20 March 2004

Speech by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Paul Boateng MP, at the Nigerian Cabinet Retreat in Abuja

The citizen as customer of public services

Opening words:

1. Your Excellency Mr President, Vice President, Chairman, Ministers, distinguished guests and participants.

2. It is a great pleasure to be with you Mr President, with your Cabinet and permanent secretaries. I would like to thank you for inviting me to attend this presidential retreat – to take part in your deliberations about public service reform, and to share with you – on this occasion – the UK experience.

3. Also Mr President, I was in Cabinet yesterday morning and I bring you the personal greetings and best wishes of the Prime Minister – Tony Blair – and the Chancellor – Gordon Brown. I know Tony Blair values the relationship with you and holds your work in the highest regard.

4. And our two countries share long and close ties. It is a relationship that we in the UK value highly. A message reinforced by the visit of Her Majesty The Queen to Nigeria last year.

5. Britain is committed to working in partnership with Nigeria to support economic and political reform here. We recognise of course the important role that Nigeria plays on the international stage, not least the valuable peacekeeping role that you play in the region, and your leading role in NEPAD. Nigeria is a bulwark of stability and a beacon of hope for the region.

6. Domestically, Nigeria also has a great deal to be proud of – particularly in recent years. The return to democratic rule in 1999, the elections held last year, and the civilian transition that followed have all been very welcome developments. And the presence of all of us, here today together, demonstrates that this civilian government, your government Mr President, wants to listen to and serve the people of Nigeria, as you outlined in your inspirational address.

7. This determination is clear to see in your far-reaching plans for economic, political and social reform.

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8. I arrived only this morning – around 5:40 – at the airport here in Abuja. As I touched down in that airport, named after Dr Azikiwe – a great son of Nigeria and a great son of Africa, I was reflecting on all that has happened and the path that has brought us to this place. In preparation for this retreat I turned to the life and works of this great son of Nigeria and Africa.

9. I began my search in the libraries of Whitehall and Westminster and I found this book – unsurprisingly labelled “Colonial Office” given its age – printed and published here in Nigeria. So all those years ago, some civil servant felt that Dr Azikiwe of Africa should be heard and that British citizens should listen. When I read it, it immediately spoke to me of the challenges we face today:

“It is an immortal privilege to be an instrument of social change for the rehabilitation of my people… I must be humble, I must be God-fearing, I must be self-effacing… I am your humble servant. If my services are inadequate, then dispense with me in the usual constitutional manner.”

“We must not allow the mistakes and disappointments of the past to act as a stumbling block to the hopes and achievements of the future… Nor should we encourage the exploitation of the ignorance and poverty of our people in order to satiate the mercenary motives of the more privileged ones.”

10. Those words echo down the decades. They hang over us all as we participate in this Retreat, that you Mr President have had the foresight to call us to.

11. The Economic Management Team, constituted by you and lead by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, is world class: it is one of the best in Africa today and has already demonstrated that it has the necessary commitment and vision – under your leadership – to drive reform. On the international stage, that economic management team continues to impress, by demonstrating the determination of this administration to push through reforms that will benefit all Nigerians. And the success of the economic team will be critical to the way Nigeria is perceived in the international community.

12. We know that reform can often mean tough choices and tough decisions. You have shown a willingness to put these choices to the people and to make tough decisions. You Mr President, and your Government, are to be applauded for that.

13. Your National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) – launched earlier this week – marks an important achievement: a comprehensive programme of reform developed by Nigerians for Nigerians. The participatory approach you took in drafting it should be a model for other countries. It represents a serious attempt to forge a partnership between the Federal Government, the States, and the people of Nigeria – a partnership that can only reinforce democracy.

14. And we in Britain are keen to support the Nigerian government in your plans for economic reform. And I know that as you begin to focus as a government on the next election – as indeed is the case with my own government back home – you will feel as we feel – the need to deliver real results that are tangible to your citizens. Because it is absolutely vital to deliver change in a modern democracy.

