Community power and the investment state

Danny Kruger MP Member of Parliament for Devizes @danny_kruger

What existed before big individual freedom. This better Leaning in to this truth will align the government? It wasn’t personal idea, this something more, is desires and inclinations of freedom – it was ‘big society’, and community power. individuals with their family, not all in a good way. In the high community, and ultimately the Victorian period John Stuart Mill nation as a whole, improving trust, wrote of the suffocating pressure tackling the democratic deficit and of social conformity, of the power Centralised building the resilience of the state. of public moral expectation. This bureaucracies are power was worse than state The doctrine of community power coercion, he thought, because it entirely unfitted is a modernised conservatism. “enslaved the mind”, not just the for the nimble, Power properly belongs not just to body. the rich men who led communities digital, diverse in the old days, but to the Big government has had its day. communities themselves. Here is Centralised bureaucracies are 21st century where liberalism is co-opted to entirely unfitted for the nimble, shore up the conservative idea. We digital, diverse 21st century. But can avoid the social suffocation Mill Community power is closer to what will replace them? Some, the objected to (more likely these days nostalgic conservatism than to modern Millites, yearn for freedom to be the new intolerances of modern liberalism because it from both state and society – a critical theory than a resurgent recognises our fundamental need new progressive utopia of personal religiosity) when ordinary people – more fundamental than our need liberty, sans rules or religions or can assert their values through for freedom – for belonging. nations or manners. Others local decision making. Indeed, freedom proceeds from nostalgically evoke a revived belonging: only with the secure Victorian morality in which base of home, only with the Community power is the secret to everyone conforms to the identity learned from others, can levelling up, the magic yeast that bourgeois standard on pain of you safely and effectively venture will make depressed places rise. As social ostracism. Neither will do, into discovery and self-discovery. Professor Sir Paul Collier puts it, though I think the second, nostalgic This unfashionable truth, that ‘we’ there is a “radical uncertainty” vision is closer to the future than precedes ‘I’ in the sequence of life, about what drives local growth. the liberal one. As we dismantle the is the basis of conservatism and bureaucracies of the 20th century the cardinal distinction between it Fittingly, there is no central recipe state we need a better idea than and liberalism. we can apply to every community. liberalism, something more than All we know for sure is that, as money. Bang for buck is by Rather than just thinking of ways to Robert Putnam demonstrated 30 definition larger in areas of existing deliver acute remedial services years ago in his study of the growth: adding a housing estate or with greater efficiency and value regions of Italy, prosperity depends a business park to an affluent town for money, government should on “norms of reciprocity and yields bigger and quicker returns think of ways to generate networks of civic engagement”. than putting these things (let alone community capital. We need an the social infrastructure places ‘investment state’ that helps create Places with high levels of social really need) into a depressed or the civic conditions for prosperity. infrastructure and associative life – ‘left-behind’ area. The system also How do we organise government with churches and clubs and applies a discount rate of 3.5 per to do this work? We are, in the charities, with volunteering and cent per year for capital investment words of John Fonte of the Hudson mutual support – do better – a depreciation forecast that Institute, in the era of “post economically than those without encourages short-term projects democracy”, when elites run the these things. “Civic conditions”, rather than the long-term show with little reference to voters says Putnam, act like “a powerful investments that drive sustained and their representatives. The Blair magnetic field”, pulling social and growth. years saw a transfer of power from economic conditions forward in democratic control to quangos, their wake. Or to put it another way, Our social model similarly inhibits including the European “civics helps to explain economics, the associative life that places and Commission; many were helpfully rather than the reverse.” Strong people need. We have a ‘just in abolished under David Cameron families and communities, in other time’ system of social support, though others were created (like words, reduce economic which essentially means the Public Health England, and indeed dependence and make for a government steps in when things NHS England as a chartered, stronger, more resilient state. have gone wrong, and tries, autonomous body of its own). expensively and often ineptly, to put them right again. Hence the Boris Johnson has rectified the Community power favouring of acute healthcare European mistake, and restored spending over preventative democratic control of our borders is the secret to treatment (the famous ambulances and our laws. He might yet rein in levelling up, the at the bottom of the cliff rather the independence of the health than fences at the top), the vast quangos. But this is not enough. magic yeast that expenditure on prisons compared Indeed, democracy in its formal to youth services, or the cost of sense – the ultimate power of willl make looking after children in care rather Parliament over the bureaucracy of depressed places than investment in families and the state – is not enough, though family support. we do need this very urgently. To rise properly enfranchise the people we These late, reactive, acute need a more distributed model of

