“We need everyone – government, local authorities, police, schools, all of us – to enforce our values right across the spectrum,” says David Cameron in the new extremism policy paper.
Let’s leave aside the flaky definition of “our values”, the lack of consultation in putting the policy together and the irresponsible way Cameron’s coalition government flung away Prevent, a previous counter-extremism strategy set up under Labour, only now to try to reinvent it.
Instead, focus on what his appeal implies about the role of public services and Tory attitudes towards them.
The government is asking its officials to push a wide-ranging extension of their normal vigilance, to be alert, proactive, to burrow down into the communities they serve. The implication is that councils, schools, NHS and police units are deeply embedded in society. Which is true – but it’s not what the prime minister and the Tories say or believe. There’s an ideological conviction, not just that public services are bloated and over-staffed, but that public spending gets in the way of markets and enterprise; the test of an effective Tory minister is how many public bodies he or she can abolish.
This leads to inevitable contradictions. In early December, business secretary Sajid Javid is set to give the Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) the chop. Yet in the extremism policy paper, Hefce is being given a new duty to inspect and monitor universities, to ensure they are addressing the risk of radicalisation on campus and have policies to “ensure extremist speakers do not go unchallenged”. The Charity Commission also faces a huge expansion of its workload at a time when its capacity is shrinking.
Cameron assumes public sector staff will not only exercise existing duties to protect society, but take on more work and extra vigilance while their budgets are being slashed. Just this week, HM Inspectors of Constabulary is expressing deep concern about the effects of cuts in police numbers. The government’s blindness to the impact of cutting staff numbers and resources is extraordinary.
But more than this, the anti-extremism paper gives no sense that public services are founded on reciprocity. Ministers and managers have a duty of care towards staff, in return for which they can expect professional commitment – a kind that brings alertness to evidence of female genital mutilation or attempts by extremist groups to infiltrate public organisations.
The Tory approach to government is wilfully asymmetric. Ministers can go around rubbishing public servants and encouraging their allies in the tabloids and social media to mock and ridicule local authorities and civil servants – but expect dedication and loyalty from public servants.
Public servants – civil servants in Whitehall especially – seem happy to play along with this lack of support; you never hear Sir Jeremy Heywood, cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, utter a syllable critical of the briefings given by ministers’ special advisers denigrating his colleagues.
Councils, too, have recently seemed susceptible to blandishments over devolution. Yet the government’s every reflex is still interventionist. Here it warns councils it will intervene directly if they are found guilty of not preventing extremism.
Council staff are left to pick up the pieces of contradictory government policies. On the one hand, schools are to be freed from the dead hand of town hall control – witness the push towards academy status for all primary and secondary schools and creation of more free schools. On the other, councils are expected to keep a close eye on governing bodies and attend to the complaints of teachers. It’s a broken-backed, inconsistent formula, especially when the basic capacity of local government is under such strain from spending cuts.
Sign up here for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday. Follow us on Twitter via@Guardianpublic
