaken a second phase of research with Ipsos MORI, this time using qualitative methods to really get under the skin of public attitudes and understand the connection between values, choices and trade-offs. We spoke to citizens in 13 discussion groups in five English towns and cities – Ashford, Kent; Stockport; Oxford; Birmingham; and London. Our groups were composed of a wide range of ethnicities and socio-economic groups, weighted towards regular service-users. The groups disagreed on many issues and were undecided about others. But about one thing they were perfectly clear – public services must be based on security and fairness. No programme of reform will be sustainable unless it delivers these convincingly to the public. Although groups recognised that there were ways above and beyond state action to become more secure in our lives and more confident about the fairness of our relationships with others, citizens looked to public services to provide the ultimate safety net, and arbitrate with authority on the fairness of our wider relationships. When asked what society would be like if there were no public services, a common reaction was ‘chaotic', and that people would be ‘at each other's throats'. The flip side to this anxiety was some real pride – mixed with frequent exasperation – in public services that both express and deliver on security and fairness. ‘It's like the NHS and the Union Jack, they're the same thing,' they said. The public's strong attachment to fairness and security raises many challenges, and one immediate problem – services which could satisfy these demands require that citizens trust their decision-makers. ‘It [the Government] has the main say, so if the top people are playing the strings, then we need to trust in them that they're going to look after us, because we're the people at the bottom.' However, trust is at a low ebb. A sense of disengagement between citizens and decision-makers ran through the discussion groups. Citizens feel that ‘government' or ‘managers' do not really understand the real needs of individuals and communities, leaving them with a sense of being removed from their own services. It seems reasonable to suppose that this lack of trust is fostering a general wariness of reform, in particular, ideas that reduce uniformity and predictability. As well as exploring the public's general attitudes towards public services, the groups looked at specific reform proposals, indicative of the trust's thinking in three areas – resources and the individual; service planning and provision; and local decision-making. Citizens' responses to these often expressed their deeper aspirations or anxieties. For example, the idea of citizen advisers – sometimes called ‘choice advisers' – went down very well, perhaps because of people's more general sense that services are too often removed and unresponsive. Similarly, people were immediately attracted to ideas such as public service mutuals and neighbourhood budgets, which offered them greater control over the services that they felt should be close to them in their daily lives. But even here, lack of trust in the Government's ability to provide fair protections and oversight, tended to dull people's enthusiasm, as they saw looming risks of interest-group capture. So, what types of reform could carry public support? Reform may well need big ideas and clear ideals, but in the current circumstances, it is concrete, practical steps, setting out clear pros and cons, and drawing on the best national or international evidence, that are likely to win consent. Change should be gradual and incremental, growing out of existing structures from the bottom up, rather than descending as grand programmes. Change should go with the grain of people's greater attachment to local, frequently-used services, as being those in which they are most likely to engage in dialogue about innovation. Similarly, citizens' relationships with new and non-core services, such as child care, tend to be both more confident and more adaptable, so these are areas in which it might be possible to make progress relatively quickly, and demonstrate the benefits of new ways of working. Our findings throw up paradoxes and challenges. The public are rather proud of their services, rather dissatisfied about their level of responsiveness, yet cautious about trusting policy-makers – or their fellow citizens – to improve them. Politicians need to engage seriously, concertedly, and honestly with the public about the future of public services in financially straightened times. Huge challenges, such as creating a fair and secure social care settlement for an ageing population, need to be met through mature dialogue and new types of partnership. v The 2020 Public Services Trust believes the public have an appetite for this big conversation, and that getting it under way must the new government's number one priority. Paul Buddery is commission research manager, and Ashish Prashar is communications manager, at 2020 PST communications manager

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WHITEHALL

Time for a reality check

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