Prime Minister David Cameron has set out the Government’s plans for modernising public services, driven by competition, choice and greater independence for institutions.

In a speech at the RSA in London, the PM said 2011 was a critical year for the Government’s modernisation agenda.

Cameron stressed he wanted “one of the great legacies of this Government to be the complete modernisation of our public services.”

The PM said he was “incredibly optimistic about what the country can achieve” this year, and that modernisation is both a personal and political priority for him.

Cameron said: “I don’t want anyone to doubt how important this is to me.

“My passion about this is both personal and political. Personal because I’ve experienced, first-hand, how dedicated, how professional, how compassionate our best public servants are.

“And this is a political passion – and priority – of mine too. I believe that Britain can be one of the great success stories of the new decade.”

The PM hailed work already underway to modernise services by announcing that more than 140 GP-led consortia have now come forward, covering over half the country.

These consortia are using new powers to take control of NHS budgets and directly commission services for their patients.

The Government's plans for the NHS though have been denounced by six health service unions - including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing - as "potentially disastrous".

But Cameron dismissed suggestions that services could carry on as they were as "a complete fiction", insisting that change was essential.

He said: "Every year without modernisation the costs of our public services escalate. Demand rises, the chains of commands can grow, costs may go up, inefficiencies become more entrenched.

"Pretending that there is some 'easy option' of sticking with the status quo and hoping that a little bit of extra money will smooth over the challenges is a complete fiction.

"We need modernisation, on both sides of the equation. Modernisation to do something about the demand for healthcare, which is about public health.

"And modernisation to make the supply of healthcare more efficient, which is about opening up the system, being competitive and cutting out waste and bureaucracy.

"Put another way: it's not that we can't afford to modernise; it's that we can't afford not to modernise."

Share Story: