Hamish Macdonell: Just what we don't need: yet more bureaucrats

Published on Monday 23 March 2009 21:05

JUST occasionally, politicians come up with ideas that show, without a shadow of a doubt, that they just don't get it. Labour's Scottish front-bench team came up with one recently. We need a "superbug tsar" they cried. The threat of infection in our hospitals is so acute, they said, that we need to put someone in charge.

That person would be appointed by and be answerable to the Scottish Parliament and would be paid a very good salary, probably between 60,000 and 80,000 of taxpayers' money every year (plus a generous pension and expenses, of course).

Well-meaning? Certainly. Worthy? Definitely. The right thing to do? Absolutely not.

The issue here is not about superbugs; it is about Labour's knee-jerk reaction to any problem – create another bureaucratic public-sector post to fix it.

That is why they just don't get it. The economy is going into its deepest recession since the 1930s, businesses are going bust all over the place, private-sector employees are losing their jobs in ever-increasing numbers and tax revenues are disappearing.

Yet, despite all this, Labour politicians – most of whom appear never to have been outside the public sector in their lives – think that the answer is yet another highly paid public-sector appointee.

What is really staggering, though, about Labour's "superbug tsar" plan is not that it was proposed at all, but that no-one in the Scottish Labour Party actually seemed to think there was anything wrong with the idea.

Last year, another 1,200 public-sector jobs were created in Scotland. Scottish ministers crowed that the vast majority were front-line posts – doctors, consultants, nurses and so on – and so they were. But the public sector now accounts for 23 per cent of employment in Scotland, and this brings with it some very real problems, the most basic of which is this: how on earth is it sustainable for a shrinking private sector to pay for a growing public sector?

This is the bit that Labour doesn't seem to understand; that it is wrong to call airily for another public-sector bureaucrat to be appointed without considering how that is going to be paid for.

At a time when tax revenues are falling and public-sector expenditure is being squeezed as a result, it is also totally irresponsible to create more posts just because you want to be seen to be doing something.

No-one in the private sector would do this.

If a big private company was faced with a problem, its first instinct would be to shuffle its existing employees around to give someone the task of fixing it, particularly if budgets were tight.

In the public sector, if Labour is any guide, the first instinct is to employ somebody new, without giving any thought as to how the money to fund that post is going to be generated.

On a superficial level, this sends out entirely the wrong message to the private sector. It says: we will go on creating more jobs, even though you are cutting back and losing your jobs. Oh, and we want you to pay for them too.

But there is a more fundamental issue here, which many politicians, particularly those on the Left, do not appear to have grasped, and it is this: the public sector is going to suffer longer and deeper than the private sector in this economic downturn, and it is going to hurt.

So far, the recession has cut a swathe right across the private sector. Jobs have gone in a range of industries, primarily in the business, retail and service sectors. Companies have either gone bust or cut back, and only the leanest, most efficient and those with the deepest pockets will survive.

When the upturn happens – and it will – the private sector will bounce back relatively quickly. The firms that have got through will expand to meet demand and recruit more staff, while new ones will spring up to replace those that have gone under: that is the way of capitalism.

But that will not be the case in the public sector. An awful lot of public expenditure has been brought forward to help to fund capital projects this year and next. That money will not now be available in 2011, 2012 and in the years to come, as it might have been.

Then there is the 5 billion a year in public spending cuts that the UK Treasury is going to force on all departments, including the Scottish Government, and the shrinking tax revenues, which will make it virtually impossible to have any spending increases at all over the next few years.

Taken together, this means that the public sector is almost certainly going to face cuts – and big ones at that – from next year onwards.

Not only are the days of double-digit percentage increases over, but the days of single-digit increases are probably over too, at least for the foreseeable future. The country is massively in debt and it will take a long time to put it right.

It is within this context that Labour's call for the "superbug tsar" must be seen. The country cannot afford to keep creating public-sector posts that are not absolutely vital – and this includes the walking development officers, toothbrushing assistants and cultural capacity officers so beloved of our councils.

SNP ministers are not immune from this tendency either. Alex Salmond has repeatedly railed at planned public spending cuts in Scotland, at the same time as demanding a bigger fiscal stimulus from the UK government. He seems to want to borrow more and more money, but doesn't want to pay back the money we have already borrowed, at least not yet.

All politicians should remember who is paying, not just for all these public-sector jobs, but the salaries too. Maybe it would help if the pay-slips for all politicians came emblazoned with the slogan: "This is taxpayers' money – remember that."

And perhaps a new phrase could be added, warning: "There isn't much of it remaining, so look after it, otherwise there will be nothing left – even to pay your wages."