Blogging squabbles are undignified affairs so it's with more than a little reluctance that I add my tuppence worth to the latest spat between Iain Dale and Chris Paul. I'm motivated to do so since neither man comes out of it tremendously well. Quick potted history of the dispute.
Iain's Telegraph column on Friday called for a 'Bonfire of the Bureaucrats' - fairly routine right-wing stuff (and that's not a criticism) about the size and cost of the public sector and a call for a future Tory government to be ruthless in reigning this back. In the comments thread Chris Paul took issue with Iain's reference to 'hundreds of thousands of extra bureaucrats' and suggested that Iain was including front line services in that number. Various posts / comments followed but as yet they've still to kiss and make up (for the avoidance of doubt that's not my goal here anyway, I'd have more joy with Tony in Jerusalem...) So, a quick dig around the ONS website and I find the following:
Public Sector Employment over the last decade and a half, split according to function looks like this:
So yes, the numbers employed by the state have indeed grown since Labour took office (Iain serves), but actually the numbers have yet to scale the heights they were at shortly after the sainted Mrs T left office so right-wing rage seems a little misplaced (Chris returns). So what about the charge that Iain's including front line staff to make his point? The graph above shows the different groups but if we use %'s we get a better view so:
I wouldn't be so rash (or arrogant) as to pronounce on a victor here - it's a complex subject. In truth, and with the greatest of respect to both men, it's fairly typical blogging fair - a little partisan, selective with the figures and generating more heat than light. My politics are a little closer to Iain's than Chris's and taken in the round the rash of statistics above show Labour still does prefer a state driven solution to most others. But as I've argued many, many times before this doesn't justify the ludicrous caricature of New Labour as some sort of Stalinist monolith sweeping everything into the arms of the state. Since Gordon Brown employs fewer people in the public realm than Mrs Thatcher did the right might want to temper their outrage a little. There's a case to be made here but nobody's making it well enough - as I said on Iain's original post:
Iain's Telegraph column on Friday called for a 'Bonfire of the Bureaucrats' - fairly routine right-wing stuff (and that's not a criticism) about the size and cost of the public sector and a call for a future Tory government to be ruthless in reigning this back. In the comments thread Chris Paul took issue with Iain's reference to 'hundreds of thousands of extra bureaucrats' and suggested that Iain was including front line services in that number. Various posts / comments followed but as yet they've still to kiss and make up (for the avoidance of doubt that's not my goal here anyway, I'd have more joy with Tony in Jerusalem...) So, a quick dig around the ONS website and I find the following:
Public Sector Employment over the last decade and a half, split according to function looks like this:
(source)
So yes, the numbers employed by the state have indeed grown since Labour took office (Iain serves), but actually the numbers have yet to scale the heights they were at shortly after the sainted Mrs T left office so right-wing rage seems a little misplaced (Chris returns). So what about the charge that Iain's including front line staff to make his point? The graph above shows the different groups but if we use %'s we get a better view so:
(source)
Taken together both graphs appear to lend weight to Chris's charge - numbers in the forces and the police are roughly static (the scalings not great but in absolute terms the former's dropped c.16k and the later risen c.48k) whereas the numbers and proportions in health and education have risen strongly (356k and 266k respectively). The proportion of staff in 'Other' (which by the way includes all 'non-front line' health, social and public admin roles) has indeed been falling although in absolute terms it's risen c.13k. Final boring numbers bit - Chris suggest that the number of civil service roles has reduced by 20%. I don't think he sources it but a quick look here shows the following:
I wouldn't be so rash (or arrogant) as to pronounce on a victor here - it's a complex subject. In truth, and with the greatest of respect to both men, it's fairly typical blogging fair - a little partisan, selective with the figures and generating more heat than light. My politics are a little closer to Iain's than Chris's and taken in the round the rash of statistics above show Labour still does prefer a state driven solution to most others. But as I've argued many, many times before this doesn't justify the ludicrous caricature of New Labour as some sort of Stalinist monolith sweeping everything into the arms of the state. Since Gordon Brown employs fewer people in the public realm than Mrs Thatcher did the right might want to temper their outrage a little. There's a case to be made here but nobody's making it well enough - as I said on Iain's original post:
"...the generalities need to be ditched and the [Tories] needs to articulate exactly which 'bureaucrats' they'd cull. Not quite named individuals obviously but specific job roles and the functions they perform. There are two reasons why the Tories need to approach this in this way. The first is simply because it's the responsible thing to do. 'Believing in smaller government' is, if we're honest, as vacuous a generality as 'fairness for all' or 'promoting excellence' etc. It actually means nothing without more detail so the Tories owe an explanation to the electorate on exactly what they will stop the state from doing. The second reason is tactical. Look at the reaction to Redwood's proposals earlier this year - can't recall exactly but it was something like 'Tories will make it easier to sack people'. That was a tremendous own goal and surely Cameron's team have the skills by now to understand how stories play with the apolitical or floating voters the Tories need to connect with to win?"
