Setting Our Training Experts Free from Labour’s Paperwork Mountain
Posted by Richard | Filed under Economy, Education, Universities & Skills
Talking with the inspiring Rakesh Ram at Community LD, a town centre group that provides training and support for people seeking employment, I got a clear understanding of what a crushing burden the top down, bureaucracy beloved of Prime Minister Brown can be. Rakesh is local, highly motivated, experienced and capable. In short, he is exactly the sort of person that someone in Bedford would want to turn to get advice and encouragement. However, because of the intrusive, restricting and obsessive requirements of the bureaucracy, Rakesh finds much of his time taken up by the requirements of form filling, and less of his time available for doing what he loves to do –serve the needs of his clients.
In this election , there are competing visions for how we provide the social goods – the schools, the health services, the policing etc – that we all share and we all benefit from. Labour’s proposal is more of the same obsessive and controlling formats of the bureaucratic state. The stifling of local initiative, the restriction on the exercise of judgement by those – the teachers, doctors, police officers etc – who we trust to provide those services here in our local schools, hospital and on our streets. More of the same is what we will get if Mr Brown and Labour are re-elected.
The other model, proposed by Mr Cameron and the Conservatives, is to push authority for our public services down to a local level. We want to empower local communities with enhanced authority over their hospital – with more foundation hospitals; their schools – with more rights for parents and teachers to establish their own schools; and with our local policing – via directly elected heads of our local police authority. We also want to empower more discretion for those who are on the frontline – freeing them up from the “box ticking”, target driven culture that is so loved by the bureaucrats, but so frustrates those whose job it is to provide the services.
This is a big change – and one that will free Rakesh and his team to achieve all they would wish to achieve here for the people of Bedford.