interventions are necessary power: more varied, more local, This is the way to level up – but our because of the absence of more informal. current fiscal model hinders it. In a community capital, the assets that nutshell, we send revenue places need to prosper and to spending to poor areas – largely via In the report I recently completed withstand economic shocks. transfers in the welfare system, for the government, Levelling up Community capital could be said to investing in individual people rather our communities: proposals for a consist of human capital (skills and than in civic conditions – while new social covenant, I set out a good mental health); social capital investing capital in the areas that range of policy areas where (the trusting networks that form are already wealthy. community power should replace around institutions and the dominance of large public and associations); and financial capital private sector bureaucracies. These This is because of the way the (wealth, whether liquid or physical, include housing, health and social Treasury calculates value for held by and for communities).

¹ Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993).  Danny Kruger MP, Levelling up Our Communities: Proposals for a New Social Covenant, 2020. care, aspects of criminal justice, exercise of responsibility by the resilience of our towns and villages early years, employment, and myriad organisations now for future generations by allowing refugee support. In all these areas entrusted with it. local systems to develop and we should enable local people, mature according to local needs. front-line professionals and expert Putnam’s work shows that strong non-government organisations to The centre should communities do not erode trust in take more responsibility - to build the central state, but enhance it. systems based on trust and be much smaller, Community power is not an reciprocity rather than simply on but it should be anarchist or anti-state doctrine. command, control, and Indeed this is the way to restore quasi-markets. much more long faith in politics, and in the good sighted that government can do. There is a danger here, as Nigel Ball of the Government Outcomes Lab More is needed, as Putnam at the Blavatnik School of The investment state should be discovered in Italy, than formal Government points out: “Relying more than a neutral inspector, democracy and liberal too heavily on relationships and however. Indeed the government individualism. We need an older trust demands an idealised vision we need is far from neutral. The idea, the inheritance of civic of human behaviour, and risks a centre should be much smaller, but humanism and the ‘virtue’ resurgence of many of the vices it should be much more philosophy of the Renaissance, that the reform of the past was long-sighted. The ‘grand which stressed your contribution to intended to combat: inefficient challenges’ identified by Theresa society rather than your services meaning wasted money; May’s Government, the threats and independence from it. Then weakened accountability structures opportunities presented by (leapfrogging the Enlightenment, allowing patronage and corruption; demographic and technological that over-promoted era) we need variations in local funding leading change, was the right approach, the Victorian ethos of social to ‘postcode lotteries’; and we should add the ethics of AI, solidarity and collective action, institutionalised prejudice; pandemic preparedness, the rise of albeit (as Mill wished) a little less systematic abuse of the vulnerable. China, and no doubt others to the patriarchal. Disraeli had it right: Many residents of less mature list. These, not the mechanics of ‘trust the people’. democracies or less dynamic local healthcare or the management of local jobs markets, economies are still attempting to This essay is part of a collection of exorcise these demons.”³ are the proper business of central government. essays published by Reform exploring how to build a more Here, then, is one of the essential resilient state. functions of the investment state Radical devolution will free up the after power has been given to capacity of central government to communities: to police their use of attend to these grand challenges, it, inspecting and reporting on the while securing the long-term

³ Nigel Ball, ‘Reset of Refine: How Should Boris Johnson’s New Government Set about Reforming UK Public Services’, Government Outcomes Lab, 13 December 2019.