The Notebook: Can Labour reform public services? The early signs are encouraging
Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, Neil Bennett, global co-CEO of H/Advisors, takes the notebook pen to talk the King’s speech, the challenge of reforming public services, and a Netflix recommendation
The big challenge: reforming public services
Today’s King’s Speech is when Labour’s airy rhetoric of change hits the hard reality of legislative grind. The new government is promising us more than 35 bills in the next year, which means it will have its hands full.
I hope this blizzard of legislation does not obscure the government’s main challenge: that it needs to radically reform large swathes of the public sector, even when there is no more money to throw at it. To do that it will need to engage the very best minds to find new ways of delivering better services at lower cost.
The early signs are encouraging. The government is pulling in some significant talent to help, such as Lord Darzi to report on the performance of the NHS and James Timpson as prisons minister. Whether talent will translate into action remains to be seen.
In the quest for greater efficiency, the government needs to look at every corner of the public sector to see how technology and better use of resources can deliver better outcomes. Here are just two possible examples:
- Britain’s decrepit, overcrowded prison estate needs radical reform, and it is clearly high on Sir Keir Starmer’s priority list. While there may be no money to build new prisons, it just so happens that some of the worst of them sit in areas where there is a chronic shortage of affordable housing. In London, Wandsworth, Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs come to mind immediately, all grim gaols that have no place in a 21st century justice system. There are similar examples of the Victorian penal system still operating across Britain.
An enterprising government would arrange for these prisons to be closed and sold to private developers for social housing, just as happened with Holloway some years ago. The funds could then be redeployed building new prisons further out of town where the land would be cheap. With state-of-the-art facilities, these prisons would have radically better outcomes for everyone. Lord Timpson, please note. - Similarly, Britain’s court buildings are often crumbling and leaky. Again, a public/private partnership could be the answer to release some of them for redevelopment, while providing new space elsewhere. For that matter why do so many court appearances have to be in person in a modern digital age? Many hearings are merely procedural and could take place entirely online, saving a fortune in transport and security costs.
There are dozens of potential reforms the government could look at like this. All of them would be difficult to achieve, and would no doubt meet a host of challenges from the ‘can’t do’ mob. But this government has both a need and a powerful mandate to be radical. We will soon see whether it really has the appetite.
The leaks keep flowing
While many things are changing in this turbulent world, one thing remains constant: the financial media’s skill and tenacity at chasing down deal stories. H/Advisors’s forthcoming report on Global M&A communications for the first half of 2024 will show that, even though deal volumes fell by 30 per cent in the period, the rate of leaks remains constant, with 65 per cent of the top 20 transactions being reported by the media before they were formally announced. (A shout out here to Bloomberg that managed to break the news on no fewer than seven of these top 20 deals, including the two largest). This means that CEOs and their teams need to prepare for when, not if, their deal is going to leak.
Once again this shows that all the regulation in the world cannot create an impenetrable barrier to enterprising journalists or stifle the financial and corporate community’s love of gossip and intrigue.
A recommendation
Class Act (Netflix)
I know I was late to the party on this one, but if you haven’t watched it, Class Act – a Netflix miniseries about French businessman Bernard Tapie – is a wonderful show to watch.
Tapie’s life is barely credible. The son of a plumber, he rose to become a pop star, business leader, corporate turnaround expert, owner of Adidas, owner of Marseille football club (that won the Uefa Champions League with him in charge) and ultimately convict when he was found guilty of corruption and bribing footballers. This series charts the extraordinary tale faithfully, revealing much about French business and French society along the way.