There have been about 9,600 entires on this blog in the last seven years. The vast majority have been written by me. But every now and then I make an exception to that rule. What follows has been written by Dr Ivan Horrocks of the Open University, whose comments here I have much appreciated and much of whose thinking I value and share. I was delighted he offered this piece for publication here.
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Since the late 1960s government in the UK has been committed to bringing management and other specialist expertise into government from the private sector. The original rationale for this was sound and undoubtedly beneficial. It was, very importantly — and with few exceptions - an arrangement built on respect, equality and mutuality.
From the late 1970s this dynamic began to change. There are many reasons for this, but the most important catalyst by far for the increase in the involvement of big business and the private sector in UK government and public services, their growing influence and power, and thus the inevitable creation of what now equates to a corporate public sphere (taken here to refer to all structures, institutions and processes of government, public policy and public service) has been the dominance from the 1970s onwards of neo-liberal economic and political ideas and beliefs.
Government by the market and an overwhelming belief that the perceived or real problems of the public sector could be solved by importing the ethos and management practices of the private sector were early and powerful components of this ideology. In practical terms this translated into a stream of efficiency reviews, programmes of organisational transformation, reinvention, privatisation and marketisation, the advent of the so called “new public management”, and the “rebranding” of citizens, patients, clients, students and so on as “customers”, regardless of the nature of their relationship with public services and the state.
Despite many examples of the shortcomings and negative outcomes of the largely uncritical adoption of such ideologically inspired policies, David Cameron continued this tradition when in February 2011 he wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph in which he promised to privatise pretty much every public service, apart from ‘...some areas — such as national security and the judiciary — where this wouldn't make sense.' He continued: ‘But everywhere else should be open to diversity; open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos.' Interestingly he too claimed this as a ‘transformation', injecting another ‘key principle' of the Tory (neo-liberal) public service ethos — ‘choice' (also a key public service principle of Blair's governments) into the war against the ‘state monopoly' in the provision of public services.
It is inevitable that over the decades since the neo-liberal assault on social democratic forms of government and public service began that it has gradually impacted all aspects of the ethos and practice of public service and management. However, the underlying values (the social democratic public service ethos) proved remarkably resilient. Thus, while accepting new management ideas, new organisational forms, and much else besides (one of the more recent examples being business people such as Lord Browne [ex BP] joining the boards of government departments), many civil servants and public sector workers — at all pay grades and levels of seniority - maintained a commitment to the fact that the work they did was, ultimately, a public — not private/commercial — service, and thus a public good. Consequently, although under constant attack, the values and beliefs, and, crucially, key, underpinning features of public service and management maintained, albeit in an increasingly compromised manner.
By the latter years of the New Labour governments of Blair and Brown a tipping point had been reached, however. The constant influx into leadership, senior management and key — high level — advisory roles across government and public services of people from the private sector, many of them deeply wedded to the values and beliefs that underpin neo-liberalism and highly sympathetic to arguments about the failings and weaknesses of the public sector, began to make its mark. So too did the anti-public sector rhetoric of politicians and negative press that public services — and public service - had endured for many years. Indeed, by the late 2000s, it was not uncommon within any public sector organisation to come across public servants who believed that they were lesser beings than people who worked in commercial organisations, and, certainly, that the work they did was less valued by, and valuable to, society.
The drift away from public sector leadership and management based on the distinctiveness of the public realm and a matching ethos of public service has always contained two self fulfilling logics, of course. The first is that as more and more people with a commercial background and support for, sympathetic to or ambivalent about, neo-liberal ideas entered government and public service they became the facilitators for the entry of others with similar backgrounds and beliefs and values. It is little wonder then, that by 2010 the mission statements and organisational objectives, management structures and cultures, and practice and jargon of almost every government department and public service more closely resembled that of corporate, profit driven enterprise, than a public (and publicly funded), usually not for profit, service.
The second is that as the distinction between the organisational and managerial realms of the public and private sectors became ever weaker and blurred the temptation for everyone from government ministers down to make policy and managerial decisions with at least half an eye on future (private sector) employment prospects and opportunities must have become ever more tempting. After all, why try to maintain an ethical position while an increasing number of your colleagues benefit from a naive or deliberate ignorance of such issues.
Nevertheless, the majority of public servants still recognised the distinctiveness of what they did and held to the core public service ethos that had acted as a check on the importation into the public domain of the most unsuitable and potentially damaging features of private sector leadership and management. Even New Labour maintained some semblance of belief in government and the public interest being broader and deeper than a cipher for the demands and wishes of multi-nationals and the wealthy. That said, examples of the corrupting influence of neo-liberal values and beliefs proliferated and became many and varied, exorcising a corrosive effect on many public services and servants who had to work in environments where it became increasingly beneficial to hold such views and act accordingly.
The arrival of the Coalition government signalled a step change in what had become an almost unstoppable process in the emasculation of government, public service and public management. The last vestiges of a system of interchange between the public and private sectors based on respect, equality and mutuality were ditched. The mantra “private good, public bad“ was visibly and loudly celebrated. As Cameron's Telegraph article and many speeches since have signalled, the supporters of such views were no longer required to rein in their base instincts. This was their day.