15. We are pleased by the way you have welcomed and commended the work of Dr Wendy Thomson and her team. We stand ready to help you in planning for the next important phase: public service reform.

16. This will not be an easy task. We in the UK have had to face real challenges. A few months ago, Dr Thomson presented a pretty tough report to me and my colleagues telling us that our system of inspection needs to be reformed and changed. We accepted this in full and we are now implementing it. And it is in the implementation where the tough challenges lie. Delivering real changes to the lives of ordinary Nigerians will require nothing less than changing the entire relationship between the state and the citizen.

The imperative

17. To change this relationship, and to turn scepticism and indifference into confidence and trust is a real challenge. To do that, it is important – in the first instance – to acknowledge the degree of poverty that confronts you in your work on public service reform and delivery. You touched on that in your opening remarks Mr President. And there is an old Nigerian proverb, is there not, that ‘truth is bitter’? We know this to be true. But we also know that as we confronted malaria, we turned to quinine. And we all have memories of that first taste of quinine. Bitter at first, but after the bitterness comes relief.

18. In Nigeria, and sub-Saharan Africa more widely, poverty has many dimensions: low income, illiteracy, ill health, gender inequality and environmental degradation. These dimensions – and the persistent inequalities between the rich and the poor, the developed world and the developing world – led to the historic international declaration – every world leader, every major international body, almost every single country – to sign up to the shared task of meeting the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

19. At the heart of that declaration was a clear commitment to ensuring primary education for every child, the reduction of avoidable child and maternal deaths, and the halving of extreme poverty.

20. I had a very salutary experience recently. I was in Lilongwe with other Finance Ministers. We were all of a certain age, all educated in Africa. And when we looked around not one of us would say that in the African country where we were educated there is a higher proportion of children receiving primary education now than there were when we were boys and girls. In every case, less was being spent per head on primary education than back then. So the bitter truth is that in some areas we have gone backward not forward.

21. It is already clear that we are not on target with any of the Millennium Goals. For example, here in Nigeria:

public spending is still, per pupil, less than a dollar a week
where, in 2001, one in five children in this country died under the age of five
where nearly 8 million people suffer from HIV/AIDS
and where health expenditure per capita has been only $8 – compared to around $1750 in the UK

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22. That is why as a nation, the UK under the leadership of Tony Blair with Gordon Brown, as Chancellor is arguing in every meeting globally for the developed world to honour its commitments to the Millennium Development Goals. And for its part the UK has already said it will use its Presidency of the G8 and EU in 2005 to press the case for development and Africa. We welcome and are grateful for the support Nigeria has given to the International Finance Facility. Your support gives that Facility, and the campaign to set it up, much more hope of success.

23. And Nigeria is absolutely key if we are to meet the Millennium Development goals here in Africa. Already 25% of all Africans live in Nigeria, and your population is set to continue growing – if Nigeria doesn’t meet its Goals, Africa as a whole cannot.

24. To escape from poverty here in Nigeria – and elsewhere in Africa – people need to be able to escape from both illness and illiteracy, and many cannot yet do so.

25. Economic growth is itself, of course, important. But it is not enough. In fact, if the economic growth projected for Africa doubles, the continent will still fall short of the basic health and education goals. The recent international Commission on Macroeconomics and Health has highlighted that a substantially increased level of investment in basic health care is needed to drive economic growth.

26. And this is where development – development that makes a difference to the citizen – becomes about delivering effective public services. Here in Nigeria, as in all other countries, that means putting the citizen at the heart of service provision; enabling them to monitor and discipline service providers; and increasing their voice in policy making. It means making the system of delivery and of measuring progress more accountable to the citizen.

PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM

27. I have been asked to speak to you today about the UK’s reform of public services. As in Nigeria, the effective delivery of public services is absolutely crucial to the political position of the Government of which I am part. I hope that you find our experiences – and some of the challenges we have faced and the means with which we have overcome them – useful. That is the value of the dialogue we have developed at every level between our countries.

