Memorandum by the Trades Union Congress
(PSR 40)
1. PRINCIPLES
AND STRATEGY
FOR REFORMING
PUBLIC SERVICES
1.1 Introduction: The TUC welcomes the debate
that the government has initiated on the reform of the public
services. This presents an opportunity to address the legacy of
twenty years of under investment and develop the argument that
continuously improving public services requires a higher level
of resources. The TUC is committed to quality public services
delivered directly by public servants. We recognise that in many
cases public services fall short of expectations and we accept
that unions have a responsibility to work with government and
others to deliver the improvements demanded by the electorate.
1.2 It is unfortunate that much of the debate
over the past eight months has focused on the role of the private
sector in driving forward public service modernisation and reform.
To a significant extent this is a diversion from the central question
which is: how can public services be improved from within? For
example, the private healthcare sector simply does not have the
capacity to be the source of performance improvement in every
NHS trust. Despite the publicity attached to the announcement
of the new BUPA diagnostic and treatment centre in Surrey, that
facility has only 36 beds and will have only a marginal impact
on waiting lists in the district.
1.3 It would be helpful therefore if the
discussion could now be conducted on the basis of evidence rather
than assertion and a sober assessment of the role that the private
sector will play in delivering the government's plans.
1.4 Principles: The starting point for the
TUC is to ask why certain services are public services in the
first place? What was it that motivated the great reformers from
the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century to place their
faith in non-market forms of service delivery? How far is that
experience still relevant?
1.5 The most straightforward answer is of
course that the market had either failed to provide these services
at all or had done so in a way that failed to reflect the values
of a democratic society where all citizens had a right to be treated
with equal concern and respect. On a purely practical level the
process of urbanisation could not have continued without determined
action to protect and promote public health—hence the creation
of the public utilities. Similarly, an increasingly complex capitalist
society with a sophisticated division of labour could not thrive
if it relied on the voluntary and private sectors alone to provide
education to the majority of the population. Other examples can
be quoted ranging from the fire service to the police to air traffic
control. In the first two of these cases private sector solutions
had been tried and found wanting before the state intervened.
1.6 Many of these developments took place
in an ad hoc and piecemeal fashion and a considerable distance
was travelled from the establishment of the Metropolitan Police
by Sir Robert Peel to the foundation of the National Health Service
by Aneurin Bevan. Nevertheless, it is important to identify the
principles that underpin the notion of public service and can
act as a guide to the development of policy in the future.
1.7 In the TUC's view at the root of the
case for public services today is the notion of citizenship—the
idea that individuals cannot fully flourish in a democratic society
without universal access to collective goods like health care,
quality education and basic utilities. Citizenship also explains
why these services are subject to political choice rather than
the vagaries of the market. It is for citizens to decide through
the electoral process what priority should be given to particular
services and how in broad terms resources should be allocated.
The contest between the political parties is therefore focused
on competing notions of citizenship, the balance between individualism
and collectivism and the policy instruments that should be used
to secure a good life for all citizens. At the most recent general
election the public delivered a very clear verdict that they preferred
high quality public services and a sustained programme of investment
to cuts in taxes and public spending. Fundamentally therefore,
the government is right to say that the goal underpinning public
service reform must be improvements in the quality of service
delivered.
1.8 The Prime Minister has sought to develop
this thinking and in his speech on public service reform delivered
in October 2001 he said that public service reform rested on four
key principles:
— High national standards and full
accountability
— Devolution to the front-line to encourage
diversity and local creativity
— Flexibility of employment so that
staff are better able to deliver modern public services
— Promotion of alternative providers
and greater choice
1.9 The TUC would question whether, taken
together, these principles are coherent and clear enough to deliver
a successful programme of public service reform. The thinking
behind government policy often appears confused and rather contradictory.
For example, in a local government context high national
standards might constrain local political choices. The
trade union movement argued consistently against the centralising
policies of the previous Conservative governments and made the
case for more local freedoms. But a corollary of the ability of
electors in some authorities to choose higher levels of local
taxation and spending must be the freedom of others to make somewhat
different choices and select other priorities.
1.10 Similarly, the implementation of clear
national targets in the NHS, for example the reduction
of waiting lists, may have had the effect of limiting local
creativity as other, perhaps more appropriate, priorities were
abandoned to meet the requirements of national policy. There is
a strong feeling amongst public servants that there are too many
national standards, too many performance indicators and a plethora
of national government initiatives all apparently directed at
solving the same problems. A more focused and coherent approach
from the government would do much to ease this sense of frustration—and
the recent DfES initiative on addressing teacher workload demonstrates
that some progress is being made. Fewer targets properly resourced
would be a good principle for the government to apply more generally.
