Public Service on the Brink

Jenny Manson

Description

The contributors to this book mount a robust defence of the concept and practice of public service at a crucial time for its future. They question the ill-conceived assumptions behind the endless programmes of reform imposed by successive governments, often on the basis of advice from people with no direct experience of working in the public sector.With cuts in public spending by the coalition government and "austerity" programmes being imposed in Britain and abroad, the book could not be more timely in its reminder of the core purpose of public service. After a long period of denigration of the public sector, here is the voice that has not been heard clearly through these decades of reorganisation:"I know what my job is and I want to do it as well as I can. Indeed I would love my work if I could get one day's peace to get on with it. But I am beset at every turn by unintelligible, time wasting and fruitless management initiatives, constant change, ill-judged targets, wrong-headed 'commercial' exemplars and continuous and misguided restructuring. I have to watch as, instead of my 'customers' (actually patients, pupils, taxpayers) getting a better deal from me, the only beneficiaries seem to be those who can lobby for special treatment." The book contains accounts of public service by people of varying backgrounds and ages who work both inside and outside of the public sector. They share an allegiance to the value and purpose of working for the common good and an enthusiasm for getting things right and for the opportunity to recount their experience through this book.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845403539
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
Public Service on the Brink
Edited by Jenny Manson



Copyright Page
Copyright this collection © Jenny Manson, 2012
Individual contributions © the respective authors 2012
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Originally published in the UK by
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Originally published in the USA by
Imprint Academic, Philosophy Documentation Center
PO Box 7147, Charlottesville, VA 22906-7147, USA
Digital version converted and published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com



Contributors
Rodric Braithwaite was a civil servant in the Foreign Office, various embassies abroad and Downing Street from 1955 to 1993.
Dan Carrier is a journalist working for an independent newspaper group, the Camden New Journal. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists and has a special interest in how press reporting distorts political discourse.
Rebekah Carrier has worked providing advice under the legal aid scheme for over twenty years. She sees herself as fortunate to have fallen into a job which has allowed her to meet so many different people and listen to their amazing stories. Quite astonishingly, she has been able to use the law to help many of those people obtain a home or improve their housing conditions. She continues to work in both the private sector and the ‘not for profit’ sector, as a housing lawyer and helping to run a Law Centre in South London. As legal aid reaches its death throes, she worries about what she will do next.
Jonathan Edwards was, until 2010, a professor of medicine at University College London, working on the cause and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Having found providing safe and effective care increasingly difficult because of negative political and commercial forces, he retired at 60 to pursue interests in nerve cell biophysics.
Libby Goldby taught in state secondary schools from 1958 to 1993 including fifteen years as a head teacher in two different comprehensive schools. She is now a governor of a school in Haringey and is correspondent for a small educational research charity.
Oliver Huitson is an Associate Editor at Open Democracy’s UK section, Our Kingdom. He completed a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the Open University in 2010 and is currently reading for an MSc in Politics and Government at Birkbeck, University of London. He works in finance in the City.
Liz Kessler is an urban designer; she trained at Oxford Brookes University, having spent many years before that working in housing and the arts. Her interest has always been in the quality of the environment and the impact it has on people’s quality of life. As an urban designer she has specialised in retrofitting dysfunctional places in areas of multi-deprivation. She was employed in New Deal for Communities areas in Southampton and in Islington, London and is now working on a freelance basis primarily in Stepney, east London.
Ursula Murray works for Birkbeck University of London and tutors a range of post graduate and undergraduate courses on voluntary and community sector studies, public sector management, local government, lifelong learning and gender studies. Previously she worked as a senior manager in local government and prior to that in the voluntary sector undertaking action research projects around local economic change and women’s employment and training. She has an MSc in Group Relations from Bristol UWE (2001) and completed a PhD at the Complexity and Management Centre, University of Hertfordshire Business School in 2005. Her research explored the meaning of the public sector using narrative and psychosocial methodologies.
Chris Richardson joined British Railways in 1961 as a trainee booking clerk. After a number of years as a Relief Station Master he moved into what became known as ‘Human Resources’. He retired from a senior position at British Railways Board Headquarters in 1996.
Mark Serwotka is the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union - the UK’s largest civil service union, with around 300,000 members in over 200 government departments and agencies and in parts of government transferred to the private sector. Born in south Wales in 1963, Mark started work at 16 in what was then the DHSS as a clerical officer, and served in the benefits service for 21 years, including seven years as a part-time worker to enable him to look after his children. During his two decades as a civil servant he held a wide range of union positions, including being responsible for employment tribunal cases. Standing as a socialist candidate and a rank and file branch secretary from the DSS Sheffield branch of PCS, he was elected to the post of general secretary in December 2000 and is almost unique among his peers, having come straight from the shop floor. Mark is a passionate believer in public services and the welfare state, as well as being a dedicated Cardiff City fan and season ticket holder. He is married with two teenage children.
David Wiggins retired in 2000 as Wykeham Professor of Logic, New College, Oxford, having previously taught philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, University College, Oxford and New College, Oxford to which he first came in 1959-60 (via a generous travelling fellowship to USA) from the position of Assistant Principal in the Colonial Office where his work concerned the implementation of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act. Philosophy apart, he was Chairman 1977-79 of the Transport Users Consultative Committee for the South East and a member of the Central Transport Users Consultative Committee. His most recent books are Sameness and Substance Renewed (OUP, 2001) and Ethics: Twelve Lectures of the Philosophy of Morality (Penguin, 2008). He has written and campaigned since the 1970s for saner public policies concerning transport and the environment.



