Dilemma over public services

The political battle over the future of public services was muddied yesterday by evidence from the Audit Commission that most people do not want tax revenues to be spent on giving them more choice.

The commission found people liked the idea of being able to choose between hospitals and schools to get the best service.

But they did not like it enough to pay more in taxes for the extra capacity needed to make real choices possible.

The findings suggested that voters may become disillusioned with Labour and Conservative proposals for widening choice once they become more aware of the implications. Both parties want NHS hospitals to compete with each other - and with the private sector - to attract more patients.

The commission's chairman, James Strachan, said: "Most people love choice if it costs nothing. Moreover increasing choice - and specifically customer responsiveness, is vital if we are to improve public services. But the challenge is to ensure we do this in a cost effective and fair way.

"We need to broaden the debate beyond widespread provider choice, which may be very expensive and at times unfair. The value for money and fairness of different ways of increasing choice is now our focus."

The commission published preliminary results from a Mori poll investigating public attitudes to local government services. It found nearly 80% of British adults were strongly in favour of giving older people living at home more choice of support services, but only 43% thought taxpayers should have to pay more to make this happen.

A similar proportion wanted to give parents a choice of schools for children with special needs, but only 36% thought taxpayers should pay.

There was even less support for raising taxes to extend choice of other services.

The commission said: "More is being invested in public services, so the issue is how can greater choice be introduced in a way which gives good value for money ... and greater fairness."

It noted that services which were supposed to offer choice did not always do so. For example 1.4m people got social care support, but only 9,600 benefitted from the direct payment scheme that let them purchase the type of care they wanted.

"Public services will need in future to demonstrate that they are fair and have the mechanisms to ensure it," the commission said.

There were fears that the articulate middle classes would benefit most from greater choice, but the poll found people from working class homes were most in favour of the idea. There was also above average support among women and residents of the north and Midlands.