NEW LABOUR’S civil service cuts programme is in crisis. Up to seventy
civil service IT projects have received secret "red warnings"
(potentially set to fail) according to the Public Accounts Committee.
This is on top of the computer failures that have so far occurred – Tax
Credits payments, immigration and national insurance records, Criminal
Records Bureau and in the Child Support Agency and Jobcentre Plus.
John McInally, Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) National
Executive Committee, personal capacity
When Gordon Brown announced 104,000 civil service job cuts last year,
he was warned by PCS that his programme would result in service delivery
failures. His ‘modernisation’ programme is based on driving out
‘inefficiency’ by installing new IT systems, centralising processes and
setting up call centre networks. Also, encouraging use of electronic
communication while reducing frontline services, slashing and
privatising ‘backroom’ functions, office closures, relocation of work
and privatisation.
All this is being driven by a government of ‘enterprise’ junkies who
are hooked on an anti-public sector neo-liberal agenda that, despite all
the evidence to the contrary, asserts the private sector delivers best.
New Labour is encouraging its private sector friends to enrich
themselves by fleecing taxpayers of hundreds of millions of pounds for
providing computer systems that are riddled with problems, and which
allows them to rake in millions more to put them right.
‘Consultants’ are paid hundreds of millions to provide useless
‘reports’ stating the blindingly obvious. One such company recently
pocketed £1 million from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) by
"revealing" staff needed to be better trained – a fact pointed
out for free by PCS when management were warned cutting training
provision would cause problems. You couldn’t make it up!
Hardworking and committed civil servants bear the brunt of New
Labour’s failing strategy. In Jobcentres reports of assaults and abusive
behaviour aimed at staff are increasing as services are reduced or cut
altogether: Brown doesn’t seem to understand it is people, not computers
that provide services. In the Ministry of Defence a programme of mass
privatisation is under way. While the impact of cuts is uneven across
the civil service, virtually no one is exempt from their effects.
Ideological assault
To fight these attacks it is necessary to understand they are not
based on whim, nor merely designed to "shoot the Tory fox"
prior to the general election. The assault is ideological and
intrinsically linked to the wider neo-liberal agenda that Blair and
Brown are promoting.
All the main parties support the cuts. They are political in nature
but can be defeated by building the strongest possible alliance of PCS,
other unions and associated organisations, including those with a stake
in preserving and improving public services.
The real battle is between the vast majority of society who require
efficient well-run publicly owned public services and the private sector
ideologues who, like Thatcher, believe there is no such thing as society
and profit should rule supreme, even in provision of those vital
services which set minimum standards for civilised life.
The analysis set out by the Left Unity-led PCS national executive,
under the leadership of general secretary, Mark Serwotka and president,
Janice Godrich is being confirmed almost daily – rather than
improvements, the cuts programme is driving services to decline and
destruction.
Civil servants are being radicalised. The cuts programme is
accompanied by vicious assaults on terms and conditions and underpinned
by an ideological offensive conducted by Blair’s press allies that seeks
to denigrate public sector workers.
The easy part is over for Brown, the loss of 13, 000 jobs in DWP, for
example, has been mainly achieved by turnover, as staff go for jobs
elsewhere. An operation that is clearly heading for big problems.
Increasingly workers understand that the chances of receiving
redundancy "packages" is not on the agenda. The plan is to
drive staff out by making their working life unbearable.
However these cuts are coming at a terrible price in terms of
operational difficulties that, along with increasing staffing shortages,
is plunging large areas of the civil service into crisis.
Workloads are dramatically increasing, stress is of epidemic
proportions, management are instituting punitive application of absence
and sickness procedures, morale is at rock bottom.
In areas where the cuts are hitting hardest, ministers and officials
are in a state of denial about the chaos, which will grow if they
continue on their present course.