Jenny Manson: Introduction
I have recently retired from HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) after a career of thirty five years.
My early delight in the job is easy to recapture. There was an atmosphere of friendliness, a rather family-like structure that everyone understood. From the first day, I was trusted to get on with the work, in the hours of my choosing if the job was done.
The initial training was long and intense. This and the working culture made it obvious what our job was - to help people struggling to understand the tax system, to chase the non-compliant, to become expert in tax legislation and to be professional in all our dealings. But things have altered greatly since then. Staff surveys have been sorry reading, putting the HMRC near or at the bottom of Whitehall departments for such things as confidence in senior managers and in the purpose of the on-going change programmes.
I have asked Revenue colleagues to what they attribute the recent catastrophic decline in morale. As one put it:
The relative compactness of the Districts, the semi-autonomy afforded to them, plus the scope for discussion, combined to foster a feeling of togetherness. It was difficult not to identify with the ‘firm’ or to have some pride in it, as the members were truly an integral part of it.
Another important element of this independence was that Districts were expected to ‘consume their own smoke’, which, at some danger to their health, they almost always did. The ‘one stop shop’ was one result of this policy, creating certainty for taxpayers and their advisors alike.
It would be wrong to conclude from the above that offices had a completely free hand; accountability there was. Performance targets were set after sometimes long discussions and were challenging. For example - and by contrast with today - post was to be dealt with normally in 7 days (no misprint!), and all accounts submitted were scrutinised by an Inspector. Nowadays such attainments are almost beyond comprehension, and certainly out of reach. Perhaps we took our achievements for granted?
It was clearly the case that the plethora of small units could not be sustained. It is also apparent that there was need of increased specialisation, against a background of orchestrated and continuing campaigns of evasion and avoidance, and to cope with the sophisticated legislation and tactics which trailed in their wake.
Districts themselves expanded, seemingly exponentially. Groupings grew, and indeed still do; surely some form of gastric banding is called for? The trail of consequences from these aggrandisements is both predictable and apparent, representing a mirror image of the ethos engendered by the smaller groupings. Staff find it difficult to identify with the ‘firm’: indeed many are not sure who or what this is. They feel powerless to have any say in what is done or how it is done. They have developed, perhaps by way of self-protection, a form of tunnel vision. They are hurt and embarrassed by having to associate with HMRC’s diminishing reputation and only vestiges of pride remain.
At one time taxpayers could contact a local office confident that they would be able to talk to someone who knew about their affairs and who could, as necessary, address their concerns. Pretty straight forward. Now, and I do speak from personal experience, taxpayers have to contact a huge marshalling yard, only to be shunted into a siding and left there indefinitely. These are called ‘contact centres’ but perhaps ‘lack of’ should be inserted initially? They are of course very big, and they are probably very cheap to run, given the conditions afforded to the inmates, but they are simply not working mainly because they ignore the very