Doctors,teachers and the police are ever more demoralised and society is sufferingWill Hutton’s excellent piece “Doctors, teachers, or the police: our public servants are demoralised” (Comment) encapsulates so well the grinding impact of 30 years of public service “reform on professional morale. A further question then arises as to the financial case for what has happened. Part of the justification for passing more resources and power to the private sector was that it would be more cost-effective than management by public service bureaucracies. Comparisons of accountancy,legal and other contract management costs with alternative public sector methods are tough to find. It isn’t easy, though, or to see how it could be done,with many former public servants now in the private sector and their functions managed by companies; a job for academe?Public service systems had many shortcomings that could have been addressed specifically but the assumption was that schemes such as the private finance initiative (PFI) were “the only games in town”. The advantage of a mixed economy is that choices on how to supply public services should be based on what will best serve the public rather than assumptions based on dogma. Too simple perhaps.
Andrew Seber
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Source: theguardian.com