Labels: Politics
19 Comments:
What then are we getting from the £250 billion extra revenue a year then? There is something very odd about these figures C the proportion of GDP spent by he state has also risen . Why have we borrowed £60 billion then ?
Masterly. Kind of. No comment on Newmania's comment which has just appeared as I tap.
There are probably "bureaucrats" in every category C. And "Other" certainly is not this group including lots of hands on staff of all ranks, industrial and professional, but not bureacrats. Vets, coastguards, fire fighters, national parks, etc.
Your figures for the national civil service are probably more indicative of the bureacrat class but don't show a range of "hundreds of thousands" never mind an increase of that quantum. As you show they've going down and are lower than 97.
So Iain is plain wrong surely?
We all know that Town Hall "bureacrat" employment has gone down too don't we? When I worked for a Town Hall 20 years ago there were 50% more workers than there are today.
And we know that the civil service is facing further cuts of 100,000 of 500,000?
PS Just to be clear the 20% cut is planned not completed but is on top of the approximately 10% cut from the height of the civil service growth.
Nice work Cassie. Good post
It is intersting but you have to unpack these figures and take them back over a longer period.My suspicion is there are changes that are behind this and set against the proportion of administrtive people in the private sector this would be a poor performance . I for example do as job about six people did ten years ago...and I do not get paid more
...and thuinking further on it Winstone Churchill had a far larger state sector than both....I think you need to have acloser look at thwta was going on in the lead uop tio the period and the underlying reasons.
Other things that are true are that single motherhood has not increased much in Labour`s period , educatuion has got marginally beter as has health care and over all crime stats are a marginally improving .
When your read soemthing written about the world under Thatcher you wouild be staggered at how diffrent it was , it is the world after Callaghan.
The real question is are we making as much progress as we should and to that I feel the answer is definitely not and considering the increased tax burden absolutely disgracefully not
=
Great post, learned a lot!
Out of interest do you have the figures from, say, 1976 ish? And would they include all the state industries 'sold' back to the owners (us) under Thatcher. If so were the employees in those organisations included in state employees. And after they were returned to the private sector did their proportions of bureaucrats reduce? My suspician (owing a lot to C Northcote Parkinson) is that state bureaucracies just keep on growing.
Lola , I was wondering about exactly that. How about it C why are you prepared to take this stats for what they seem to be when the axis is obviously importnat as is the nature of Public sector employment .The efeiciences gained by everyone must also be taken into account
...and where HAS all the money gone?
Thanks all and apologies for not acknowledging comments sooner - I've been away for a couple of days.
Lola / NM - re: your point on going further back or taking into account context, productivity etc. I completely agree. In essence that's my point entirely - this is a complex area with lots of subtlety but too many on the right make sweeping statements about 'hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats' if the 'bloated state' etc. I have no interest or concern over abstracts like % of GDP or absolute £bn spent - I'm interest in outcomes.
