PUBLIC SERVICES: "IT'S NOT JUST MONEY"

11.50.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 9th Apr 2003

South Richmond Liberal Democrats ran the second of their successful political debates on Monday evening April 7th at the White Swan in Old Place Lane Richmond.

The topic for the debate was "Better Public Services – It's Not Just Money" and the principal speaker was Liberal Democrat MEP for the South East, Christopher Huhne, who was introduced to the audience by Susan Kramer.

Mr Huhne, a former award-winning economic journalist, told his audience the Lib Dems needed to find a new "Unique Selling Point" to replace its famous "penny on income tax to pay for education" now that the Government was clearly moving towards increased expenditure on public services.

Mr Huhne identified three main problems with the current state of Britain's public services: too much interference by central government; ongoing funding problems, not just the level, but a constant cycle of boom and bust; and a lack of political accountability.

"No other country tries to run its health service entirely from the centre," Mr Huhne said, "and it's far too big to respond. So when we make mistakes in this country, we make them on a massive scale."

The answer, Mr Huhne said, was decentralisation – of health and education services – to regions, cities and even towns. Regional assemblies should be given the power to vary taxes and held to account for how they spent them.

Liberal Democrats, Mr Huhne suggested, would convert employees' National Insurance Contributions to an earmarked tax which could be varied by each region.

"The key to good local services," said Mr Huhne, "is local control, stability of funding and diversity."

"We need a new localism," the MEP for a region larger than Ireland said. "Our political elites are arthritic – they're too used to being told what to do. Give them back the power and they will develop the responsibility."

"Local resident Peter Willan questioned whether total decentralisation of services could deliver much-needed economies of scale, and whether strategic decisions should not continue to be made centrally. Mr Huhne countered"

"that the current system was certainly not efficient and warned against too close a comparison of service industry with manufacturing."

"Another resident, Jill Grist, clearly pining for French levels of health provision, asked if there would ever be Europe-wide provision of services."

"Not if I have anything to do with it!" was the MEP's response."