Ministers tell Blair to be more open about policy

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Leading Article: The Commons must assert itself

Four ministers have warned Tony Blair that the Government must abandon its "control-freak" policy towards public services if his flagship reforms are to work.

The four are among nine Labour MPs who have drawn up a plan to scrap the "top-down" approach to the public sector that marked Mr Blair's first term. In a blunt warning about "the perils of centralisation", they feared the plethora of action zones, initiatives and targets imposed by Whitehall might not deliver the promised improvements in services.

The MPs' new blueprint for the public sector will be seen as a challenge to Mr Blair over Labour's future direction. Although Blair aides have hinted at a different approach in his second term, there is scepticism at Westminster that he will "let go" as the MPs demanded after studying the impact of Labour's policies.

Their inquiry began when the nine MPs were backbenchers and has been given added importance by the promotion of four of them to ministerial posts after the general election. The ministers are John Healey and Ivan Lewis, both Education ministers; Hilary Benn, a minister for International Development, and Ruth Kelly, Economic Secretary to the Treasury. The other MPs in the group are Karen Buck, Fiona Mactaggart, Paul Goggins, Bill Rammell and Alan Whitehead.

Their report, to be published shortly in the New Labour journal Renewal, said: "A second- term government needs to control and measure less, but explain and inspire much more." They urged the Government to be "more upfront" with its goals of social justice and opportunity for all.

The MPs said ministers should realise that the morale of public service workers could be undermined by different targets set by different departments. Staff "were confused as to the underlying aims and rationale of government policies".

They called for a commitment to "devolve ever more responsibility and power from central government" and hand more power to local authorities, which Mr Blair has been very reluctant to do. They said ministers should trust locally based agencies and bodies to drive through their policies, even if this produces some results that the Government did not like.

Centrally determined policies had only a patchy impact and their benefits might be overstated. "The law of unintended consequences affects every initiative," they said.

In another challenge to Mr Blair, Frank Field, a former minister for welfare reform, expresses doubts over whether "a centrally directed, top-down approach to reform has much chance of success".

Writing in The Independent today, he warns that the National Health Service is "close to implosion" and calls for a new funding system to guarantee taxpayers that extra money raised from them is earmarked for the NHS.