A lot of it is down to the abuse of statistics by all sides. My favourite is McBeans claim to be the one who conquered inflation. A simple search of the ONS website and downloading some data into excel will show you it's downright lies. So why does he do it? No wonder no-one belives any politician.
To be fair it was Labour who established the ONS ...bet they wish they hadn`t ...and FOI..easy to forget..again I bet they wish they hadn`t
but
Since 97 taxes have risen by nearly £10,000 per family in cash terms ( see HM treasury Public Finances databank )Weekly disposable incomes fell in 2005-6 and have grown by an average of only £2.15 a year a staggering achievement .( ONS 05/06) The length of the Yellow tax Handbook has doubled to 9000 pages and the British Chamber of Commerce say the cost of additional labour regulation has topped £50 billion. In 97 we were the 9th lowest taxed in the OECD now we are the 14th./ Stamp duty has quadrupled to over £10 billion( HM Treasury Budget 1998). Over 60,000 occupational pension schemes have been wound up( Hansard6.2.06) Frank Field said "5/6 of final salary schemes that have closed have done so since 2000 . In other words they have closed under our watch“. Britain has dropped from fourth to tenth in the international competitiveness league ( Global Competitiveness report 06/07) and productivity growth slumped from 2.6% per year (92-7)to 22.1% peryear(97-2001)
There you go again NM with that knack you have for missing the point entirely.
Let's take that raft of statistics at face value. What do they speak to? Largely the amount of money the government takes in tax and the volume of regulation around taxes. But what's missing is what's always missing from you analysis NM - context. So we're paying more tax so that all 4-year-olds have a nursery place, more tax so that waiting lists have been cut right back, more tax so that crumbling school buildings are replaced. I could go on (and Labour press releases do) but the point is this - complaining about increased taxes in isolation of any context is an ideologically extreme position, it's utterly meaningless if you don't address how that money's been spent. You need to clearly document (and source) things this government is spending money on that you don't think they should be.
This post was a response to an Iain Dale article almost a week old now, Chris Paul's contention of it and probably hundereds of comments here and elsewhere on the subject of public sector spending. I may have missed a nugget somewhere but in the tens of thousands of words written on the subject then how many costed, specific examples of public spending the Tories would cut have I found?
None.
That's right - absolutely nothing.
If the Tories are ever to achieve, no less deserve power again they need to do better than Alan B'stard style parodies on the 'evils of taxation'.
Also - did you miss (or ignore) my cheeky public response to your comments on my post on Sweden?
You are right about the context, but much of the ideas behind low taxs are philosophical and difficult to prove without testing. Plus it is all very well saying that these taxes have been laces spent on those nursery places but it does not show whether they have been value for money. It's also very difficult to show how state funding can crowd out private provision. Probably what needs to be said and done is to cut spending savagely and actually close services and see whether the private sector moves back in.
In regards the 'evils of taxation' this has been understood and accepted for centuries. Look at the Robin Hood myth.
C - Do the Labour Party issue detailed accounts of whose lives will be rendered pointless by 90% marginal rates. Whose business will go under because of over regulation or which family will not be able to afford a holiday due to vicious rates of taxation.. No, and the fiction that each pound equates to a shoeless waif is far less true than the equation I suggest. In fact tax cuts have raised revenue in Ireland for example and even Brown is well aware of the hence his low rates at high levels .
The answer is of the implicit in the way the question is set. I do not agree with yur answer because you are asking the wrong questions.
Yes your Sweden thing is the usual attitude to the US. . You miss the mainpoint though , that the hyper taxed Swedish economy can only proceed because of its low population and gigantic natural wealth percapita. Even the Swedes are starting to notice by the way.
As to whether the Free and individualist US model is better of worse than the Euro socialist one I would not make any sweeping statements because what works for one country may not in another.
I wonder why then Sweden , which quite obviously is irrelevant to our situatiion is trotted out like a bedtime story. Persoanlly I would prefer more freedom more risk and greater opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyqzPu5pX6U&feature=related
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