All governments love boasting about their achievements and HMG is no exception. A particular favourite boast for the current lot is how many jobs they have created since they came to power. Sounds good, doesn’t it.
But there is a whole world of difference between job creation and wealth creation. In fact, the two things can be mutually exclusive:
Labour has hired 344,000 extra people to work for the Government since it took office, with the state now employing 5.3m people, or one in five of the workforce, according to figures released yesterday.
Until Labour was elected, the government payroll had fallen for 15 years, mostly thanks to the privatisations of the 1980s, but that is now being reversed by a massive public spending spree funded from tax rises.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are overseeing a hiring bonanza. Hundreds of thousands are joining the public sector, especially in the National Health Service, where 160,000 more staff have been taken on. The NHS now employs about 1.3m people, reputed to be more than any other civilian organisation in the world apart from the Indian railway.
If those people working in the shrinking private sector want to know exactly why they have to hand over more of their income and savings every year to their government, I suggest that they look here for an answer.
And with one in five of the population working for the government, it isn’t hard to work out which way they’ll vote, is it?
Hi David,
It’s even better than 1 in 5. Those figures you’ve quoted don’t include those tens of thousands working for the government, via private companies (eg: staff at EDS working on long-term IT contracts for the Inland Revenue). It’s more like 1 in 4.
Soon there’ll just be one bloke producing some wealth in this country, and 27 million people checking up on him! 🙂
Rgds,
AndyD
1 in 4 is the same as France. Is there some Euro dictat we haven’t been told about regarding harmonising the level of “workers” in the Public Sector to avoid “unfair” competition.
It was reported yesterday that the EU commission said countries in Europe should look to adopt best practice in running their civil service, and they pointed to Ireland as an example.
Well I can tell you that if Ireland is the best, God help the rest of Europe.
I was amazed to see a report on the news the other night proclaiming that the economy in the UK is still growing but only due to the growth of the public sector since the private sector is hardly moving now. The tone of the report was ‘thank goodness for the government spending all this money because otherwise the economy would be in a terrible state’. Then I realised I was watching the BBC.
Edmund Burke wrote:
1 in 4 is the same as France. Is there some Euro dictat we haven’t been told about regarding harmonising the level of “workers” in the Public Sector to avoid “unfair” competition.
A bit off topic, but would we minarchists/libertarians/individualists/insert favorite word of your choice to describe the political beliefs of us Samizdata readers be better off trying to alter the meme by not using the term “Public Sector”, but instead “Government Sector”?
By the same token, I prefer to use “Government Health” instead of “Public Health”, and here in the States, “Government School” instead of “public school”.
Edmund Burke
Well I can tell you that if Ireland is the best, God help the rest of Europe.
I thought the Irish model of civil service was a direct inheritance from the British one?
Eamon Brennan
Ted, point taken, however a rose by any other name etc. The problem with the term Government Sector is that it would appeal to the Left as much as Public Sector. We need a term that conveys its inefficiency. How’s about the Fawlty Sector. Fawlty schooling, Fawlty medicine, Fawlty housing etc. might not seem so appealing.
Eamonn – the Irish Civil Service is indeed based on the British one, but would appear to have lost its way a lot less. However we have some very inefficient State Monopolies,with the usual appalling work practices, inflated wages and pensions way beyond anything attainable in the private sector.
Yet the authors of the study by the ECB indicate that the UK could save 12% annually if reaching Irish levels of efficiency. Savings for countries such as France and Italy would be much larger.
How about:
Compulsory Sector (cf. Voluntary Sector)
Tax Sector
Red Tape Sector
Inspector Sector
‘State sector’ is probably one that has more chance of being widely adopted, I’d suggest.
Interesting point, Eamon, I wonder what it is Eurocrats like about the Irish civil service? Is it really so bad, Edmund? I bet the Eurocrats like the way the Irish [understandably] say all the right, flattering things about Brussels, no? That could [British link regardless] briefly co-exist with competent and honest civil servants for a decade or two.
I would expect love of Bruxelles to sooner or later corrupt any decent body of men, but it could be happening quite slowly.
An Irish Times opinion editor today politely rejected an article I wrote him about how Eire will come to reject giving up their independent Irish punt for the euro.
I can’t be sure, but I suspect he is already one man among many in Eire seduced by what he thinks the EU did for Ireland [and which I think the freely-floating punt did for Ireland]. Even honest people can be bought by subsidies. That’s probably what Brussels likes about Irish bureaucrats.