1.11 Encouraging flexibility to enhance
service delivery might appear uncontroversial—no one after
all would support rigidity and poor services. However, it is important
to understand that one person's flexibility can be another's reduction
in conditions of employment. In far too many cases the quest for
more flexible service delivery has focused exclusively on cost
reduction. In local government for example, the abolition of Compulsory
Competitive Tendering and the introduction of Best Value has not
been matched by any significant change in management style or
procurement practice. For many trade unionists the experience
has been "more of the same" rather than a determined
shift away from the policies of previous Conservative governments.
It is welcome of course that the government is alert to these
problems and has instituted a review of Best Value. The issues
covered by the review include measures to eliminate the two-tier
workforce (which is discussed further at paragraph 2.11 below)
and a willingness to accept the case for greater trade union and
employee involvement in the Best Value process. The progress made
so far in local government should set the pace for the remainder
of the public sector. Flexible and responsive services can only
be delivered by a well-motivated, highly skilled and well-rewarded
workforce and the evidence suggests that effective trade union
and employee involvement is a necessary condition for the fulfilment
of this goal[18].
1.12 The Prime Minister's final principle,
"promotion of alternative providers and greater choice",
owes much to thinking developed in the USA in the early 1990s—the
process known as "reinventing government"[19].
Essentially, the argument runs as follows. Public services delivered
by directly employed public servants are prone to "producer
capture" and stultifying bureaucracy. The consistency demanded
by bureaucratic procedures limits the scope for innovation, creates
perverse financial incentives and produces "one size fits
all" solutions. Continuing with the existing model of public
service delivery will fail to meet the expectations of service
users and will compound the existing problems of the public sector—in
particular, there will be a general resistance to higher levels
of taxation if the public sector continues to be sclerotic and
unresponsive to the changing needs of users.
1.13 The solution therefore is to remove
"bureaucratic constraints", create a new body of public
sector entrepreneurs and inject a healthy dose of competition
into the public sector. Proponents of this argument suggest that
it goes beyond traditional classifications of left and right since
it seeks to deliver public services albeit using public, private
and voluntary means. No doubt the argument is well intentioned
and, in the early 1990s, seemed to be a useful device to rebut
New Right arguments that private provision secured by individuals
was invariably superior to anything procured by the state for
citizens. Nevertheless, the notion that "alternative providers"
or "contestability" will of themselves deliver greater
quality and "choice" remains an assertion rather than
a verified fact. There is a strong case for saying that the approach
embodied in this principle displays a misplaced faith in market
solutions and a considered disregard of the limited capacity of
the private sector.
1.14 The greatest weakness in this view
is that it potentially impoverishes the concept of citizenship
by reducing citizens to consumers—it still relies heavily
on an essentially neo-liberal assessment of the role of public
sector and continues to embrace notions like "producer capture".
The Prime Minister expressed the argument thus in his October
2001 speech:
"We are making the public services user-led;
not producer or bureaucracy led, allowing far greater freedom
and incentives for services to develop as users want".
1.15 Neo-liberals have always believed as
a matter of ideology that market solutions are invariably superior,
that markets operate as a "continuous referendum" on
corporate performance and that where public services are provided
they should to the greatest extent possible incorporate market
principles. The concept of "choice" suggests that health
care and education can be treated in the same way as any other
consumer good. Parents can choose schools and patients hospitals
in the same way as consumers choose to shop at Tesco, Sainsbury
or Waitrose.
1.16 There are three further significant
problems with this approach. First, it ignores the fact that public
services are subject to a regime of democratic accountability
that embodies political choice and is at least as rigorous as
anything that the market might deliver. Second, it is not clear
that greater "choice" is what citizens want from public
services. In health for example, citizens are rightly demanding
access to high quality care when they need it. People are looking
for improved facilities, shorter waiting lists and waiting times,
faster diagnosis, more rapid treatment and an overall improvement
in the UK's health outcomes. Offering people a choice between
one hospital and another seems marginal to the concerns consistently
expressed about the NHS. Similarly, in education what most parents
really want is a quality education for their child at a local
school—that this may not always be available does not mean
that it is not a real desire.
