Leviathan

WHILE the gruesome fate of Britain’s tabloids is played out with full furore this week, another British media institution is being re-made more quietly, but still definitively. The new BBC Trust chairman, Lord Patten, has delivered his first major speech. While stopping short of blood, sweat and tears, it offers new austerity and differing expectations to his predecessor.

The Beeb has never sounded enthusiastic about pruning itself back, either in terms of its services or expenditure. Sometimes, it is forced to do so: but the tone has generally been defensive. The lacklustre former chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, was inclined to make quiet recommendations and then sit back to discover whether the management at TV Centre felt like carrying them out. That tendency to rest on laurels continues. The director general, Mark Thompson, interviewed in the New Statesman, says that "pay had come down significantly". He has already forgone a bonus and instigated a pay freeze for top management.

That hardly answers the broader question of an upper-end salary structure, frequently out of step with the leaner TV commercial sector. Lord Patten is allergic to this anomaly and he is saying so rather loudly, by targeting a subject the DG does not want to focus on at this late stage in his tenure. Most intriguing, for a senior Tory grandee, Lord Patten also embraces the idea of the BBC accepting the principle of a "pay multiple" so that the public can see exactly how the salaries of those at the top of the BBC compare with those in the rest of the organisation. This is the first example Leviathan can find of a senior figure in a public institution in Britain wholeheartedly embracing the idea put forward by the Work Foundation's social democrat boss Will Hutton. Mr Hutton asserts that the public sector should limit the income of its highest earners, compared to the least well paid.

General Patten is in full military campaign mode with the notion. "There is further to go—both in making further reductions and securing public confidence," he says. No kidding. e laggardly approach of the BBC to reforming pay for its top brass has been as toxic with its own modestly remunerated programme-makers as it is with licence-fee payers. Lord Patten also argues that the publicly funded BBC "needs to distance itself" from the commercial market. This is a trickier ask. Talent can travel, and a broadcaster which relies on arguments about its its reach, as well as quality, can’t be entirely resistant to commercial pressures if it wants to retain good people. Still, the new chairman is right to identify that a desire to keep up with the Joneses, in terms of financial deals for star presenters and key talent, has at times lead to foolish decisions to pay eye-watering sums to household names.

Your blogger (an occasional, modestly remunerated broadcaster on the BBC) notes that Lord Patten signals that he hopes the present director general will stay, while gently opening up his requirements for a successor. He or she must be prepared to accept the “pay multiple” restriction; in other words, come cheaper than the existing version. The cost model is to be easyJet, rather than British Airways first class.

This is unlikely to be the chairman's last broadside, and few managers today in the public sector will risk a row by defending high pay. In the labyrinthine corridors of the BBC, it feels as if a new era has already begun.

IT HAS taken a few years but Conservative ministers are beginning to utter the long forbidden words "grammar schools" in the debate about the proper mix in education reform. Nick Gibb, the schools minister, says that existing state grammars would be able to take advantage of new rules to admit extra students without seeking the permission of local authorities. Even more controversially, he has suggested they encourage social mobility.

His colleague, David Willetts, now universities minister, enraged the Tory ranks and lost his job as education spokesman in opposition for saying exactly the opposite. Mr Gibb was pointing out that, among the 158,000 children in the rump of grammar schools in England, poorer children perform almost as well as their peers. What he didn’t dwell on was Mr Willetts’s central point: that a combination of selection-by-house-price and middle-class parents tutoring younger children for 11+ entry effectively means that the social selection takes place rather earlier. This is something that those who want to expand grammars tend to neglect.

More usefully, Mr Gibb called on existing grammars to form partnerships with local comprehensives to encourage the teaching of difficult academic subjects. One very positive thing happening in education today is the breakdown of the old barriers between types of schools and sectors. The government wants something in return—namely that grammars opt into becoming academies. This will create an anomalous situation in which existing selective schools "would be able to take advantage of crucial freedoms" (Mr Gibb) and continue selecting their pupils. Other academies, while enjoying freedoms in organizing themselves, are obliged to stick with the existing comprehensive approach to intake.

Why transform grammars into academies? Because Michael Gove and his education team are well aware that their major expansion of the academy programme must be seen to show results a lot better than the remaining comprehensive schools. No one has quite explained what will happen to them. They feel like the unloved residue of previous policies—which they are. Having grammar schools within the academy fold helps ensure that the exam passes will look good when we come to assess the impact of the Gove-ite reforms. It does, however, leave another riddle for perplexed parents deciphering the system. When is an academy not an academy? When it’s a grammar school.

