The 2020 Challenge for Public Services

4th Mar 2009; 18:30

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In a major speech, Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP, will set out his thinking on the priorities for public service policy in the coming decade.

Through investment and reform, substantial improvements have been made to public services over the last decade and the pace of reform, in creating new Academies, establishing Foundation Trusts and transforming welfare, is accelerating.  But over the next decade new trends will change the nature of demands to which public services will have to respond.  These trends are likely to include: a more diverse population, new sources of risk, the information revolution, an ageing society, and profound behavioural challenges (e.g. in relation to public health or the environment).  All this at a time when the economic environment will be much tougher and public services will have to achieve even more within tighter public spending constraints.

Liam will consider how, in the context of these challenges, reform in the next decade will need increasingly to transfer power from the centre to citizens, front line deliverers, and communities.  He will draw on the inspiration of an earlier generation of Labour thinkers and social innovators to look at the role community based social entrepreneurship could play in achieving better public services and how the state can help enable this.

Respondent: Sir Andrew Foster, deputy chairman, Royal Bank of Canada and chair of the Commission on 2020 Public Services

Chair: Ben Lucas, director, the 2020 Public Services Trust

Find out more about the 2020 Public Services Trust at the RSA

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Download the text of Liam Byrne's speech on Public Service Policy.(PDF)

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