1.17 The rhetoric of choice is very often
used to conceal a policy of growing inequality in the provision
of public services—the challenge for policy makers is to
raise standards across the board, not to create islands of well-resourced
excellence in an ocean of otherwise mediocre performance. This
challenge is related to a third point—public services are
intended to deliver equality of access and close the gap between
the life chances of the rich and the poor. Perfect markets depend
on participants possessing perfect information—but in the
case of public services, as with markets more generally, it is
certain that service users will not all be equally well informed,
determined or articulate and will not all be equally able to "shop
around" for the alternative provider that suits them best.
There is a real risk that the introduction of greater "contestability"
and more "alternative providers" will create "choice"
for the few and continued mediocrity for the many. Public services
rooted in the notions of democratic accountability and citizenship
are therefore more likely to achieve the objectives that the government
seeks—social inclusion and opportunity for all—than
a reliance on a hefty dose of entrepreneurship.
1.18 If the principles identified by the
Prime Minister constitute only a partial guide to action, is there
an alternative approach that provides a better basis for public
service reform? The answer has to be yes—and it should be
borne in mind that many of the elements of the approach can already
be found elsewhere in government policy.
1.19 First, the TUC agrees with the government
about the need to tackle the legacy of public sector under-investment.
In large measure this problem is a result of the relative weakness
of the UK economy over the past forty years and the anti-public
service policies pursued by the Conservative governments between
1979-97. Whilst the Government has made a start on dealing with
the massive level of under investment in both capital stock and
the funding of services, there is still a considerable way to
go before the UK achieves the Government's targets of European
levels of funding and of capital investment. For instance the
capital per hour worked in non-market services in the UK in 1995
was less than half the amount in France, less than a third the
amount in Germany and less than one seventh of the capital deployed
in Japan[20].
It is essential for the renewal of our public services that this
massive discrepancy is put right. The top priority must be to
sustain the big increases in public investment scheduled for the
current spending round into the next three year period—this
will be a central feature of the TUC's submission to the Third
Comprehensive Spending Review. Under-investment is a far more
serious problem than any alleged risk of "producer capture".
1.20 Second, for more than twenty years
all the incentives for public service managers have focused on
cost reduction, getting more for less and getting by with a declining
stock of capital assets. A determined effort needs to be made
to shift these incentives in the opposite direction. The focus
must be on quality, continuous improvement and the rapid and efficient
implementation of capital investment programmes[21].
There are real questions about the capacity of public service
managers to respond to the scale of this challenge without significant
investments in management training. The Audit Commission and the
Public Services Productivity Panel may both have a role to play
here in assessing performance and identifying/disseminating Best
Practice. There is also a need to raise management standards through
the establishment of centres of excellence. The NHS University
is a very encouraging start and more needs to be done in a similar
vein.
1.21 Third, the real source of innovation
and reform will come from within public services rather than directly
from the private sector. Of course, it is important for the public
sector to learn from best practice wherever it may be found, but
that does not mean that there should or indeed could be a massive
extension of private sector involvement in direct service provision.
As the Wanless report[22]
has noted, the extent of private healthcare provision in the UK
is very limited and it is extremely unlikely that the NHS Ten
Year Plan can be delivered through increasing reliance on the
private sector. Indeed, it is far more likely that the public
sector has more to learn from itself than it does from the private
sector. That means however that a much greater effort must be
made to identify best practice and facilitate effective networking.
Once again a good start has been made by the local government
Improvement and Development Agency, which has developed an innovative
peer review model to identify weaknesses in performance and identify
possible solutions. The Centre for Management and Policy Studies
is developing a comparable approach in central government departments
and agencies and the Commission for Health Improvement could play
a similar role in the NHS.
1.22 Other possibilities might be to allow
successful public service organisations to second staff to others
who are performing less well. In local government a relaxation
of the limitations on the power to trade might enable successful
local authorities directly to take over services in under performing
organisations. All of these options should be actively considered
and are more likely to deliver improvements in service delivery
than either an increased but essentially marginal role for the
private sector or an attempt to make markets for alternative providers.
1.23 Finally, any process of modernisation
and reform will fail unless it engages the commitment and enthusiasm
of the workforce. That is why a properly implemented programme
of trade union and employee involvement is essential for the successful
management of change. Framework agreements to permit developments
of this nature have already been concluded in the home civil service,
the NHS and local government. The challenge of course is to take
these admirable statements of national policy and apply them to
every public sector workplace. Exhortation has proved to be an
inadequate force for change and a more rigorous approach must
be adopted. Once again there could be a role for the Audit Commission
here if organisational performance included benchmarks for effective
trade union and employee involvement.
