r e a l r e v i e w . i e

You have to love it when Britain goes a bit mental. This week it’s transpired that a head teacher in England has an annual salary in the region of €180,000, and lo there was much affrontery. Tory Education minister Michael Gove rushed to clarify that he would ensure this would never happen again (while strategically ignoring the fact that the school was free to spend its budget however it damn well wanted, and this “freedom” is exactly what his big plan promises more of), while most of the parents, students and teachers from the school in question rather spoiled things by not being in the least bit bothered and taking pains to stress how wondifulous Mark Elms was at his job. That’s not the point, countered some; that’s a ludicrous salary to pay anyone, and that’s not why we pay our taxes. Nobody has yet had the temerity to reply “Well, apparently it is.”

Of the people sticking up for Mark Elms, a curious number have used the line that “Well, it’s a lot of money and probably a bit much, but I’d rather see it go to a good Head Teacher than to an Assistant Head of Compliance in the local council.” There’s certainly a logic to this – teachers are pretty important, let’s face it, and nobody likes or gives a shit about administrators. Still, what’s most interesting about this line is that, in the same week, the ConDem Government have released a Government White Paper about how they want to dismantle the NHS. Sorry, “liberate” the NHS. Of the many slices of what-they’re-calling-reform, the most instructive is the plans is to get rid of the Primary Care Trusts and make GPs directly responsible for commissioning. Or, in short, “getting rid of the bureaucracy and protecting front line staff,” as Francis Maude described it on Question Time.

Bureaucracy is a great word. Nobody likes bureaucracy. And yet, the administration hasn’t been cut; it’s just that the doctors will now have to do it instead of PCTs. The end result will be that companies will be hired to do the admin for the doctors, and the PCTs will wind up being replaced by private healthcare companies instead. It may save a small amount of money, but it will replace bodies motivated by fairness with companies motivated by profit. That isn’t to criticise these companies, whom I’m sure are run by fine human beings that feed puppies and visit their grandmothers et cetera et cetera, it’s just a statement of fact.

So what’s the motivation?

It’s easy to say “individualist ideology”, or “doing favours for their rich business friends”, or “knee-jerk belief that the private sector always does things better and state services are always shit”, but I’d say it’s a slightly more slippery anxiety. Government decisions have to be carefully documented and desperately accountable, whereas private companies don’t. What was characterised by Francis Maude as “bureaucracy” was described by Andy Burnham on the same Question Time as “accountability”, and accountability costs oodles of money*. Just to be razorblade-clear, I’ll say that the money we spend on accountability is well worth it; I could say more about the importance of transparency in public provisions at this point, but I’ll just say “Golden Circle” and let you work out the rest yourselves. Can private companies do things more efficiently? Yes, of course, because we don’t expect their standards of neutrality and fairness to be so high, and we’re not bothered if a private healthcare company employ dozens of people earning more than any of the Mark Elmses or Assistant Heads of Compliance of this world.

The annoying thing about the prurient fad for cost-cutting is how self-contradictory it is. The Tories criticise Labour’s waste, and bin schools-building projects because they represent bad value for money; but, in bringing “private sector enterprise” funded by the state, they’re embracing exactly the same Public-Private Partnership models that made the schools projects so ruinously expensive in the first place. David Cameron trumpets loudly about freeing up schools from central control, but when a school choose to go to the market and spend a chunk of cash getting the man they need, they’re censured for doing so. The Tories talk about the need for a Big Society, but clearly believe that anyone who serves that society should operate under more stringent limitations than someone who decides Society Can Get Fucked and sets out to make as much money as they possibly can.

This isn’t to defend huge pay-packets for public servants; the sooner we get to a point where people do what they do without being motivated by enormous swathes of money, the better. However, that doesn’t explain why public bodies decisions on pay have to operate by different rules to everyone else, or why we demand “fair” salaries for any state servant but don’t give a toss what someone working for Microsoft earns. Ultimately, my reaction to Paul Elms is exactly the same as to the oh-so-moral rubbernecking about what a FÁS administrator earns, or breathless stories about someone on the dole going on holiday to Thailand; I don’t really know what these people do, or understand their job, so what they earn or do isn’t really any of my fucking business. I’m sure there are some people  exploiting the system, but I’m also sure those people will always exist. Pay an individual half-a-million if you want, then we can tax the shit out of them; but nitpicking the actions of individuals is a boring, conservative and self-righteous thing to do, and reforming a system isn’t the same as pointing at the nearest banker and shouting “arsehole”.

Whereas we, in Ireland, have no idea how to handle systemic reform – to the extent that politicians use the word to describe blanket cuts to the pay of all public servants, and nobody just laughs in their stupid ugly faces – our neighbours are embracing it, even if what’s being proposed amounts to cultural vandalism. In terms of money saved or wasted, and/or patient welfare, my suspicion is that this will make very little overall difference to the bottom line in either direction – even if it leads one to expect the NHS to slowly become little more than a brand-name, concealing private companies who will inevitably behave in ever more inequitable ways, simply because “equitability” isn’t part of their mission statement.

From an onlooker’s perspective, my reaction is more one of… social aesthetics, if that’s not too pretentious a term. The National Health Service is a collective statement of which UK people of all persuasions can be hugely, unequivocally, justifiably proud. The notion that people from all walks of life can expect exactly the same level of care, that anyone is entitled to excellence, makes it an instititution that bespeaks… well, just a fundamental decency. Living in Ireland, with its unapologetically two-tier system, the NHS has always struck me as the subtle watermark of a civilised society. Watching the relish with which these reforms have been flagged – by the party of Daniel Hannan**, who went on to US television to describe the NHS as “a sixty-year mistake” – as private companies spread their napkins over their laps and start to salivate, is far more grotesque and sickening than any one individual’s pay-packet. Many people described Paul Elms’ salary as “obscene”, but the White Paper is so culturally ugly that it shows up the Elms business as the shop-gossip it is. This is a what an obscenity looks like; suited and coiffured, staring glassily at one of the few great things about Britain from official stationery. Smiling. Taking aim.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.