Making Public Services Serve the Public
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cabinet Office Minister John
Hutton speech to the Social Market Foundation
24 August 2005
Minister for the Cabinet Office John Hutton today made the case for further
reform of public services to achieve social justice and equality of
opportunity.
He announced a possible new way of measuring how well public services
satisfy their customers, a project to be taken forward by the Cabinet
Office.
He also announced a review of the Charter Mark scheme to recognise good
customer service.
Addressing the Social Market Foundation in a speech entitled ‘Making public
services serve the public’ he made the following points:
-
The public services of the post-war welfare state brought great advances,
but have not been responsive enough to tackle some of the social
divisions in our society – in certain areas opportunity gap between rich
and poor is actually widening. That is why the Government must continue
to transform public services.
-
Where the Government has broken down the old, monolithic model of public
services it is succeeding in delivering better services for the socially
disadvantaged.
-
Now the Government can either truly embrace the goals of social justice
in the twenty first century and be at ease with the modern world around
us; seizing the opportunity to harness and manage the modern tools of
competition and choice to create a public service delivery system capable
of delivering levels of social justice and equality of opportunity that
have always eluded us
-
Or it can retrench – adopting a programme and a rhetoric that seeks to
shield people from change by taking refuge in the language, structures
and institutions of the past that are increasingly irrelevant to the
modern world
-
Empowering public service users themselves is an essential part of that –
that is why the Government must now focus on customer satisfaction as a
key driving force in public service improvement.
-
Individual public services are investing more resources into measuring
and improving customer satisfaction, but there is currently lack of a way
of comparing customer satisfaction across the range of public services.
-
I can announce today that the Cabinet Office is exploring the possibility
of developing a new standard measurement system that can identify, and
then track, how satisfied customers are with the public services they
get. If it can construct a successful model, this will be a powerful
force for change from the ground up – showing which areas of public
services are leading the way in providing a good service to customers and
which need to improve.
-
And I will go further in spreading best practice in customer service
across the public services. I have today appointed Bernard Herdan, Chief
Executive of the Passport Agency to build on the success of the existing
Charter Mark scheme, working with the Cabinet Office, to set new
standards of excellence for services to aim at. Under Mr Herdan's
leadership, the Passport Agency shook off its troubled service history
and now consistently beats the very best of the private sector in
customer satisfaction surveys
Full copies of the speech can be found at www.smf.co.uk[External website]
For further information, contact Nadine Smith in Cabinet Office 020 7276
1203
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