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Edinburgh
TUC
March
and Rally for Public Services
Saturday
17 November 2001 - Edinburgh
Speech by John Stevenson, UNISON City of Edinburgh
Branch Secretary
UNISON calls for real modernisation and
partnership to make services Positively Public
I'm here to sing the praises of public service
workers. The nurses, the cleaners, the porters.
The home helps, social workers, catering staff,
janitors. The admin staff, the road gritters,
the water workers, the electricity and gas workers,
the voluntary sector, the staff in universities
and colleges in careers. The staff who run our
ambulances and the staff who back up our police
and fire services - and the postal workers.
They are all there delivering public services
at the coal face. Delivering those services
on behalf of public and private authorities
- or as it so often feels at the coal face these
days, delivering services in spite of
those public and private authorities.
Politicians keep telling us about the need
to modernise. Our new first minister
elect is very big on the idea. Well let
me tell you, you won't find public sector workers
arguing about that.
We want modern public services. Grown-up
public services. We dream of modern public
services….
- Public services that are so modern, there
might be enough homes and foster parents to
go round to protect and help children in trouble.
- Public services that are so modern that when
you build a new hospital you get more
beds, not less.
- Public services that are so modern that a
cleaner would earn as much in a council as they
can in a burger bar.
- Public services that are so modern that they
realise water is a basic essential of life and
needs to be protected in public ownership.
- Public services that are so modern that they
do not go back to the private, profit driven
services that collapsed and had to be brought
into public control and ownership by our forebears,
so they could survive until today.
The trouble with 'modernisation' is that it
has become a buzzword like Thatcher's 'efficiency'.
So often is just means cuts and waste. So often
it means rolling the clock back to Victorian
times and ideals. So often it means using public
money to line the pockets of big business and
financial institutions.
Too rarely does it mean actually providing
a better service. Rarely does it mean providing
Best Value with the accent on Best rather than
just cheapest.
Let's look at one of these modern ideas. PFI
or PPP. There may be a difference between a
Private Finance Initiative and a Public Private
Partnership - but have you spotted the common
word?
The word Private is the con. We are told that
PFI is the only game in town. But we are told
more. We are told it is the BEST game in town.
We are told that it brings public money in to
subsidise and improve public services, saving
the taxpayer money.
Well the first argument you could debate, the
second is just so off the wall that you wonder
how so many intelligent people could go for
so long without spotting that something is the
matter - It makes14 years of sub-lets pale to
insignificance.
Lets lay the lie to rest. It is not private
money - it's public money.
You pay for it, I pay for it - and because
it is tied up in 30 year contracts, our children
pay for it and their children pay for it. This
is nothing new. One of my colleagues signed
up for a photocopier like that once - but to
be fair, he didn't have the benefit of a quarter
of a million worth of special advisers.
And it is not new money, it is not a supplement
to public budgets - it is INSTEAD of these.
But worse still, it bleeds money from other
services to pay for the private profits.
One of the attractions we're told of PFI is
that the private consortia take the risk. It's
a risk we wouldn't mind taking. If there is
a cash crisis down the road in this city, we
can't cut the PFI projects, because the contract
is protected. The cuts will have to come in
non-PFI schools, or in home helps or in other
essential services. It seems to me that the
public services run all the risks and the private
consortia get all their profits protected.
And that brings the simplest argument of all
to the equation. How is it more efficient, more
modern, to pay higher interest rates, to find
more money to pay for profits and to hand back
to shareholders, than it is to run those services
without having to find all that extra money?
No there is nothing modern about it. What public
services need is real modernisation and
imagination
- Modernisation that makes services more accountable
to users.
- That delivers quality services, services
delivering real Best Value and services that
are constantly improved and resourced to provide
the best they can.
- Modernisation that recognises real joined-up
working - the Public Service Team able to rely
on their own specialist structures, but able
also to break down the false barriers of internal
markets, short term funding and constant fear
of outsourcing and privatisation.
- Modernisation that recognises the need for
a properly trained, properly valued and properly
rewarded workforce.
We in UNISON have held out the hand of partnership
to modernise our public services. There are
so many things delivered by the UK and Scottish
parliaments that we should rightly be proud
of. We can have the grace to say that and to
praise politicians who deliver.
But part of a partnership must always be mutual
respect. And mutual respect means listening
to your friends and being big enough to recognise
that they - the people who actually deliver
the services - might have valid points to make.
They might even have a greater commitment than
you to really modernising the services, to really
getting value for money and to really making
sure that taxes deliver services and are not
wasted on private profit.
We who work in the public service are proud
to be public servants. We would need to be,
the money is hardly the attraction.
We need to go out from here and on Scottish
Public Services Day on 5 December and loudly
say we value our services, loudly say we are
proud to be part of the team that delivers our
services - and loudly say we will fight for
our services.
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Public Campaign
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