Public services are worth fighting for - article by Derek Simpson

From publicservice.co.uk website - August 14th

There is always room for improvement. But it is on improving services, not dismantling them, that we as a nation should be concentrating, writes Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite

The future of public services will be a key battleground on which next year's general election will be fought. As attacks on the public sector escalate from the Conservatives, never has it been so important for the union movement to mount a vigorous defence.

The key question is why we have public services in the first place. The answer is clear – the general consensus was that there were certain services the state should be responsible for, health and education being prime examples. The state was deemed to be the best agent to provide fairness and an overall strategy for the country's development.

With the advent of Margaret Thatcher, the post-1945 consensus about the role of the state was smashed. For 30 years, the private sector has been making the pitch that it can provide these services better. Not only is this not true, such thinking is deeply unpopular with the public, as opinion polls have repeatedly shown.

Unite will be fighting very hard to maintain jobs and services in the public sector as they are central to a fair society. Projections of 350,000 jobs being lost in the public sector between 2010/11 and 2014/15 due to the fiscal squeeze are unacceptable.
Cutbacks, whether in doctors, nurses, teachers, housing advice staff, prison officers or refuse collectors, would do nothing to cement the long-term economic and social fabric of the country. The insidious and continual promotion of privatisation by ministers has an adverse affect on hardworking employees in diminished terms and conditions. The morale of the workforce is seriously undermined by such fragmentation of services.

And in the harsh world of competitive tendering, where cutting costs is a key business objective, what will happen if a social enterprise loses a contract with the NHS? Jobs will be shed. What purpose is served by unemployed health visitors and nurses?

Nowhere has privatisation caused such a furore as in the NHS. It has been hit by a whole raft of initiatives designed to fragment it, with the chief beneficiaries being private healthcare companies. And money that should be spent on frontline services is diverted into supporting the whole edifice of the market. Academic research has estimated that 20 per cent of the NHS's annual expenditure has been squandered on what is described as "the transaction costs of the market".

Public sector pensions are also a popular target. However, one of the indicators of the moral worth of a society is how it treats the older population – and pensions are fundamental.

Private sector employers should be greatly improving their own schemes, rather than attacking public sector pensions, a good template for how a progressive democracy should approach this issue, especially as we are all living longer.

A number of myths need to be dispelled. First, the current level of public sector pension provision is self- funding. Second, the cost of providing a public sector pension, according to a Pension Policy Institute report, is the same as the cost of a typical private sector final salary scheme.

Third, the government has negotiated with the trade unions to raise the retirement age for new entrants for public sector schemes; to increase average member contributions; and to cap the increase in government costs.

Unite would like a clear commitment that public services remain exactly that: public, with their steady expansion guided by government, and not by the private sector.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. But it is on improving services, not dismantling them that we, as a nation, should be concentrating. This is the line in the sand that divides Labour, and Unite, from the Tories.