Gordon Brown will next week unveil plans to offer people more power over their public services, including the police, as he seeks to regain the initiative on policy after a tumultuous few months.
Brown has felt unable to set out the government’s policy agenda in recent times as he has dealt with the fallout from the expenses scandal, a series of ministerial resignations and Labour’s poor performance in the European elections.
But in an interview with the Times, he dismissed speculation that he could resign before the next election.
“I have got a job to do,” he says. “One that every day I address with new enthusiasm.”
The government will publish the proposals on Monday in a document entitled Building Britain’s Future, alongside a draft legislative programme for the final year before a general election.
The document is expected to include plans to offer patients, parents and residents more personalised public services, as well as powers of redress if services are inadequate.
The police will be required to consult more closely with residents over issues such as the location of CCTV cameras and over where criminals serve their “community payback” sentences.
Brown said: “We are prepared to take on any vested interest that stands in the way of better services. Services exist not for the public servants but for the people who are there to be served. For the patient, parent, resident and citizen our first focus will be how they can be better served.”
On constitutional reform, he suggested that legislation to remove the remaining 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords would be introduced, clearing the way for the creation of an elected second chamber.
He also renews his attack on the Conservative Party’s spending plans, making it clear that he believes the key dividing lines at the next election will be over public spending.
“We had a strategy for tackling the recession. Our opponents had no strategy. They would still leave us in a position where perhaps the banks would not have been rescued and action would not have been taken to support businesses. There would be no extra public investment and no support for jobs,” he says.
