Three cheers for

our under-valued

public sector

 

Anthony Seaton

 

Two things caught my eye over the holiday. The first was a letter to a newspaper in which the writer described the public sector as 'unproductive'. The second was a report that Mr Osborne's grand plan for deficit reduction was not working, since for every job created in the private sector 14 had been lost in the public sector.      Most of those 93%, the 13 out of 14 with no job available, are presumably paying little or no tax and relying on state support in one form or another. I suspect a disproportionate number live in Scotland and the north of England. Few people who live outside the wealth girdle in south-east England will be surprised at this. Perhaps our lack of economic sophistication blinded us to what was so clear to the UK government. But the sequence of events does seem to make sense, because the public sector is not unproductive. It has just been characterised that way by people, and parts of the media, with a political axe to grind.
     Of course, I'm biased. I worked my whole career in the public sector, indeed in four separate public sectors as an employee of the NHS, the state of West Virginia, British Coal and finally the University of Aberdeen. So save for two years draining the US economy of a couple of hundred dollars a month I appear to have spent my life as a parasite on the UK economy, and even now I draw my pension from it. But have I and my colleagues in these organisations really been economically negative? Have we not contributed according to our abilities something of value to the society in which we have lived?
     Almost all children are educated in the public sector. The raw products of their parents' initial attempts at child-rearing are mostly turned into employable and useful citizens – value is added. Who does not recall an inspirational teacher? A remarkable proportion now goes to university, an environment where most of the ideas that lead to innovative enterprise are hatched. Many graduates find work in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering, electronics, IT and, more recently, in the nanotechnologies. Sadly, a proportion has recently been diverted into gambling in the money markets.
     The best of the non-science graduates find ways to express themselves in such exportable cultural outlets as film, illustration, literature, art, design and theatre. The law and financial services are also exportable. Most will lead useful productive lives and pay their taxes, though a few will have ended up as politicians or their advisors with grand ideas based on little experience of the rest of the world. Education is not unproductive. Scotland in particular can look with pride on the educational opportunities it has provided for its people and on the effects these people have had on the world.

 

     What about the NHS, currently threatened in England with yet another of its cyclical reforms in search of greater efficiency? It is interesting to see a recent study from the US Commonwealth Fund of consumer views on health care in developed countries (www.commonwealthfund.org) which shows how well the NHS stands up, most especially in equity of care delivery. Having worked in both the US and UK I can well understand the unfavourable views of the citizens of the former country on their expensive, inequitable and ineffective system and find it hard to share Mr Lansley's faith (for that is what it is – he has no positive evidence in support of his schemes from any international comparisons).
     But aside from the obvious benefits to the population's health of the NHS in terms of their ability to remain active and productive, there are less obvious benefits to the UK. The unequalled innovation of the UK pharmaceutical industry owes a great debt to its access to NHS doctors and patients for the development of new drugs. The NHS is also the major customer of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. And don't forget that all those hard-working doctors, nurses and technicians, managers and clerks pay their taxes. No avoidance opportunities in the NHS that I know of.
     From my personal experience, that leaves the coal industry. You may think that here I would be on weaker ground. But this was the industry on which Britain's wealth was founded from the 18th century onwards. When in private hands it had an appalling record of causing death, injury and disease among its workers. After nationalisation it was faced with preventing all this as well as maintaining production in competition with countries where coal reserves were much more accessible and labour much cheaper.
     Anyone who has been down a UK mine will easily understand the problems. To this end the industry innovated and quickly became a world leader in researching the engineering of mining and mining machinery, the diseases of miners and their prevention, and the ergonomics of mining. These were all exportable skills. In addition it also led the world in research into efficient coal utilisation and into such fields as underground gasification and liquefaction of coal and carbon capture.
     The privatisation of the industry has led to the loss of much of this expertise, including the Scottish mining machinery industry, though happily my own little bit managed to resist closure and survives in Edinburgh as an internationally-recognised self-funding institute researching occupational and environmental disease. It is sad but unsurprising to see the rise in deaths and injuries in coal mining since privatisation.
     I could go on, but I hope this is enough to show that the private and public sectors are partners in providing societal goods. The too-easy fitting of an adjective, such as 'unproductive' or 'grasping' to one or the other results in a stupid caricature. Each should give according to its abilities and take according to its needs. Some enterprises are better and more efficient in private hands, some not. Where lies the balance? That we find out when those PPE graduates get ideas in their heads and the scales tip.

 

Professor Anthony Seaton is an emeritus professor in the school of medicine and dentistry at the University of Aberdeen