1.24 To summarise then, the TUC would argue
that any programme for public sector modernisation and reform
must:
— Recognise the importance of effective
democratic accountability
— Be based on a continued effort to
sustain high levels of public investment
— Recognise the need to build management
capacity across the public services through the development of
centres of excellence
— Develop the extent of networking
so the best of the public sector can share experience more widely
and directly tackle underperformance.
— Implement an effective approach to
trade union and employee involvement.
1.25 How do we know if public service reform
is effective?: The simplest test of the effectiveness of public
service reform might be said to be the government's popularity.
If the electorate are generally content with the outcome then
the programme can reasonably be said to be a success. There are
other measures that might be applied like waiting lists, waiting
times, improvements in educational standards or reductions in
crime. Nevertheless, the ultimate test will be purely political—public
service improvement is the core objective of the government's
second term and progress will be measured by the outcome of the
next general election.
2. THE CONCEPT
OF A
PUBLIC SERVICE
ETHOS AND
THE INVOLVEMENT
OF THE
PRIVATE SECTOR
2.1 What is the "Public Service Ethos"?:
For all the reasons set out in Section 1 the concept of public
service is far from being an anachronism. It remains the case
that the market will not of itself provide universal access to
those services on which full participation in society depends.
Indeed, the delivery of the government's manifesto commitments
depends on a renaissance of the concept of public service.
2.2 To a degree the notion of the "public
service ethos" has become less clear in recent years because
the process of privatisation has blurred the distinction between
the public and the private sectors. At one time it would have
been relatively easy to identify characteristics that applied
across the NHS, central and local government, public utilities
and the emergency services—but the fact that some of these
activities are now wholly in the private sector has inevitably
made the discussion more complicated. Nevertheless, it is still
possible to make the case that there are values other than market
values that society treats as important, that people do not invariably
behave as the rational wealth maximisers of classical economics
and that these non-market values contribute to a distinctive public
service ethos.
2.3 To take an obvious example first, the
relationship between patients and health care professionals is
not constructed as a purely market transaction based on contract.
Instead, both parties are acting on the basis of trust—patients
would be legitimately concerned if they were being treated by
individuals whose only motivation was to make as much money as
possible. The values that constitute the foundation of the relationship—trust,
professionalism, concern and respect—are all essentially
non-commercial and to introduce a wholly commercial motive would
lead to a worse result for both parties. Similar considerations
apply in education where schoolteachers are self-evidently inspired
by considerations other than profit—and would respond to
the imposition of demands to maximise shareholder value as an
attack on teaching as a vocation.
2.4 Adair Turner has expressed the argument
well by referring to "intrinsic" rather than "commercial"
motivations, adding that:
"There is a danger that the introduction of
overt commercial relationships cannot be achieved without eroding
those intrinsic motivations...... [I]t is wrong to imagine that
healthcare can simply be a market like any other, and that the
complete marketisation of patient/provider relationships would
be desirable. The market economy is a tremendously powerful tool
to achieve ends, but it should not pretend to reflect the full
range of human motivation and aspirations." [23]
2.5 The commercialisation of public services
might also produce inefficient outcomes—Turner compares
US healthcare "absorbing 14 per cent of GDP in total"
with France and Germany, where healthcare accounts for 10 per
cent of GDP "without commensurately superior results".
Wanless[24]
reinforces this view when he reflects on work carried out by OECD
that indicates that publicly financed health services lead to
generally better health outcomes "for a given level of expenditure".
2.6 Put most simply then, the public service
ethos is about the application of values other than those simply
determined by the market. It reflects that wider range of human
motivations and aspirations to which Turner refers.
2.7 Of course it is possible for workers
in the private sector to be motivated by such non-commercial considerations.
For example, a worker repairing fallen power cables on a cold
winter weekend may be just as concerned about restoring the electricity
supply to vulnerable pensioners as the profits of National Grid
plc. An air traffic controller employed by the public private
partnership now operating the National Air Traffic Service will
be no less concerned about passenger safety than was the case
when the service was wholly in the public sector. A nurse employed
in a BUPA hospital will be just as committed to patient care as
a nurse working for an NHS trust. Yet in each of these cases it
might be said that the public service ethos has been transplanted
into the private sector—applying purely commercial considerations,
pure market motivations, will mean that the essence of the service
is lost.