SO EVOLUTION, not revolution, is to be the way forward on British health care. The NHS Future Forum was convened by the Government to signal a change of direction in health-care reform. It has duly delivered just that: unsurprisingly, given that the panel of experts were largely culled from the NHS and attendant organisations in their current form. There was only modest input from private sector providers or outside experts, for instance.

Besides the restoration of a lot more oversight and consultation (otherwise known as more tiers of NHS bureaucracy), the key finding of NHS Future Forum is that the regulator’s primary duty to promote has been "significantly diluted".

The regulator, Monitor, should not be devoted to the task of promoting choice and competition. The new aim of Monitor is to promote collaboration and integration between providers. However Number 10 describes this alchemy, it is a significant departure from its original intentions. Ministers have said that there is nothing in the review which stops private providers continuing to provide services within the NHS. This is true: but what has very clearly been cast aside is any impetus from the centre to encourage more private providers or indeed investors. Some may regard that as reassurance. The Labour leadership has said it will vote against the white paper whatever it contains, on the grounds that if the coalition is doing it, it must be suspect.

The retreat does however create a hole where the heart of the reforms used to be. Private-sector management and areas of practice and innovation providing competition to the NHS are one way in which standards can be pushed up, in a sector where cost tends to grow faster than outcomes (see the Obama reform debate about coverage versus cost-effectiveness). That, rather than some reckless disregard for the patient, is what has driven several other European countries to have mixed health-care systems—and in some cases, to farm out management of entire services to providers who can deliver them at a lower cost than the state can manage.

Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said changes to Monitor's role would be a "step in the right direction". But what exactly is the direction of the reforms? Britain has an NHS which is costly, facing a spending squeeze and in which productivity has not kept pace with expenditure. "Integration, collaboration and quality", the watchwords of the review, sound comforting. We are not much closer, however, to finding out how they are to be delivered. A political patch-up is not the same as an advance for the NHS.

IT WOULD appear that association with the Big Society is something of an albatross. As eagerly as David Cameron has ridden in to re-explain the idea, few in the inner counsels of government now think it will be something to boast about when the time for re-election draws near. Lord Wei, the former management consultant sent to the Lords to be a figurehead for the project, has just announced his resignation to work for a charity. A spokesman told the Guardian that Lord Wei had completed the task of developing the policy—and thus there was no need to replace him. This is akin to saying that Andrew Lansley has completed a task of developing health policy, and so there is no need to replace him either. Not many at Westminster would take bets on that.

Lord Wei himself sounds like a disappointed man, speaking of the "modest" role he was able to play. The story is symptomatic of the broader problems of the Big Society as a guiding idea. More than the government has been prepared to admit, it arises from a desire to save state expenditure. But this context has proven difficult for those, like Lord Wei, who have to flesh out a nebulous policy. 

The prime minister recently spoke warmly of charitable and voluntary bodies innovating public services in their communities. Truly, these are often more flexible and less bureaucratic than state-run ones. Alas, these are the very bodies threatened with loss of funding—frequently delivered through local authority grants—as the cuts are implemented this financial year. However great Mr Cameron's faith in local green shoots springing up to replace the tangled undergrowth of state provision, it is hardly realistic to expect this to happen on any major scale, when the most experienced voluntary and charitable sector groups are facing incisions into their budgets. 

Even in the cabinet office, where the Big Society duo Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin have their lair, Leviathan detects a falling enthusiasm for discussing the "Bigsoc". It is interesting too that the Liberal Democrats haven’t taken up the idea with any enthusiasm. Nick Clegg is focusing on restoring more local accountability to health and education reforms instead. One of his allies describes it merely as a "device to salve guilty Tory consciences". That is putting it too harshly. Mr Cameron and his Bigsoc architect Steve Hilton genuinely believe that there is more commitment, knowledge and ability lurking in communities than the state can unleash alone—and they're right. But their flagship idea is beginning to look like New Labour's Third Way: an idea that came and went, leaving not much trace in the real world and precious few adherents. The Big Society is already on its second relaunch since Mr Cameron took power. Leviathan doubts it will get a third.

