Plundering the Public Sector
David Craig and Richard Brooks Constable 2006 £9.99 paperback,
ISBN 978-1-84529-374-1
‘What is your greatest legacy?’ Mrs. Thatcher was asked recently. Without hesitation, she replied ‘Tony Blair’. How right she was about New Labour!
Plundering the Public Sector is a readable and indeed entertaining exposé of ‘How New Labour are letting consultants run off with £70 billion of our money’ (the book’s subtitle). Sidelining civil servants, Parliament, the political parties, the trade unions, and indeed anyone who has anything to do with the real world of providing services, New Labour has poured millions into consultancy firms, highly profitable businesses, with an estimated gross profit rate of 55%. The writer admits that the figure is ‘estimated’, because of the veil of secrecy drawn over their operations, under the guise of ‘commercial confidentiality’. The entertainment value arises when the author, from his own experience as a consultant, describes the seven consulting profit-boosters, shabby tricks to boost the consultants’ bills: the ingenuity of their excuses when occasionally called to account, an unholy trinity of stonewalling, circumlocution and opacity; and some elementary lessons in consultantese (‘learning the lessons’, ‘changing the culture’ and so on).
But the great merit of this book is that it shows that the employment of private consultancy firms is part of the government’s privatisation programme for education and health. The authors cleverly undermine every New Labour claim for the virtues of privatisation.
Private sector management expertise? In management terms (cost overruns, punctual completion of projects), the private sector is no more efficient than the state – its expertise in making ‘efficiency savings’ relies on sacking thousands and worsening the conditions of those left. No to ideology, yes to ‘what works’? On the evidence provided here, the private sector is anarchic and wasteful. Free choice? The government chooses between private sector Tweedledum… and private sector Tweedledee, and the choice of a well-funded, democratically accountable welfare service is the only choice which is not allowed. Partnership between the private and public sector? One of the partners ‘negotiates’ its own terms, will walk away if it does not make enough profit, expects to be bailed out if things go wrong, and does not expect to pay if by extreme mischance its greed and inefficiencies are exposed – no prizes for guessing which one. Interestingly, the authors point out that when in power, the Conservatives were very cautious about the Private Finance Initiative and the only Labour shadow minister not to warn against its dangers was Gordon Brown (so much for the ‘difference’ between Brown and Blair).
Best of all, the final chapter puts forward a practical programme for reining in consultants, for restoring democratic accountability, and for re-nationalising the NHS. Every worker in the health service, and every supporter of fair and universal public services, should read this book.
Patrick Newman
FRFI 195 February / March 2007
