Examination of Witnesses (Questions 369-379)
SIR STEVEN
ROBSON, MR
JONATHAN BAUME
AND MR
JACK DROMEY
THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2001
Chairman
369. Could I welcome our witnesses, on behalf
of the Committee. It is very kind of you to come along. We are
welcoming Sir Steve Robson, former Second Permanent Secretary
at the Treasury, Jonathan Baume, General Secretary of the First
Division Association, Bill Morris cannot be with us, as it happens,
but we have got Jack Dromey, who is the National Organiser of
the TGWU. So thank you very much indeed, all of you, for coming
along. I do not think any of you want to say anything, to kick
off, so perhaps we will just be away. I think you know the areas
that we are interested in here, looking widely at public service
reform issues and things that will relate to it. Could I just
kick off by looking at one area that we are trying to clear our
minds about, to start with, which is this business about public
service ethos and all that, and whether it exists, and if it does
what does it look like, and what might we do with it. I may be
wrong, but I take it that Steve Robson takes a fairly dim view
of this. I have been looking at some of the stuff you have been
writing, and you say, for example, that "the public sector
is a collection of monopoly providers, which tend to put the interests
of the providers above the interests of the users." Now that
does not seem, to me, to be at all consistent with the idea of
the public service ethos at work; is that right?
(Sir Steven Robson) Yes. I have worked
in the public sector for over 30 years, it dismays me whenever
I say that, but it is true, and I cannot say that in that time
I ever came across anything that seemed to me to represent a public
sector ethos, although I have to say that when people use that
phrase they are usually very unclear about what they think it
means. But if one tests it against a proposition, do people work
harder or better in the public sector, or in some sense more selflessly
or are more dedicated than people in other parts of the economy,
I do not think they do. There are a lot of people in the public
sector who work very hard, who like their jobs and put a lot into
it, but the same is equally true, in my experience, of people
in the private sector too. If you look at the Nolan characteristics
that he desired of the public sector, integrity, objectivity,
accountability, openness, honesty, leadership, those are characteristics
which, in my experience, are displayed as much in the private
sector as in the public sector. In my view, the public sector
ethos is a bit of a fantasy, it is rather like middle-aged men,
who fantasise that beautiful, young women find them very attractive.
370. Steady on, now, this is getting a bit close
to home.
(Sir Steven Robson) It is like it in the sense that
that is a very reassuring and comforting fantasy to have, but
it remains a fantasy. And if middle-aged men act on the basis
of that fantasy as a reality, the outcome is usually very unhappy
for them; and I think the public sector ethos has very many similarities
with that.
371. That is our text for the day, I think.
There we are, there we have it said; although I can see you want
to respond?
(Mr Dromey) Firstly, can I declare an interest, I
suffer from no such delusions. And can I also then make this starting-point,
which is, we accept, without hesitation, that it is the public
interest that comes first. Now we are not fans of old-style producerism,
not least because our experience historically was that old-style
producerism not only let the community down, it also let down
the great bulk of producers who suffered from what was a low-wage,
low-productivity culture and discrimination against both manual
workers and women. Now, having said that, I think there are four
substantive points that I would make, in terms of what is a public
service ethos and how you define it. First of all, our whole experience
is of members for whom it is not just any old job, it is that
preparedness to go the extra mile, and it is also not just about
the front line, the nurses and the doctors, it is about, for example,
in a hospital, the wider and caring team, including ancillaries
who clean wards. As somebody who had an operation just two and
a half weeks ago, I can testify to how they make a remarkable
contribution towards a caring atmosphere, crucial to the recovery
of patients; it is intangible but it is intense. Secondly, there
are wider issues; it is not just about delivery of service, it
is also about accountability, accountability to elected politicians,
but accountability also to the community. Our experience is that,
frequently, contracts are a bar to the making of variations when
the community wants more or different. Thirdly, it is about transparency
and openness, and not a culture whereby problems are cloaked by
commercial in confidence. And fourth, and finally, it is about
the primacy of public interest, something we accept without hesitation,
the primacy of public interest, and it is the primacy of public
interest over the interests of shareholders.
372. So there we are; thank you very much. We
have got the proposition that it is a fantasy, countered by the
statement that it is a reality, with these ingredients; now, Jonathan,
which of these is true?