28. When we came to power, my party had experienced many years – too many years – out of power. However, it was during this period out of power that we developed our programme – our vision – as New Labour. As part of making a modern Britain, we were determined to strengthen our connection with the people. And we saw public services – properly financed and popularly supported – as the key to our return to power. And importantly, the key to our remaining in power so we could do the good we were committed to doing. Resource and reform – hand in hand – as the key to delivery. That is our experience.

29. And so, when we were elected – in 1997 – delivering world-class public services was one of the key planks of our manifesto – health, education, crime. As a result we have increased investment in public services to record levels. But we have also sought to gain the confidence of our own public, and the international markets, and to build this programme of reform on a sound economic base. And that is the key – a foundation of macroeconomic stability and rising productivity to underpin public sector reform.

30. And because of our sound budgeting and good economic growth, we have been able to enjoy the most consistent period of growth in investment in public services ever. A healthy economy means that more money is available for important issues like health and education.

31. It is critical to increase investment in public services – but it is just as critical to sustain that investment, in order to allow for long-term planning. I have to tell you in the spirit of openness and comradeship, that for many years my party did not understand. And it was New Labour – under the leadership of Tony Blair with Gordon Brown, as Chancellor – that embedded this understanding into our thinking. Not to see it as a one-off injection of money, but as an ongoing financial responsibility. Investment must also be linked to reforms that enhance service delivery in order to ensure that resources are focused where it counts – on the citizen. Taxpayers quite rightly expect their investment to yield tangible results.

32. In order to get these results the UK has concentrated its reforms on 3 key areas: firstly on standards and accountability; secondly on setting performance targets and inspections; and last, though not least, on devolving public service delivery – getting it down to the grassroots where it is best delivered. Through all of this runs a constant focus on the customer –delivering flexibility and choice.

33. Setting public service standards, and making the Government accountable to these standards, is at the very core of the UK reform experience.

34. In my country, there has been a real shift away from thinking about inputs and processes towards thinking about the real world outcomes – moving from rhetoric to reality. In other words, rather than letting our own internal processes drive reform, we want the results on the ground to drive it. We are seeking to make a difference to the lives of our citizens – by creating tangible improvements to their experience of public services.

35. For example, on child poverty, we measure progress not by the money we spend but on the outcome. On how many children we lift out of poverty; on how much better their lives become.

36. As with many areas – like passing laws – the easy part is getting everything down in theory. It is far harder to implement change. I know that only too well from my own experience. For some years, I was a Home Office Minister with responsibility for police and prisons. I wanted to improve efficiency in our prisons and to do that I had to ensure there was an element of competition in the provision of custodial prison services. This was very firmly the view of our Government and the Prime Minister.

38. This was not an easy decision and not without its difficulties – we were opposed, very strongly, by prison officers for example. However, not only did we deliver better outcomes in privately run prisons, but when faced with competition, the performance of public sector prisons also showed a dramatic improvement – to the extent that many were later able to win back contracts from the private sector. So, by being guided by the outcome, not the process, I was able to bring about a real improvement in efficiency.

39. Another benefit of focusing on results – and the customer experience – is that targets sometimes need to change to reflect changing realities. In the police service, we have had many improvements – which have caused many aspects of crime to fall – including domestic burglary, car theft and violent crime. However robberies and muggings in the street continued to increase against our targeted reduction levels. It was clear to see that robberies had become a specific problem, and one that the public were increasingly concerned about. In order to tackle this specific area, we introduced a Street-crime Initiative – which in turn has led to a 38% fall in robberies. So again, focusing on the specific outcomes, and the customer experience, has allowed us to alter our policies and achieve continuous improvement.

40. Central to that was our own engagement as Ministers, under the leadership of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister would call together all those Ministers who had responsibility for the policy along with chief constables, local government, magistrates and those responsible for implementation. At these stocktakes, key issues were discussed and performance against targets assessed. And let us be clear – nothing focuses the mind more on delivery than the presence of the Minister responsible and the Prime Minister.

