I have written this morning about the efficiency of the state. And in the process I said that the aim of big business is to capture it for private gain. I have also explained in my book The Courageous State (see panel on the right) that the politicians who engage in this process are the creators of what I call the Cowardly State: one that walks away from responsibility whenever it can.
George Osborne is a prime architect of the Cowardly State. He has new plans, according to the Telegraph that will mean that the government's number of employee's will fall by about one million between 2011 and 2019. At a rate of 36,000 per quarter, this is the equivalent of sacking one state employee every four minutes, every day, for the next five years. Apparently all of this is to allow the benefits of competition to be seen.
The difficulty is that competition is entirely predicated on the possibility of failure. Without that possibility competition can never deliver. And the last thing that state services need to embrace is the possibility of failure. The exact opposite is true. The only acceptable possible outcome for state services is success. In that case the claim that competition can deliver better public services is knowingly false: it can't. Some might improve as a result of competition but the chance that many might get worse is also accepted whenever privatisation takes place. Improvement in public services is not then the motivation for this change unless those promoting it have wanton disregard for outcomes (which is, of course, possible). The motive is, instead, the capture of public revenue for private gain.
And who pays the price? Well, we all do, through lower quality services.
And so do those employees who will lose their jobs and be offered insecure, lower paid, alternatives with limited pension prospects. Their wealth will be transferred upwards to the few who will capture these services for their own gain.
The process of creating more inequality goes on. Privatisation is a key component within it. That's why this government is promoting it
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“And who pays the price? Well, we all do, through lower quality services.”
You forgot to add “at much higher costs”.
Competition is predicated on the possibility of failure but only relative failure- a role for regulation is to provide for the adverse outcomes of absolute failure to be avoided. If a market for a public service is established setting a floor for the acceptable minimum standard (which in many cases will be high, eg in healthcare) even competitive failures would have to reach that standard to be able to stay in business.
Failure happens, indeed absolute failures often happen (eg Mid Staffs) even in a competition free space but then there’s no real mechanism for spotting the failures early or of remedying them until after they’ve had their disastrous consequences.
The argument is not as binary as you suggest but comes down to how competition is structured and regulated vs how public monopoly is operated to secure improvement and avoid failure. Both are possible to do.
I have dealt with this point in a later post
You are arguing for regulated activity
Absolutely no point in private ownership then – just paying for a very high cost of capital and massive extra accounting costs
smash the condem alliance before it is too late, public need not private greed
The trouble is that although George Osborne’s plan is based on delusional ideology, he at least has a plan. Balls and Milliband seem to have exactly the same false beliefs, but if they have any alternative plan, I haven’t noticed it.
The 2 Eds’ alternative plan is to do the same thing as Osborne – slightly slower – while claiming they are “rescuing social democracy” or some such nonsense. In fact they are finishing the job of destroying the centre-left which Tony Blair started. And then they wonder why they are not seen as competent on economic policy… words fail me at this point!
Words must not fail you!
I worked in the public sector for four and a half years. You could have canned about one third of the staff in my office and noticed no decline in output.
That’s what I usually find when i walk into a private sector company too
And initially it works
Then you realise why they were there
I worked for nearly 30 years for a publicly funded research council. To date, it has funded research leading to 29 Nobel prizes, including 8 in the present century. This is on a annual budget that is less than the salaries of some successful hedge fund managers. I was a union rep, so that I was far from uncritical, but I believe it did and still does a lot of things right. In particular, it understood that money is not what motivates most outstanding scientists. In my own research I had considerable contact with industry, and I had a high respect for a lot of my industrial colleagues. However, I felt they were subject to at least as much idiocy from above as the public sector.
Except, just prior to my leaving, staff numbers had fallen by a quarter from a peak and output had…
…you guessed, it remained constant.
In the short term these things happen
I have rarely seen them sustained
Mr. M., don’t know if you’ll publish this, but you normally allow one counter-point…
Are you saying that in the NHS alone we couldn’t afford, at all, ever, ever to without these ‘non-jobbers’ on some serious wedges…..
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Head of Communicating and Marketing – £50,854
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
Marketing and Communications Officer – £29,759
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Equality and Diversity Lead – £43,414
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Head of Communications – £43,414
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Leadership and Organisational Development Facilitator – £35,536
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Communications Manager – £29,759
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Graphics and Communications Manager – £29,759
Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust: Communications and Marketing Information Manager – £24,312
That’s nearly £287,000 per year that the NHS is spending purely on pay (then add pensions and employment costs) on managers and those not directly in the front line……
…..the sort of people, gorging on the public teat – in fact the white collar Guardianista’s – that Ed will do anything to keep on side….
…but wait, there’s even more of ’em….
“Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust employed 22 Public Relations staff at a cost of almost £1.1 million, including:
– Director of Communications
– Three Communications Managers
– Two Communications Officers
– Senior Media Officer
– Media Manager
– Senior Media Manager
– Head of Media and Corporate Communications
– 12 additional PR staff
They also employed:
– Carbon Manager
– Carbon Assistant
– Energy Awareness Project Officer
– Energy Manager”
Just look at that jobs list and honestly ask yourself, if the cash is so tight on frontline services, would you pay for them if was out of your pocket in your business…..because we are paying for them.
The public sector has millions of people in it – surely even the most esteemed author can’t think that they are all vital. Surely there has to be some room for cuts?
If you said to me, right then Gunnerbear, rather than save the nearly £1.4m per year by not employing non-jobbers, what would you do with the cash, I’d turn it right back around into front line services and equipment.
Granted nearly £1.4m per year doesn’t sound a lot in terms of the entire NHS budget, but £1.4m sure helps when it comes to employing nurses, doctors, radiographers and the like.
Yes
I suspect it would be very hard to survive without many of those people and a) compmy with the law b) be cost efficient c) meet public demand – including for information
Not for the first time Mr. M., I will have say that, respectfully, we’ll have to agree to disagree (but thanks for the reply).