Labour pushes mutual model for public services

Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell will today say that enterprises owned by staff or communities should deliver more social services.

Jowell is due to give a speech on mutualisation at the New Labour pressure group Progress tonight. She will argue that the public is looking for 'different types of organisations that give them a greater sense of ownership and control' and at the same time she will launch an independent Commission on Ownership to look at the mutualisation agenda.

The commission is to be modelled along the lines of the Commission for Social Justice which ran from 1992 to 1994 and which laid the foundations for the Labour party's 1997 election manifesto. Jowell plans to call on the commission to investigate how to create a 'level playing field for mutuals to run public services'.

In her speech to the Progress group, whose members include influential politicians like health secretary Andy Burnham and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, Jowell will say: 'Public services are owned by the public, so the public must have the right to influence how those services are delivered.

'We can't really expect citizens to take on greater responsibility for their own health, learning and environmental impact if public services fail to give them the right to shape the ways they work.'

The Commission on Ownership is to be chaired by political commentator and executive vice chair of the Work Foundation Will Hutton, and funded to the tune of £100,000 by Co-operative Financial Services.

It will begin its work in February 2010 and key questions it will ask include: Does ownership matter? Does ownership affect fairness in Britain? What, if anything should government do about ownership?