John Oxley: There’s no point in cost-effective public services that can’t do their job

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

It is probably rare in these pages to begin by agreeing with Sir Keir Starmer.

In his speech this week about Southport, he was, however, right to focus on the failure of state agencies to deal with Axel Rudakubana before his atrocity in Southport. It is shameful that systems like Prevent are unable to keep us safe, and it is something the Conservatives need an answer to.

If we are to have a credible platform at the next election, it will mean more than talking about how much money we spend on these things, but how they are reformed to make them better.

The missed chances to stop the murderous Rudakubana would be bad enough if it were an isolated incident. Yet every outrage like this seems to be followed up by a similar story of state agencies not being thorough enough or determined enough to stop a readily predictable escalation.

It is a sign that the British state is failing in its most basic duties of keeping the public safe.

I could probably fill my entire word count for this piece simply by reciting the times it has happened. After the Nottingham stabbings in 2023, investigations were launched into the failings of both mental health and police services in how they dealt with the attacker. Reports into the Manchester bombing showed how MI5 missed key chances to stop it and that rescue efforts were hampered by failures in the emergency services. The murder of Sarah Everard uncovered how some of our most elite policing units had failed to notice deeply depraved criminals in their ranks.

The bigger, more wide-ranging scandals are even more shocking. The rape gangs issue is perhaps the most horrifying, where multiple agencies failed to grasp, tackle or even seemingly care much about the issue. But there are others too – the Post Office prosecutions, the infected blood scandal, the crisis in NHS maternity care – all of these involving state bodies struggling to do their job and often covering it up afterwards.

Most of the time, these have not been ideological or politically driven failures. They have happened under both Labour and Tory governments, in eras of austerity and when public spending was more generous. The issue seems to be more structural, cultural and institutional – rooted in a lack of care, enthusiasm or capability – rather than political. Each inquiry that comes around offers up some solutions but fails to properly delve into why these errors happened in the first place. The lessons learned rarely lead to seeing where they need to be applied elsewhere and what other scandals are brewing but not yet noticed.

Understandably, the public are angry about this.

It should go without saying that the state should be trustworthy and capable. So often, however, it seems not just flawed but blind to its own mistakes and intent on dismissing them. Government agencies will never be perfect, and mistakes will happen, but the extent and depth of these failings are baffling to the ordinary voter. There is also a lack of apparent consequences for many of the people involved.

If the Conservatives are serious about governing again, it is something the party needs to get to grips with. Too often, our discussion about public services is centred around funding. Tory governments want to cut waste and reduce taxes, both laudable aims, but there needs to be more focus on how to get the delivery right. The party needs to find a programme of reform that is not just about saving money but about delivering state organisations that are properly effective, honest about their failings and committed to avoiding the mistakes that endanger people.

This should partly be about empowering them. A recent report argued that decades of over-centralisation in the prison service led to poor decision-making and worse outcomes.

There’s a good chance that similar issues have plagued other public services. Giving greater empowerment to those working in these agencies should unlock enthusiasm to go beyond processes and focus on outcomes – balanced with real accountability when things go wrong. The aim should be to build a greater culture of responsibility. It’s worth noting that in the Manchester bombing, one of the most crucial, life-saving decisions made was when a police officer disregarded the rules to keep medical personnel in an area that had (wrongly) been declared too dangerous for them.

There also needs to be a serious conversation about how we staff and support our public bodies. We know that recruitment and retention in lots of aspects of the state sector have struggled in recent years. Many of the most crucial jobs, like social workers, face difficult conditions, dealing with harrowing events, with pay lagging behind equivalent private sector roles. There is no way to attract and retain the best talent for those roles. Crucial frontline roles once garnered real respect and provided a good career. Eroding that too much can, and has, put off people who could make a real difference.

Getting public services to deliver needs to be a key part of any future Conservative manifesto.

Failure to ensure this was part of the reason we lost so badly in 2024. The day-to-day stuff mattered, like NHS waiting lists, but so too did the rare, alarming failures, like those which led to Southport and other attacks. We can strive to deliver services cost-effectively, but we must not neglect the “effective” part. Indeed, some of the better, most successful bits of the last government – Gove on education and Jeremy Hunt on patient safety, were the result of looking beyond the accounts when it came to public services and making real strides on outcomes.

There will also be a discussion within the party about rolling back and shrinking the state. That is an important part of Conservatism, allowing people and businesses to get on with things as freely as possible.

There will, however, always be stuff that the state must do, and we should be keen on ensuring it does it well. When it comes to public safety and the interlocking web of social services, healthcare, the police and security forces, we have not only the right to demand the best but the duty as a government to work on the reforms and systems that ensure it is delivered.

Starmer may have been right in his diagnosis, but there is so far little to suggest that he is capable of delivering the necessary changes to stop these mistakes from happening again. Already, government attention has been drawn to the tangent of knife sale laws, a repeated tactic of leaders when the real problems are too hard to tackle. Stopping recurrences of tragedies like this means really getting to grips with how our public services failed to prevent it, and following up the necessary changes. As an opposition and a future government, the Conservatives need a clear plan on how to do this, and how to build state systems that do what they are expected to, and retain public trust.

The post John Oxley: There’s no point in cost-effective public services that can’t do their job appeared first on Conservative Home.