One of the most important and far reaching consequence of the ongoing and now rampant neo-liberal ‘turn', for a country where government is supposedly based on representative democracy, is that as government and public service has taken on the structure, leadership, management and ethos of a commercial enterprise so a culture has been created in which government ministers are no longer seen for what they are - politicians — representatives of the people, supposedly serving the public interest, but as quasi company directors (of “UK Government PLC”). Senior public servants and managers act accordingly. Their loyalty and actions are governed by this mistaken and misplaced belief. They see nothing wrong, therefore, with treating politicians outside government who dare to ask searching and challenging questions (such as the PAC has done) with contempt and disdain. They are viewed as the equivalent of a small group of noisy, rebel, shareholders who turn up at the AGM of a large corporation and make a bit of a nuisance of themselves. They are not seen as exercising the legitimate authority that has been vested in them through the ballot box as elected representatives of the citizens of a democracy, and thus guardians of the public interest.
Other no less serious examples are legion and are routinely highlighted on the Tax Research UK blog and elsewhere. A central feature of many of them is that the causal pathways lead back to the values, beliefs and actions of those who are ultimately responsible for the leadership and management of government and public services - government ministers. But in an age when accountability has become a dirty word for ministers and senior managers alike, listening to Jeremy Hunt using the findings of the Mid Staffs inquiry to lecture nurses and other NHS workers about their “failings”, rather than directing his attention at NHS leadership and senior management, was both insightful and instructive. It is a measure of the extent to which the Tories are confident that across government and the public sector senior management are all “neo-liberals now” — or if they aren't they realise the consequences of voicing alternative views. Public service workers and professions such as nursing, teaching, medicine, policing, and so on, are now seen as the enemy — the last bastions of a social democratic, consensus based, public service ethos that is anathema to the supporters and servants of the neo-liberal project.
To be clear, this is not a lament for a supposedly golden age of government and public service — though to be sure it would not be difficult to construct such a narrative given the rock bottom status that both now occupy in the UK. The structure, function and culture of every organisation and sector — whether public or private — routinely requires critical review, and restructuring and rebuilding if necessary (as Apple discovered some years ago). But what we are now seeing goes beyond the hollowing out of the state that was a feature of government in the UK and elsewhere through the 1990s and 2000s. The primary problem — the rot at the core of contemporary public administration — is that such much of the leadership and management of government and public service no longer considers itself part of a public domain. Like managers of commercial enterprises their primary concern is now the bottom line. And the bottom line for government and public service is delivering the neo-liberal project. Thus, the ugly face of corporate capitalism morphs into the ugly face of the corporate public sphere.
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Very interesting! As a young man in the 1980’s I can remember the culture shifting so fast that there was already a pervasive sense that if you weren’t making money you were ‘nothing.’ Then there was the derisive running down of public transport the Tory interest in road building all given succour by a vicious brand of put-down humour exemplified by Clarkson which became very popular – if you use a bus you were a ‘loser.’ It is amazing how fast this all happened. It is as if as soon as you create any vacuum it sucks in this corporate greed mentality. This country now feels like a moral dustbin – very, very sad.
A sobering and depressing read, with the painful ring of truth. I’m sure I’ve posted before about Larry Eliot’s castigation of Thatcher’s handling of tertiary education, but it bears repetition here.
Eliot, in a 1982 article in the Guardian laid into Thatcher’s demand that universities become more business-like, arguing that she had it exactly back to front, and that it was business that should learn from universities!
Back then the tertiary sector – just like the Civil Service – had clear vision, clear strategy, and above all confidence in its role in, and value to, wider society: they were about education in its fullest sense – not fact-collection & earning power but FREEDOM, in the form of intellectual confidence, and above all the ability to recognize bullshit! In consequence UK universities were highly regarded as being world class leaders in their sector.
Now, alas, having succumbed to the psycho-babble and “management/business values” of the neo-liberal hegemony, even the best of them have
slipped back in global renown, as the sector has been encouraged to transform itself into a mere sausage-machine, rather than a focus for freedom.
Can it be any co-incidence, as Bishop Peter Selby noted in his presidential address a few years back at the AGM of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice, that the Government brought in loans to replace grants, transforming students into debt-bonded “serfs”, where before they had been intellectually free agents?
Such intellectual freedom is ESSENTIAL to a spiritually healthy society. Instead, the neo-liberals reacted like Goering, who famously said “When I hear the word ‘culture’ I want to reach for my gun!”
Andrew, thanks for adding this postscript. It adds another important dimension the argument.
I worked in secondary education for nearly 20 years and witnessed the disappearance of the ‘maverick’ from the scene (eventually me!) during this time. By 1989 I was being told by a deputy head that I needed to ‘improve’ my appearance as research showed that the more teachers looked like bankers the greater was the level of public confidence in them! The banking model was being universally applied. Teaching has become the management of systems and data collection rather than the creation of thought. Academy brochure in particular now look like ads for investment banks.
Richard, thank you for opening up your blog to Ivan. Ivan your accumulated wisdom and insight is needed right now. Keep going.