(Mr Baume) It will not surprise you to know that I
agree with my colleague Jack Dromey here. I will not say much
more, because I think we have had two quite clear expositions
of alternative cases. Certainly, the FDA view is that it is hard
to define; we once spent a very long evening trying to work out
a definition of it, and, frankly, failed, I will be honest about
that. And I did, in the FDA evidence, draw attention to some work
that I saw recently by Professor Raymond Plant I happened to come
across this because I was invited to the seminar that Professor
Plant delivered, and a very long and very erudite paper highlighted
the difficulty of defining it and pinning it down. All of that
said, it does exist, and is internalised by a great many public
servants, it is something that actually motivates. Many of the
people that we represent are people who could easily double their
salaries; we represent senior tax inspectors, I actually know,
occasionally, that people have gone out and quadrupled salaries
by leaving the Inland Revenue and going to work for the private
sector. I am sure Sir Steve knows many colleagues in the Treasury
who are in a similar position to be able to do that; and people
do not. And part of the reason that people do not is a very strong
ethos of public service. They have taken a decision at a very
early stage in their lives to join the public services, not because
these were the only jobs that were available, or problems in the
local community, or anything like that, but because this is a
concept that they actually believe in. It is hard to define, but
it is there, and the country would suffer enormously, in my view,
if that ethos of serving the public were in any way undermined.
That does not mean that it is exclusive to the public sector,
and I think Jack highlighted that there are a number of facets
to this, including, clearly, accountability. It is a difficult
construct to define; but those internalised values, I think, are
very important, and what actually motivate, in many ways, public
servants to do the job they do, in often very difficult circumstances.
I have one other slightly tabloid-type point. We were conscious,
over the summer, we have all been very conscious, that there is
a debate going on about the public services, in the widest sense,
and we were quite concerned at times by statements by Ministers,
that appeared just before and after the general election. Now,
thankfully, a lot of that has calmed down. I think there was a
reflection, in my view, on the part of Ministers and the Government
about some of the statements it was making. But, I think, when
you actually looked at what happened in New York, on September
11, and people saw, when the crisis came, it was public service
workers who were actually in there, working day after day, and
I think it reminded people of just what public servants deliver
in this country. Just as if you go round Whitehall, even now,
a couple of months after the horror of September 11, people working
late into the evenings, into the night, in many Government Departments,
supporting the Government, because that is their job; and they
do it not for money, not because they are going to get paid overtime
if they work beyond 5.30, but because they are dedicated to serving
the Government, dedicated to the national interest. And that is
an important value that we should not underestimate.
373. Thank you for that. Let me just ask a further
question then. Because, if we have contrary views about whether
there is this public service ethos, and, if there is, what it
consists of, and we have a rather bleak view and a rather positive
view, the next question will be, well, how do we find out which
of these is true, how do we test it. And I would put it to those
of you who are enthusiasts for it, the view that, actually, despite
September 11 and people's view of the emergency services, on the
whole, people have got a fairly negative view of public servants
and public services, which is why we have got the problem that
we have got now, and, indeed, there is probably evidence to suggest
that they find them faceless, bureaucratic, removed, unhelpful,
not these people who go the extra mile. So does not this make
the fantasy case?
(Mr Baume) One could be rather cheeky and say that
I think last time I saw an opinion poll, civil servants came above
politicians, but; yes, people have a concept, probably even those
of us who work in the public services at times find aspects of
local government or aspects of central government frustrating,
and I think many civil servants, representing as I do predominantly
civil servants, find some of the procedures and the ways that
they have to work frustrating and demoralising. But if you ask
people about the commitment, they may be critical of aspects of
the local school, but if you ask them about the dedication of
the local teachers, if you ask people about the dedication of
nurses, and other key public service workers, who interact directly,
I think you get a very different opinion. I think people actually
value those services and value the individuals working in those
services very highly, and knowing as well that many of them are
relatively low-paid workers.
374. But, if people who work in public services
are imbued with this ethos, and if they are as Jack Dromey describes
them, which is that they are the "go the extra mile"
people, why then did we not just want to leave public services
alone, if that was what they were like, why did we have to start
denouncing producer interests, as you were doing, if, in fact,
this is how they are?
