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It is clear that for public services to be driven more by users and professionals, the Government's own role will need to evolve. The new focus will be on setting the overall direction – identifying the biggest priorities, providing the necessary resources and working with professionals, users, local authorities and private and voluntary sectors to speed up innovation and change.

Alongside retaining the capacity to intervene rapidly and effectively to address failure or a crisis, the Government will play a more strategic role:

• establishing overall strategy but holding back from micro-managing the detail of implementation, exemplified by a new constitution for the NHS;
• providing stability, such as through multi-year pay settlements in preference to annual pay deals;
• sharing leadership, learning constantly from those at the cutting edge of change as has been undertaken through the NHS Next Stage Review and the way professionals, parents and young people were involved in the development of the Children's Plan; and
• not controlling everything from Whitehall but giving schools, hospitals, local government and local communities more power and responsibility to decide what is right for their area and to join up services in ways that make sense to them.

From setting the overall objectives, agreeing funding and monitoring minimum standards to intervening to tackle failure, central government still plays a crucial role. But in future it must take a different approach – facilitating and empowering not directing and controlling to achieve truly world class public services.