Why are public services getting worse?

In the 1970s, public services were run by public bodies of one sort or another: local councils controlled many, central government others, and some were run by corporate bodies such as the National Coal Board. This was the start of my working life, and I want to draw illustrations from sectors I have worked in over the years, public libraries in local government and the National Health Service.

First some history. We can trace what we now consider public services back to the nineteenth century. The working class fought, not only for pay and conditions in the workplace, but for services to improve their lives in the developing towns and cities. This was a time of widespread trade union activity, new organisations for trades and skills joining battle with the employer.

These measures were given voice in parliamentary legislation, the Factory Acts of the 1830s, 1840s and that of 1850, and later the Elementary Education Act of 1870. But that should not make us believe that they were the gift of parliament to grateful supplicants – rather the laws followed popular struggle for improvements. This struggle continued in the period after the Second World War, when many public services were broadened and deepened.

Libraries

When I started as a library assistant in a North London public library, the borough I worked for had a network of branches. Even the smallest library had as a minimum a professionally qualified branch librarian and deputy, as well as library assistants. Larger branches had more staff and specialist services: music libraries, reference libraries, with appropriately qualified and experienced staff.

Then there was a mobile library service to parts of the borough not served by buildings, a housebound service, and a schools’ library service offering collections and advice to schools without their own professional librarian.

The borough could call on cooperative arrangements with other libraries to get material that we didn’t hold, with the British Library as backup. Part of a subject specialisation scheme, each borough undertook to acquire stock in a particular range of subjects, sharing the universe of knowledge among the member libraries for the benefit of readers. A similar system organised specialisation for London’s music libraries.

‘So where did it all go wrong? Round after round of cuts started with the Healey–IMF cuts of 1976-77…’

I have painted a picture of a golden age. So where did it all go wrong? Round after round of cuts started with the Healy-IMF cuts of 1976-77. Over the decades opening hours were reduced, branches closed, staff posts lost. Schools’ library services could not survive the local management of schools. Cuts in book funds ended subject specialisation in interlending networks.

More recently councils, whether Labour or Conservative, have replaced qualified and trained staff with volunteers. Some even open libraries with self-service machines instead of staff. No unaccompanied children allowed here! As other services fail, the purpose of libraries is diluted as they take on other functions, or are sold off for redevelopment.

Over 800 public libraries have been closed since 2010. By 2019 there were 28 million fewer books in stock than in 2005. Now there is a context of local government insolvency. A survey of council finance officers earlier this year found that 51 per cent of them thought they were likely to declare their council insolvent.

The potential for public libraries, and libraries of all kinds – scientific, technical, academic, medical – is immense. An example: libraries now lend e-books. Their great advantage as a medium is that they are capable of multiple simultaneous uses. Or would be, except for the restrictive practices of publishers and sellers of eBooks to public libraries.

We could do a great deal about this. The principle of legal deposit requires any British publisher to provide a free copy to the British Library and up to five other libraries, if they request a copy. This principle could be extended to require publishers to make eBooks available throughout the public library network.

The use and abuse of volunteers to de-skill the profession and downgrade services could be stopped, and library education expanded once more, to provide the staff needed for a reinvigorated public library service.

The NHS

Hospitals continue to be crippled by debt repayments: in 2021 NHS trusts were spending nearly half a billion pounds on interest charges alone on private finance initiative contracts. Banned since 2018 after the collapse of Carillion, these PFI deals, which were usually struck for 25 to 30 year terms, are starting to come to an end. There are around 700 PFI contracts with a capital value of £57 billion and charges of around £160 billion still to be paid for use and maintenance.

In January the external cladding on Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford – the country’s first private finance initiative hospital – was found not to comply with fire safety standards when it was built nearly a quarter of a century ago and will need to be removed.

A parasitic dispute resolution industry has grown up around the end of PFI agreements. One of the advantages claimed for PFI was that maintenance would be carried out by the contractors. But when Whittington Hospital in North London tried to get their contractors to carry out remediation work after a fire, the contractors filed for bankruptcy and Lloyds Banking Group, the biggest investor in the PFI scheme, sued the hospital for £56 million.

Nevertheless, after the election of the new government, the chief executive of NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS trusts, Julian Hartley, in the name of “thinking outside the box” was quoted as saying that the new government should relax Treasury rules that limit NHS trusts from entering into such deals.

Over the years capitalism has been quite content for some industries and utilities to be in the public sector. Failing industries still required can be bailed out, and finance capital gets rich on workers’ money (taxes) used to service debt. Even some of the banks were nationalised in the 2007-2008 banking crisis.

We do not advocate nationalisation as an end in itself. Nationalisation is not the same as socialism, as proletarian dictatorship, although that belief still lingers.

Those who argue for nationalisation as a panacea probably do not remember nationalised industries as they really were – trade unions had to fight every bit as hard as against a private employer. If renationalisation, say of rail, were to end some of the inanities and anarchy of the current system, that it is to be welcomed, but it will not of itself help us.

Privatisation was resisted, rightly, both by the trade unions organising in those services, and by the users of those services. They predicted, and were correct, that to privatise, outsource, or market test services would result in an attack on pay, on conditions of service, on workplace safety and on the quality of services. It did not make services any more efficient. If anything, it introduced unnecessary complexities, extra layers of management.

Trade unions

As for trade unions in the public services, the trend of merger has led to Britain’s largest trade union being a public service union, Unison. But the number of public sector workers in trade unions has fallen for three years, and now less than half of public sector workers are members. So we need to pay attention to basic questions of recruitment and organisation, and refocus our trade unions on their purpose.

‘It is time to assert again our professionalism, to challenge those we work with who are prepared to acquiesce in decline.…’

With a dwindling membership, it is too easy for unions to be taken over by those with axes to grind: the decolonisers; the enthusiasts for the latest technological fad; the aspirant censors; the diversity and equality obsessives. All the more important that members speak out and say, “these are our organisations, we will make them tackle the fundamental questions of the future of our profession”.

The brutal answer to the question of why are our public services getting worse, is that we allow it. It is time to assert again our professionalism, to challenge those we work with who are prepared to acquiesce in decline. We take pride in doing our work to the highest possible standard and there’s no room for those who won’t accept that.

If the working class does nothing, not only will nothing get better, things will get much worse. People organising around certain issues can be part of the answer: on water for example, surfers’ and swimmers’ groups have exposed the shocking state of our rivers, lakes and seas.

There clearly is money, if we choose not to divert it to make war abroad, if we renounce the debts entered into in our name: last year 10 per cent of total government revenue went on debt interest; this year more than £110 billion. The problem is not money: the working class make wealth, not the parasites, speculators and oligarchs. We should take control of how it is used for and by the people.

• This article is based on a CPBML public meeting held in Conway Hall, London, on 10 July.

• Related article: How public libraries were won