(Mr Dromey) We will not defend the status quo,
because the status quo is not good enough.
375. No, but if the status quo is intrinsically
governed by people who go the extra mile and are as you describe
them, why on earth do you want to reform them?
(Mr Dromey) What Government should not do is to make
a series of mistakes. First of all, it was Lenin and Nicholas
Ridley who both wanted the state to wither away. There are serious
implications of a contract state. Secondly, following on from
that, and something that we would be very keen to explore with
you, there are some very important, wider public interest reasons
that require to be taken properly into account, so that you do
not have a narrow focus on what works best but instead look at
the wider and longer-term public interests issues, which crucially
require to be taken account of. Thirdly, what you do not do is
to make some of what we would call the first term mistakes, which
was to set a negative tone about the public sector; it was a lead
figure in the private sector, incidentally, who once said, "I've
never known yet a successful enterprise build its success on the
back of always telling its people how bad they are". There
was a remorselessly negative tone, for example, from central government
about local government. Fourthly, what you do not do, and this
is a mistake in my view still being made, is to have a ludicrously
overprescriptive approach. You can be demanding nationally, again,
take local government, but outcomes are best found locally; and,
fifthly, what you do not do is to make the mistake of being infatuated
with the private sector. I remember being in a discussion with
ten leading figures from the private sector and saying to them
that, "I think that the Government's problem is that it bestows
magical qualities upon you, and that it can't tell the difference
between the worthwhile and the worthless." And do you know
what the first story told was, in what was a fascinating discussion,
which went on for two hours, it was by a leading chief executive,
who necessarily must remain nameless, who said, "You're absolutely
right;" he said, "My experience of dealing with Government
is that, all too often, I am engaged in dialogue with born-again
capitalists in short trousers who can't tell the difference between
the worthwhile and the worthless." So, in positive terms,
what we have been trying to do is to focus the debate back on
where it should be, which is, if it is right that public services
are not what they should be, they vary in their quality, crucially,
what does that then mean in terms of a public service excellence
agenda and improvement agenda; very serious issues, which range
from, on the one hand, what that means in terms of a serious people
agenda, because I do not think the people issues have sufficient
centrality in the debate about how you renew public services,
to, on the other hand, issues like change management. And so what
we need to do is to get away from the rather difficult debate
that has been going on, for everyone to acknowledge that there
is a problem in terms of the quality of public services, for everyone
not to make silly mistakes that derail the debate, but then concentrate
on what is important, in terms of improving the services that
our members provide. And we are up for that.
376. Before I hand over, let us just move that
into one other area then, which flows naturally from this. You
mentioned Lenin. Now Steve Robson is a Leninist, he wants to smash
the state, as we know, he thinks it is a great monopolist and
the only way to get improvement is to break it up. It is averse
to change, got to bring the private sector in, shake the whole
thing around; that, in a nutshell, I take it, is what your position
is?
(Sir Steven Robson) It is a slightly odd shape from
that. My position is that there are a lot of people who work hard,
in a very dedicated way, in the public sector, but they are working
in an environment which does not enable them to do their best
and to produce the right outcomes. And the main problems with
that environment seem to me to be a lack of clarity about objectives,
the wrong sort of incentives and inadequacies in management; and
I think that part of the way one goes about curing that is to
produce greater diversity in the way that public services are
provided.
Brian White
377. But you set those from the Treasury?
(Sir Steven Robson) Set what?
378. You set those rules from the Treasury?
(Sir Steven Robson) Which rules are you talking about?
379. About defining contracts, defining the
way local government works, defining the way Departments work,
that was with Treasury Rules setting out exactly what they have
got to do, and the centralising came from you?
(Sir Steven Robson) I was not talking about centralising.
What I was saying was, the objectives are not clear, by which
I mean there are usually far too many objectives bearing down
on organisations and individuals, but the incentives are wrong,
by which I mean there is fundamentally a blame culture, which
makes people risk-averse, and there are inadequacies in management,
that people who are in management positions, and I include myself,
in my past incarnation, in this, did not have the management skills
to do the job they were asked to do. It is not about rules, it
is very much about management and incentives.
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