I see there may be a Civil Service Bill (the name itself is a contradiction) in the Queens Speech that will allow ministers to appoint the civil servant who runs their department. Wonder which pond they might fish in for the successful candidate?
Thanks Richard. Appreciated. As and when I can add anything useful/insightful to issues and stories that Richard M. features here I shall.
My congratulations, Ivan, on this piece. I’d like to add a a comment.
Professor Paul Hoggett of the University of the West of England heads the Psycho-Social Studies dept. He brings a knowledge of psychotherapy and social studies to his writing (was an adviser to the European Foundation and the Home Office)and I quote a bit from a piece in the British Journal of Psychotherapy from a few years ago. He was writing about how government like to deliver services at ‘arm’s length’ as though they were private businesses.
“Besides the apparatus of regulation and surveillance the introduction of risk management with clients and users as a proportion of working time decreased considerably as professionals became tied up in the construction of care plans, risk assessments, lesson plans, the exhaustive recording of activities ( by 2002 it was estimated that over 250 forms were in regular use by police officers who spent 435 of their time in stations and just 17% on regular patrol), the completion of monitoring returns (such as the battery of returns involved in the DOH’s Better standards for Health Care) and so on. ‘real’ contact became increasingly replaced by its virtual counterpart, and welfare practice increasingly took on an ‘as if’ quality.
Increased proceduralisation ensured that, where face- to- face work did occur, the encounter was itself highly regulated and subject to standardised behavioural repertoires. In some areas of professional practice, such as working with offenders, the very concept of the professional who carried a personalised case-load has almost disappeared although as offenders became the objects of a programme of standardised, off-the —shelf, intervention packages such as CBT and Anger Management, undertaken by a team of human service ‘technicians’. What progressively disappears is the idea of an encounter between two separate subjectivities in which the client/user is recognised as a unique locus of experience, a subject to be understood rather than an object to be acted upon via re-skilling and reprogramming. Here then, we see the spread of instrumental relations in welfare.”
In less academic language what gets lost is the person to person contact-the humanity.
In my work as a humble counsellor and group leader for MIND, I have seen a lot to confirm what Paul says. There are lots of people who agree with this. We need to identify who IS in favour of this approach and challenge. My main hope is that a new generation will change things-but it will be hard.
I went to a secondary modern school, left at 16 with O levels and went to teacher training College with just O levels but the Open University ( I joined in the first year) gave me an opportunity to get a degree. To me the OU is a great example of the state enabling people who come from a poo background to realise their potential and I hope, make a contribution to society.
poor background last line but one-it wasn’t that bad!
not just you who makes typos, Richard.
Many thanks, Ian. It took me and lot longer to write than anticipated – and I too ended up with a typo right near the end (such instead of so)- so it’s good to know people have enjoyed it.
Your info on Paul Hoggett is interesting too, and not just what you cite – which I hadn’t come across being in another academic field. But I still have a co-authored book of his – with Danny Burns and Robin Hambleton (The Politics and Decentralisation), published in 1994 when all three specialised in local government (and I’d just started teaching it). Much of what they said then about local democracy is even more relevant today. And with the likes of Eric Pickles in charge – a man whose grasp of what democracy is and means must be no greater than that of an earwig – not likely to improve any time soon.
Also good to hear the OU served you well. We still try, despite the efforts of successive government to turn us into a university like any other.
Hate to say this, Ivan, but there was an earlier mistake: exorcising => exercising. (Only two is brilliant!)
I corrected the later error when I quoted that part with the blog on my Facebook status – one like so far. I also sent it to all my local Labour Party members. One has already thanked me for it.
This is an important piece of work. Thank you.
In the 1970s I worked for the Training Services Agency (part of the Manpower Services Commission) and it is impossible to imagine such an organisation now. There was an acknowledgement that not only was there a training gap, which was holding back innovation and productivity, but also there was a role for government in researching and promoting better practice. In other words the public sector could tell the private sector what it should be doing. it was not thought that the private sector had all the talent and all the answers, instead the underlying belief was that companies mostly made short term commercial decisions, which were not necessarily in their own or the country’s long term best interests. Of course such an Agency could not survive the 1979 election.
We have now had 30 years of the Civil Service being told that talent, innovation, and best practice always comes from the private sector and the state is mostly a bureaucratic burden. An organisation has a culture that is analogous the the psyche of an individual. If you repeatedly tell someone they’re rubbish they will believe it and their confidence, abilities, and scope for action will shrivel. This has now happened and the results can be seen in all policy areas. Once you lose faith in your own competence you become reliant on the opinion of others. For a Department those opinions are likely to come from the firms they deal with (e.g. HMRC taking tax advice from the big accountancy firms). Where that leaves the idea that the government should take a wider view I have no idea.
The 1960s and 70s were not a golden age, the Civil Service was too hide-bound and there was an underlying disdain of commercial motives, but there was a belief in the national interest and it was their role to look out for it. I mourn the passing of that confidence.
There’s nearly always a new problem waiting to be solved as soon as you’ve ѕorted one.
Νever donе huh!