2.8 It is also possible to argue that not
all public services always apply the values inherent in the public
service ethos. Critics on the Right would say that this demonstrates
that the public service ethos is a chimera—but a better
response is to note that the systematic denigration of public
service for almost twenty years has inevitably had an effect on
the motivation and commitment of public servants. An agenda focused
on cost reduction is hardly likely to create an environment where
trust, professionalism and the values of concern and respect can
flourish. The failure of public services to display the public
service ethos is more likely to be explained by inadequate resources,
management weakness and hostile government policies than by the
failings of individual public servants.
2.9 Some might say that all of the above
amounts to little more than the observation that public services
should aspire to the high standards of "customer care"
found in the private sector—but once again this is to miss
the point. Citizens expect different treatment from public services.
There is a real distinction between doing the weekly shopping
or buying a new refrigerator—where "customer care"
is important—and being treated in hospital or relying on
the air traffic service. A further example might make the point
clearer—the willingness of firefighters or other emergency
service workers to put their lives at risk in the service of others
goes beyond the requirements of courtesy and responsiveness which
constitute good service in much of the private sector. That the
general public understand this distinction is reflected in their
at best ambivalent attitude to greater private sector involvement
in the delivery of public services.
2.10 Does increasing private sector involvement
undermine the public service ethos?: If all of the above is correct
then there is a serious question about the extent to which the
public service ethos can be sustained in the face of increasing
private sector involvement. This is not to argue however that
the private sector has no role to play. The public sector has
always procured goods from the private sector and private contractors
have always undertaken major public sector construction projects.
Equally, there is far more expertise in information and communications
technology in the private sector and it would be absurd to expect
that the whole of the public sector is well equipped to develop
its own IT solutions. Nevertheless, recognition of these facts
does not constitute an argument that the private sector should
be given a role in the provision of core public services. All
private companies exist to make a profit—that is their principal
motivation, even though non-commercial considerations can intrude
from time to time. Although private contractors might say they
are committed to providing quality services they will always need
to keep a watchful eye on the bottom line—and to that extent
there will always be a real tension with the public service ethos.
2.11 Trade unions are particularly concerned
that the increasing involvement of the private sector has often
led to a reduction in the terms and conditions for new employees.
Workers transferred from the public to the private sector have
their conditions of employment protected by the Transfer of Undertakings
(Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981. This means that the
new employer cannot vary contractual terms for any reason related
to the transfer, although changes can be made subsequently within
the limits of the common law. Unfortunately, employees recruited
after the transfer enjoy no such protection and can be offered
inferior wages and poorer conditions of employment—particularly
pension benefits where the transferred employees are often members
of final salary pension schemes and the new employees are offered
an inferior money purchase alternative. It is encouraging that
the government has accepted that this "two-tier" workforce
exists and that action must be taken to prevent the phenomenon
continuing. In local government this issue is being considered
as part of the Best Value review and in the NHS an agreement has
been reached that will ensure that around 80 per cent of non-clinical
staff will remain directly employed by the NHS in PFI situations.
Both initiatives are important steps in the right direction, but
they constitute the minimum necessary to ensure fair treatment
for all those employed in the delivery of public services.
2.12 A far more important question in this
context must be to ask, "what value can the private sector
add? What can private companies do that cannot be done by the
public sector?". The evidence on this point is patchy to
say the least yet the government continues to believe that private
sector managers have a distinctive contribution to make—hence
the large number of private sector representatives on task forces
and advisory bodies and the continuing commitment to the Private
Finance Initiative and Public Private Partnerships. Whether PFI
and PPPs genuinely deliver better value for money is an empirically
testable proposition and the evidence is by no means persuasive.
This is not an appropriate occasion to deal at length with the
issue and the TUC has extensively reviewed both initiatives elsewhere.
On the first point, reference has already been made to the need
to raise the quality of public sector management, but the belief
that the private sector has a readily available solution is a
little too simplistic. It should be remembered that the UK has
a general problem of management weakness—in both public
and private sectors. Patient work in closing this gap should be
a higher priority for the government than seeking the advice of
private sector managers who may know little about the public service
on which they have been asked to comment
2.13 Finally, there is a legitimate concern
that greater private involvement leads to greater inequality.
Wanless quotes the OECD indicating that the "consequence
of shifting from public to private [health] spending is to shift
the burden from the relatively rich to the relatively poor".
There is no reason to suppose that the balance will be any different
in other parts of the public services where equality of access
is a primary concern.
