When people feel they are not involved in shaping public services, this puts at risk the ‘social contract’ between citizen and state

The importance of public services to British citizens hardly needs to be restated, with the NHS and the welfare and schools systems at the heart of citizens lives. Here Lord Victor Adebowale and Henry Kippin argue that these services must be shaped with a stronger focus on relationships and engagement with what they term the ‘collaborative citizen’, rather than handed down from Whitehall by diktat.