Where Now for European Social Democracy? - Policy Network

PATRICK DIAMOND 35have hardened their attitude to the public sector, judging onlycentralised state provision to be compatible with the commitmentto equity.The provision of public services by traditional state providers isregarded by many in the party as the touchstone of social justice.Hence the raging disputes since 1997 over Public Private Partnershipprojects for capital infrastructure, the use of private agencies in theNHS and schools, establishing ‘foundation hospitals’ in the healthservice, and the outsourcing of public administration functions toprivate operators.This orthodoxy on public services has also been reinforced byLabour’s abandonment of the rhetoric and aspiration of socialisttransformation that reached its climax with Nye Bevan in the 1950s. Bydiscarding the bold aim of replacing capitalism with socialism, aminority in the Party have settled for a more modest and conservativedefence of the traditional Welfare State as the pinnacle of socialistambition.Public services are rightly fundamental to the social democraticconception of the good society. But the removal of one rigid orthodoxyabout markets is in danger of hardening new orthodoxies in relation tothe public sector. As Andrew Gamble has persuasively argued 10 , thequestion of whether there should be public services at all has beenconfused with how the provision itself is delivered.Public services and the public sector have been equatedunambiguously when they are in fact quite different entities. That thepublic sector should be regarded as an island of altruism in a sea ofprivate interest and greed, and private profit must never be allowedto intrude, is obviously too simplistic.This intransigence puts at risk the continuous innovation essentialto achieving Labour’s aspirations for public services. The foundingprinciples of the public service to which Labour is most attached, theNHS, are that it should be universal and free at the point of delivery,not that it should be provided through a particular structure or set ofemployees.PPPs are intended not to weaken public provision, but to add a newdimension drawing on capabilities across both the state and private