41. I first saw this as a young boy in Ghana when my father was Education Minister. He would sometimes take me with him on unannounced visits to rural schools – he had done his homework and asked the right questions. “Where did you spend your budget?”, “Where are the teachers that you receive funding for?”. He would probe and challenge the answers, seeking to satisfy himself personally that the school was delivering. And this hands on approach still remains relevant.

42. In the UK the Treasury – our Finance Ministry – plays a key role, under Chancellor Gordon Brown’s leadership, in constructing the spending reviews that drive the investment in public services. As the Cabinet Minister responsible for public spending this involves a substantial amount of my time.

43. And in this process it is essential that we draw on all expertise – not just Ministers and civil servants but also those that will play a role in implementation. There will always be different views but discussion and diverse ideas help us arrive at informed decisions. Our role, as Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, is to take a lead in this work and delivers better outcomes worthy of our citizens.

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44. The Government needs to be accountable when it comes to standards in services and their improvement – or lack of improvement. To be held accountable, we have to be both transparent and honest about progress… We believe that it is only right that people should know what they are getting for their money, and so we provide the public with the information to make judgments about our progress and performance.

45. In the UK, this involves the publication of all sorts of comparable data, from league tables for schools and star ratings for hospitals to the publication of performance information on local waste collection and recycling. Each country needs to adapt this to their own situation.

46. In addition, all our Governmental Departments report on their progress twice a year and, from last April, we have put in place a system of regular web-based reporting in order to ensure that we are held fully accountable. This top-down accountability creates the political will and incentives for delivering reform.

47. As I start to bring my comments to a close, I would like to touch on the use of performance targets. In the UK, Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets are the key method used to measure performance.

48. And, importantly, targets provide a basis for monitoring performance. Being clear about what we are aiming to achieve, and tracking progress, allows us to see if what we are doing is working. Effective monitoring helps my Government to make better decisions about how it allocates its resources.

49. Targets should not necessarily be seen as a tool for increasing centralized control. In the UK they are, in fact, central to the process of devolution: getting rid of input-focused and interventionist controls has allowed local solutions to grow upwards and deliver the outcomes that matter most.

50. We have found that effective public service delivery cannot be imposed from the top. In our experience, national targets work best when they are matched by devolution, accountability and participation.

The Nigerian situation

51. Talking about the “customer” is not a simple thing when – as in Nigeria – the customer is a diverse rather than a unified group. This is of course crucial when we talk about putting the customer at the centre of reform. For you in Nigeria, we know that there are issues of access to services – some customers cannot get into the shop. So initial efforts may need to focus on getting them into the shop – improving their access in the first place, before trying to measure customer satisfaction.

52. We are delighted to be here with you today to share our challenges. The key recommendations that are made in Dr Thomson’s report are based on some of the main organizing principles of reform in the UK. Including:

The formation of national standards in a framework of standards and accountability
Devolution to the front line so that decisions are made closer to the point at which customers access the service
And flexibility in methods of delivery to the consumer

53. As relevant in Nigeria as they are in the UK. And in Nigeria so very vital to the future of the nation. Even on basic healthcare, immunization has already been highlighted as one of these key priorities.

Conclusion

54. I end as I began, with that great son of Nigeria and Africa. He was reflecting, as we all do, on our responsibilities and the scale of those responsibilities that we carry on our frail shoulders. Dr Azikiwe said:

“This is a chance of lifetime to serve those who have been placed in questionable circumstances by the social forces of history. I pray to God to give me the faith and the courage so that I will live up to expectation.”

55. We all feel the burden of expectation that falls on our shoulders today:

“So let it be, Creator mine,
whose skilful hands and thought divine
did mould my frame without a blame,
and gave to me this fleeting flame.

That in this span of strife and hate,
Buttressed by irony of fate,
Grant that I live to love mankind
And thoughtless prejudice rescind.

And may I live to help the weak,
And learn to serve the poor and meek,
That when Death wins, I should not miss
The path way to eternal bliss.”