KENNETH Clarke, for so long the favourite politician among fans of the liberal Conservative breed, this week introduced a new phrase into the political lexicon: "To do a Ken". It can henceforth be applied to those in public life who propose something in such a way that it alienates people long before they have though about what it entails, let alone whether it might be beneficial. Mr Clarke's distinctions between "classic rape", date rape and other varieties sounded just awful, not least because they were cast in the breezy tone of a barrister sounding off in the golf club bar, rather than a serious ministerial reckoning with a serious crime.

Nonetheless, Mr Clarke was opening up a discussion on sentence tariffs which is a proper part of his job. No one likes to talk of "degrees of rape", with the accompanying implication that some are less reprehensible than others. It does not follow, however, that every offence that falls into the category should attract precisely the same sentence or that the tariff should never be questioned. Labour itself recognised this under its "tough on crime" leader, Tony Blair. It established that a statutory rape involving minors close to the age of consent and arising from sexual experimentation should attract a tariff less than that of what Mr Clarke would call "classic rape". All of these calls are controversial, but the point of appointing a liberal justice secretary is not to avoid the argument, but to make the best case possible for sensible distinctions. Many Liberal Democrats in the House are unsure whether to censure Mr Clarke for his tone and phrasing, or to support his more discriminating approach to sentencing. 

In the hue and cry that has followed, another inconvenient truth has been concealed: namely that the pressure on Mr Clarke to reduce prison numbers is directly linked to the desire by his colleague George Osborne to impose public-spending cuts across the board. However many people the Conservative base might like to put behind bars, the money for prisons, like much else, is simply running out. Either Mr Cameron has to reverse that particular ferret and say that his own brand of "tough on crime" comes before all other considerations, or he has to make the best argument he can out of Mr Clarke's fundamental belief that too many people who do not need to be in jail are being sent there. It is an issue which tugs away relentlessly at the Coalition's tender parts—and it divides many liberal Conservatives from the majority in the party (and its natural supporters). Therefore, the prime minister's hope was to stave the matter off until the tariffs were proposed. Mr Clarke's early radio outing and a day of slithering apologies put paid to that. A classic case of what not to say and, just as important, how not to say it. But the subject itself can't be so easily dismissed.

TWO of the ministers responsible for public-sector reform plans have had an absolutely dreadful week in the Commons. Andrew Lansley bore the look and sad defiance of a man who knows that he has lost prime ministerial support on a major bill. Given that the pause button has been pressed on his NHS reforms and the noises from Number 10 suggest a major retreat on GP commissioning, it's an act of cruelty to haul poor Mr Lansley before the House, only to defend proposals which might well not happen and which he probably won't be in charge of if they do.

More worrying is a shift in the mood in the coalition about radical reform of any sort. Was this not supposed to be an alliance based on the readiness of senior Liberal Democrats and Tories to think the unthinkable in reforming the state? You wouldn't know it from the present debate, which is overwhelmingly about what should not be allowed, rather than what should go ahead or be fully considered in their context.

The next sacrificial lamb on the chopping block was David Willetts, who proposed supply-side reforms to university admissions by lifting the cap on numbers. His intention was to admit more high-scoring students, currently losing out in the race for places in top universities. Because this would increase the cost to the taxpayer, Mr Willetts also wanted to explore other avenues of funding, including employers and charities paying for places and the thorny question of whether some privately funded places should be available to British nationals, as they are for foreign students.

All hell broke loose. Mr Cameron slapped down another reforming minister (he is beginning to make a habit of it) and Mr Willetts retreated before he got properly started. So another big reform topic has been iced for the foreseeable future. Really, you do not need to be a state-slaying fanatic of the Tory right to see there is a problem here. Who needs the Liberal Democrats to block discussions on radical reform when the prime minister is so ably doing that himself?

AN INTRIGUING leaked memo from a meeting between John Cridland, the CBI's chief, and Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, appears in today's Guardian. Mr Maude insists there will be "no return to the 1990s" when it comes to wholesale outsourcing. Who knew we had lived through a decade of sweeping state-retreat? Those of us who have been waiting—for several months already—to see the shape of the delayed white paper on public service reform, sniff change, or at least repositioning. Downing Street is now briefing that no "wholesale privatisations" are planned. This is odd, given that David Cameron promised in February to "end the state's monopoly" in public service provision. It's certainly true that David Cameron, the prime minister, and his deputy Nick Clegg want to see a Big Society expansion in charities and social enterprises providing services. 

