While politicians rail against “quangos” and flexible working, the reality is a civil service stretched to its limits and holding essential public services together, warns Roz Foyer.

As sure as night follows day, an election campaign and tightening fiscal conditions will presage intensifying attacks on public service workers.

The past few weeks it has been the turn of civil servants.  Brilliantly funny though it may be, “Yes Minister” has a lot to answer for. Maybe politicians believe that the public believes that your archetypal civil servant looks and sounds like the series’ central character James George Hacker, Baron Hacker of Islington, KG, PC, BSc (LSE), Hon. D.Phil.  The truth is of course different. Not that we need to apologise for the section of the civil service which supports government.  Without these people, our democracy would grind immediately to a halt. 

However, imagining that this is an adequate description of the work that all civil servants do is like saying the NHS is only made up of doctors or that the only people who make our universities tick are lecturers.  

Last week, within the basket of nastiness and economic illiteracy that is the Reform UK manifesto for Scotland, Lord Malcolm Ian Offord, Baron Offord of Garvel, was the latest out of the traps to announce a bonfire of the quangos.  The detail of which departments and which services would be scythed under his masterplan are still to be detailed.  

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Perhaps he means Food Standards Scotland, Marine Scotland or Agriculture and Rural Economy who keep the food supply chain safe and functioning, carrying out inspections on farms, cattle markets, meat processing plants, on boats and at ports across Scotland, protecting animal, plant and public health.

Or maybe, and perhaps this is more likely, he means the staff at Social Security Scotland who have designed, rolled out and, most importantly paid lifeline benefits to the most vulnerable in our communities.  I guess if child poverty or supporting people with disabilities is not your priority, why would you value the staff that deliver that?  We do though. 

There is simply not the space to detail all of the work in health, justice, environmental protection, national security and so many other areas that civil servants deliver.

Despite being cut to the bone and clearly being selected by those on the right wing as the inglorious scapegoats for the economic failures of governments, our civil servants have performed admirably.

Tireless work through the pandemic coupled with increasing, not decreasing workloads, in addition to ever changing ministerial priorities makes for a challenging environment. That’s without even mentioning the headcount reductions, recruitment freezes and spending controls inflicted on governmental departments. In fact, much of the problems facing the civil service can be traced back to of privatisation, public service outsourcing, underfunding and deregulation. That has left us with societal challenges which have never been so big, and public sector capacity which has never been so stretched to meet it.

Workload up, demand up, support and resilience down whilst recruitment comes to a standstill. Tell me any other workplace, public or private, that would thrive in such conditions.

The next time someone wishes to point at the absence figures of Scottish Government departments being higher than average, it wouldn’t go amiss to provide some context why that may be the case.

Comparing apples with oranges when it comes to sickness absence is another political hobby horse for the right, not to mention their fellow travellers in the commentariat.  The apples are not just public sector organisations but also large private sector employers.  The oranges are smaller private organisations who consistently report lower sickness levels.  Why could this be? What could major financial institutions have in common with the public sector? 

Might it just be that they run more effective HR recording systems and are more prone to have negotiated policies allowing longer periods of sickness absence, rather than the sack, in order to support people to return to work?  Maybe they value the experience and expertise of the very many people who, inevitably at some point in life, will experience serious illness.

Sacking folk, putting them on the benefits (to be administered of course by civil servants) and in turn contributing further to the economic inactivity statistics is a strange way to promote economic growth.

If you are going to jump on a bandwagon, I guess you might as well go at it with both feet.  Not content with undervaluing their work and seeking to undermine humane and effective workplace absence policies, the same politicians and commentators are having a pop at civil service home working.

The ire of the commentariat, in most cases probably launched from their living room laptops or home offices, now turns to those in the public sector who have the temerity to avail themselves of flexible working arrangements.

Never mind that studies undertaken by institutions like Stanford University and King’s College London indicate productivity increases of 5-10% from flexible working.   Let’s not mention the fact that the financial services sector reports similar gains.  Let’s ignore the IMF – the infamous and notorious global defender of trade union rights and labour laws who say, “recent studies of work discrimination and reallocation highlight how expanding labor markets to a wider pool of potential employees can have massive productivity benefits.”

These are civil servants. The world of work should work differently for them.

Opening up the labour market to those most excluded from it - those with caring and childcare responsibilities (mostly women), workers with a disability and workers with additional workplace requirements – boosts the public coffers and widens our tax base. In other words, we grow the economy, not stifle it and unions such as PCS, Prospect and the FDA pushing to do that very thing should be congratulated and not criticised. 

Those politicians and sections of the commentariat criticising flexible working are relics of a by-gone age. It is almost as if they are more interested in having a pop at unionised public sector workers than improving the economy.

They’re amongst the most dedicated workers in our public sector and should be supported, not shunned. 

Roz Foyer is general secretary of the STUC

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