From An Englishman’s Castle, a report on the increase in public sector workers makes quite shocking reading.
Employment in the public sector rose by 72,000 in the year to September 2005, compared with an increase of 115,000 in the previous year to September 2004.
The largest increases in public sector employment in the year to September 2005 were in health and social work (45,000) and education (25,000). There were also increases in the police service (including civilians) (10,000) and public administration (3,000).
There were decreases in HM Forces (8,000) and construction (7,000).
The Englishman is surprised at the proportion of workers though:
Public sector employment in the
Well at least that is a trend in the right direction. Or is it?
From 1991 to 1998, public sector employment fell every year, with an overall reduction of 816,000 over that period. From 1998 public sector employment rose every year to 5,846,000 in June 2005. This was 680,000 higher than in June 1998. Private sector employment rose by 1,241,000 (5.7 per cent) from June 1998 to June 2005.
That shows a pretty clear picture where
Sadly, it does not get any better. Public sector bureaucrats are "sucking up" billions of pounds that could be spent on front-line services because of the Government's fixation with targets, rules and policy guidelines.
Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the chairman of the Local Government Association,
says: "Of all the major democracies and economies, our Government exerts the highest degree of central control over public service and local government. We must dismantle the control mechanisms of the central state."
The huge cost of regulation under Labour was highlighted last year by the Gershon efficiency report, which denounced the Government's fixation with centralised controls as "costly, frustrating and dysfunctional".
It said that the inspection and standards regime employed 155,000 people across 1,000 organisations and was causing "frustration in central government about its impact on performance improvement, delivery outcomes and the pace of change".
Although Gordon Brown promised to cut the burden of regulation, Sir Sandy says it has become heavier.
Councils also have to deal with highly bureaucratic policy guidance, bid funding regimes, specific grants, targets and inspectorates. Sir Sandy says there is huge scope for savings in back office administrative functions, many of which duplicate each other and could be rationalised, saving £3 billion a year.
I have a dreadful feeling that if they did make these improvements, they would just spend it on more public sector non-jobs.