The Labour Party should fight the next general election on a "power to the people" manifesto, Alan Milburn has said.

In a speech to a community consultation conference in London on Tuesday, the former health secretary urged the government to extend reforms offering choice in healthcare to the areas of education and housing.

Neighbourhood councils should be established to tackle "crime and grime" issues, he argued.

He said that direct elections should be held to such local bodies as school governing councils, primary care trusts and police boards.

Neighbourhood ballots

And residents should be able to remove poorly-performing service providers through a petition or ballot.

"I believe we have reached the high water mark of the post-1997, centrally driven target based approach," he said.

"That view is also widely shared in government. Reforms to enhance choice, diversify supply and devolve control are all now taking hold as the government moves from a centralised command-and-control model to what has now been called new localism.

"The issue now is how much further to go. There will be those who say that any move to devolve, diversify or democratise is merely privatisation by another name. They say we have gone too far and must now stop.

"I say we have not gone far enough and need to go further."

Rights

Milburn, who resigned from the Cabinet last year but remains close to Downing Street, called on ministers to legislate to give people a right to public services within a maximum length of time.

"The government should have the confidence to enshrine these rights in law, so that NHS patients for the first time have a legal guarantee of maximum waiting time for a hospital operation of no more than three months with the right to choose between hospitals and the right of redress should the guarantee not be met," he said.

"Similar legal guarantees could be considered for other public services to shift the balance of power decisively in favour of consumers."

"I hope Labour will fight the next election on a power to the people manifesto," he added.

Social justice

He called for "co-production between providers and users" in a bid to achieve  social justice.

"In a modern consumer society with a more informed and inquiring public, voting at elections is not enough. Democracy needs to be broadened and the state's role needs to be reformed," he said.

"The challenge over this next decade is to move power irrevocably outwards and downwards to those using public services and the communities who rely upon them.

"Our purpose - as Aneurin Bevan once famously said - having won power is to give it away."