2.14 Are "socially responsible"
companies more appropriate partners for the public sector?: The
question of private or voluntary sector involvement in the delivery
of public services is much less controversial elsewhere in the
EU than in the UK. It might be said that there are two potential
reasons for this difference. First, conditions of employment are
not subject to the progressive erosion that has been the case
in the UK following public-private transfers. Collective agreements
are generally applicable across an industry or sector and it is
simply not possible for employers to cut costs by creating a two-tier
workforce. Second, corporate governance arrangements across much
of Northern Europe embody the notion of the company as a social
as well as an economic entity. Two-tier boards, workplace codetermination
and explicit social and environmental obligations work to ensure
that the so-called Rhenish model of capitalism is shorn of the
rough edges found in Anglo-Saxon systems. All these factors act
to restrain the relentless pressure to maximise shareholder value
and instutionalise non-commercial considerations in the process
of corporate decision making.
2.15 In the UK in contrast the pressure
to squeeze value from organisations remains compelling, corporate
governance arrangements protect the interests of shareholders
above all other stakeholders and value is often maintained by
reducing employment—a company's share price will generally
rise after a major redundancy programme. To that extent therefore
the peculiar nature of capitalism in the UK makes it harder to
forge effective partnership between public and private sectors
than might be the case elsewhere in the EU. "Corporate social
responsibility" is an entirely voluntary activity in the
UK with a remarkably unspecific content. In the absence of a wider
change in the corporate governance regime it is hard to see how
a company's self-reported "good" record on CSR would
make that organisation a more appropriate partner for the public
sector.
3. ACCOUNTABILITY
ISSUES
3.1 A consistent theme throughout this submission
has been that democratic accountability is one of the distinctive
features of the public services. Yet accountability must go beyond
simply voting periodically or making complaints to elected officials.
Across the public services there have been a number of experiments
exploring how citizens might be enabled to influence the design
of the services they receive. The use of citizen's juries', scrutiny
panels and regular, direct consultation with service users are
all worth further development.
3.2 The risk with increasing private sector
involvement is that flexibility and responsiveness to public complaints
will depend on the drafting of complex commercial contracts. It
is entirely foreseeable that arrangements with the private sector
could be more rigid than those found where public services are
delivered directly by public servants. Indeed, it could be argued
that this is a more serious form of "producer capture"
than anything that has been experienced in the past. Similarly,
the contract could become an even greater disincentive to innovation
than any of the "bureaucratic" rules that have allegedly
caused problems in the past. It would be paradoxical if, in pursuit
of "user centred" public services, the government created
less accountability and flexibility in public service delivery.
4. CONCLUSION
4.1 The TUC would therefore argue that a
rather different set of principles from those outlined by the
Prime Minister must be adopted if the process of modernising and
reforming public services is to be effective. There is much in
current policy that points in the right direction, but the obsession
with placing great emphasis on the marginal involvement of the
private sector must be abandoned if progress is to be made. An
emphasis on presentation rather than substance is undermining
the confidence of public service workers who should be the government's
natural supporters. The process of tackling a generation of under
investment requires patience, dedication and a commitment to reinforce
current spending plans in the third comprehensive spending review.
4.2 At the heart of the TUC's case is the
argument for more trade union and employee involvement in the
process of reform. It is accepted that public services must change—but
that change will not happen if public servants are alienated and
feel themselves to be constantly under threat.
4.3 Finally, the achievement of the government's
manifesto commitments depends on a renaissance of the public service
ethos. Reducing citizens to consumers and believing that private
sector solutions are generally superior are obstacles in the way
of successful policy implementation. Nor is it right to believe
that private sector managers can be brought in as an instant solution
for the improvement of public services. Most of the expertise
needed can already be found inside the public services. The government
must find a way to tap this great reservoir of knowledge and engage
the commitment and enthusiasm of public servants in delivering
change.
January 2002
18 See Partnership Works, TUC, January 2002. Back
19
See for example, Reinventing Government, Osborne and Gaebler,
1994. This influential work has the illuminating sub-title: How
the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. Back
20
Britain's productivity performance 1950-1996 an international
perspective, Mary O'Mahony, NIESR (1999). Back
21
That the public sector is having trouble coping with this process
can be seen in the high level of central government departmental
underspends reported in the last year. Back
22
Wanless, Securing our Future Health: Taking a Long-Term View,
November 2001. Back
23
See Turner, Just Capital, (2001), p.369. Back
24
Op cit. Back
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