But if the intention is to increase innovation and contestability, it is odd to constrain outsourcing without first examining alternatives the private sector could provide. The memo goes on to rule out "excessive profit-making by private sector firms" involved in providing public services. Clearly a fear of "fat cat" headlines has unnerved Mr Maude. But can he be sure that the reinvigorated services Britain needs can be secured while being quite so unfriendly to entrepreneurs who might wish to contribute to reforms? The evidence for charities, social enterprises and mutuals alone filling gaps left by the inefficient state is scanty. Showing that the market is not the alpha and omega of government thinking is prudent. Appearing to rule out commercial alternatives without due consideration is just short-sighted.

Leviathan cannot help but reflect that had this been a leak from a Labour government, the charge would have been that the centre-left was showing its kneejerk hostility to business. We can even imagine Mr Maude saying so in another incarnation. And with restrictions like this, what can the white paper finally say that has not been endorsed or ruled out already?

DO YOU prefer your cuts by amputation or salami slicing? It's a question that sorts one brand of manager in a cost-cutting era from another. Except at the BBC, where the intention seems to be to do both at once, therefore ensuring that neither is done with conviction. The corporation has just announced that it will not be cutting the Asian Network, one of the services it had recently earmarked for closure. A short consultation concluded that the alternative plan—launching a patchwork of services on the  hard-to-receive Medium Wave—would not adequately replace the service offered via the network.  Also, BBC audiences being highly  sensitive to any threatened reductions, the Network's listenership rose as soon as it was threatend with being disbanded. Result: Asian Network will continue to exist, but lose half its funding.

At this time last year, a similar hokey-cokey was conducted on the future of 6 Radio, the indie-music station. It was to be closed in order to show the management was serious about pruning the BBC's sprawling output—and then wasn't. The BBC Trust, responding to indie-loving petition-gatherers, ruled against the management. The Beeb's cuts strategy looks indecisive, to say the least, and at worst chaotic.

In essence, the argument reflects division between salami slicers. Chief among them is BBC director-general Mark Thompson who, having engineered a cuts deal with George Osborne on the eve of the last spending review, baulks at the immediate effect being seen to be an amputation of services. Where the Asian Network or 6 Radio was planned to go, might not one day BBC3 or 4 follow? This is a "legacy question," insiders say, for Mr Thompson. In order to avoid high-profile amputations, the cuts are being "work-streamed"—in other words, visited across the board by a league of senior managers.

This has the effect of demoralising just about everyone, but it spreads the pain, and the blame. Leviathan wonders however whether Lord Patten, the incoming chairman of the BBC Trust, who set a robust tone in his appearance before the Culture Select Committee last week, will share the view that charcuterie is the best way to enact a major funding cut. With the exception of BBC online (undergoing a 25% cull) and the World Service, which has taken a major hit,  very few hard questions have been asked by BBC management of what services deserve to remain and which do not. The outgoing chairman declared that the salami slicing was now in endangering the quality of core programmes and that another approach was needed.  Lord Patten may wish to make a stronger case for amputation.

THE BBC is in some uproar over plans to move "Question Time", its discussion programme, to Glasgow. It has already lost its present editor, who doesn’t fancy a relocation. The programme’s presenter, David Dimbleby, is also unkeen, saying that it is "like trying to report on Holyrood from London. You have to be around swirl of Westminster life." It’s the tip of an argument about the corporation's commitment to boost regional representation by moving programmes to the regions. Whatever the intention, the result has often been to add cost and cumbersome logistics to programme-making.

Now it emerges that staff will have to be flown from Scotland to London to brief Mr Dimbleby. Has the BBC stopped to analyse the growth in its carbon footprint from farming out programmes which have no intrinsic reason to be made outside the capital? Here is a pressing matter for the BBC Trust's new chairman (due to be appointed in the next two weeks) to address. Of course the BBC has a duty to reflect and comment on life in the regions and nations and to ensure its programme diversity covers the whole country, not just London. Also, having invested in vastly expensive buildings in Salford and Glasgow, it clearly feels the need to do something with them (though there may be other commercial answers to that problem).

But existing requirements and programme diversity do not mean that the present policy is the right one—or that it should be continued without further scrutiny. The stumbling block, according to BBC executives, is existing guidelines from Ofcom, agreed under the last government, which specify quotas of output to be made outside London. The media regulator in effect required the BBC to behave like a government quango, dispersing jobs and production, and the BBC duly obliged. Now, with severe cuts to make and a Tory culture secretary saying that he expects Ofcom to play less of a part in policy decisions and stick to regulation, the arrangement needs to be looked at again—both by Ofcom and the BBC, when it gets its new arbiter.