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• 

  A Professor writes...

  Lee 11:35 pm on 16 February, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly (21), local democracy (9), One Wales (16), public sector

  His may not be a name widely known outside the Cardiff Bay bubble, but Mark Drakeford has been a key figure in Welsh Government over the last decade.  On Saturday he’s likely to be selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff West at the next Assembly elections – succeeding the man he’s been advising. 

  A very thoughtful man, he was the one who effectivley made Rhodri Morgan’s Governments hang together  – ideologically and organisationally.  The Professor of social policy at Cardiff University gave a short lecture to the Labour Grassroots ginger group at the end of January which I have just come across on the web

  It is an interesting read on a number of levels but the point that struck me particularly was his fear that without strong political leadership over how to deal with spending cuts the civil service will lead the way in crudely slashing schemes they were never keen on in the first place.  Or as Prof Drakeford put it “unless we are prepared with our own democratically driven way of dealing with reduced budgets, the machine will take it over”.  

  He warns there will be:

   -       An assault on the entitlement agenda: much despised as low populism, rather than the production of strong social capital which we know it to be;

  -       An assault on jobs: a firm belief that the public sector is bloated here in Wales, with lots of easy opportunities to slim back and make room for the private entrepreneurial spirits which we have held back for so long;

  -       An assault on  public services: those creators of dependency and sullen apathy which save people from the consequences of their own behaviour and teach them that, no matter what havoc they wreak in their own lives, and those of others, the state will always be along to bale them out.

  In particular he foresees a temptation to engage in displacement activity by going after local authorities: “there are voices, at the Assembly, who believe that the solution will be found in an attack on local government in Wales”, he warned.  I half agree with his advocacy of PR for Local Government allied with a new settlement centred on “binding agreement around a small number of key outcomes”.  But can’t help observe that this has been done in Scotland without much effect on the culture of Local Government.  Anyway, that’s an aside.

  Here is a man who intimately knows the way the Assembly Government works, at both a political and official level.  His warning about the ‘machine’ taking over is a sober one.  There are undeniable failings of delivery right across the Government in Wales.  Ministers need to deal with that and not let their officials get away with sloppy work.  But capacity problems pose challenges and there is clearly a fear that when the spending cuts bite and the fog of war descends, the civil service will have the perfect cover to cut the big schemes they never wanted (free bus passes, free prescriptions) rather than deal with the inefficiencies and inadequacies throughout the system.

  So we must rely on “our own democratically driven way” to ensure the response to the cuts is driven by political priorities and not administrative prejudices.  But Mark Drakeford doesn’t seem confident that this will happen…

   

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  Bonuses and the Economy

  ian 2:33 pm on 4 November, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Economy (16), public sector

  It has been apparent for some time the bonus culture is not confined to the hyper-inflated rewards associated with bulge-bracket investment banking. Therefore I must congratulate the Western Mail on a fine piece of journalism today.

  Using the Freedom of Information Act, Sion Barry its Business Editor has identified bonus payments for the last financial year made to civil servants in the upper echelons of WAG. I am not sure what signals this sends out but at best it seems the payments are badly timed.

  It also raises wider questions about the need for remuneration structures to include this element of incentivisation. There was a time when people in all walks of life did their job and were compensated accordingly. The price of continuous failure was inevitable and the reward for success was the respect of colleagues, appreciation from your employer and enhanced self-esteem in the knowledge of a job well done. At some stage this all changed.

  From memory it seems to have been associated with the self-justifying claims on the part of large corporations that to remain internationally competitive the best people needed to be brought in and they needed to be compensated appropriately. Nothing wrong with that but maybe a better approach would be to establish the right level of expectation and set the pay level in accordance with this.

  Which brings me back to the world of banking. That notorious Welsh-man Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, Vice Chairman of Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs recently defended the banking bonus culture by suggesting the British public should “tolerate inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all.” This is an interesting point of view and needs to be contrasted with the news in Friday’s Financial Times that Moody’s, the ratings agency, has suggested UK banks are expected to experience further writedowns of between £130 and £250 billion over the next few years.

  If this proves to be true there are numerous implications from this. One of them should be the cancellation of bonus-time and a stinging rebuke from the mouth of Lord Griffiths to those contemplating being rewarded for failure.

   
• 

  Great Leap Forward?

  siobhan 10:32 am on 20 October, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: NHS (5), public sector

  The latest reorganisation of NHS Wales went “live” at the beginning of October. Today’s Western Mail reports concerns that additional costs have been incurred by undertaking this “massive reorganisation” (the Minister’s words) part way through the financial year. These may not, however, be the only costs associated with reorganisation.

  I was not a fan of the previous structure which created a level of organisational complexity and bureaucracy that few understood. I said so at the time and received more than a little flak from the same party that is currently leading the latest reorganisation. However, I’m just as unconvinced by another “big bang” reorganisation which has the potential to yet again destabilise the health service. It would have been possible to take a more evolutionary approach to structural change.

  And that is what it is – structural change. It does not of itself improve services to patients. It just changes the organisational and management structure and we have little evidence of what the most effective structure for the NHS looks like. Unlike clinicians, who we ask to undertake evidence based practice, we are rather short of evidence based policy and this is not helped by the fact that we rarely evaluate the groundhog days of NHS reorganisation. We think the previous structure wasn’t effective but we don’t actually know why and how.

  There are costs to any reorganisation, for example simply in recruiting to new positions. This reorganisation has the potential to make savings in management costs but, as Felicity has written here and elsewhere, these do not seem to be being realised and it may be that it will actually end up costing more than the previous structure. However, because we don’t have the information on how much each respective structure has and will cost, again we just don’t know.

  Beyond this, radical reorganisations risk losing good practice, effective working relationships and organisational history. Managers, civil servants and politicians become preoccupied with restructuring (and for managers whether they will actually have a job) rather than improving services. It can take years for the new organisations to mature and “bed down”.

  So why do politicians reorganise the health service? Because they can. It is much easier than making difficult decisions about actually changing services. I hope and want to think it is out of a genuine belief it will improve things for patients and not for political advancement as is suggested today. Whether this is,as the Minister promises, the “doorstep of a new dawn” I’m not at all sure about. But I am sure that NHS reorganisations are like buses. If you miss one don’t worry – there will be another one along shortly.

   
• 

  Objective what?

  Lee 7:58 pm on 11 October, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Economy (16), public sector

  The BBC today reports what we already know – the current round of EU Structural funds is likely to be Wales’ last. 

  It was only our lamentable economic performance that saw us narrowly qualify for the current round of Convergence funding.  The enlargement of the EU to include even poorer areas than our own is likely to mean that in 2013 we’ll have to learn to live without the top level of European structural funding.

  What the BBC failed to ask was, is that a bad thing?

  Clearly £1.2 Billion over seven years is not to be spurned, £171 Million pounds a year clearly matters.  But in the context of the annual WAG budget of over £16 Billion a year, it is relatively small.

  More important to my mind is the opportunity cost incurred trying to spend the EU grant available to Wales.  Over the last decade Welsh public servants have learned a whole new language – Eurospeak.  It is a secret code.  They talk of the intervention rates which they can draw down EDRF to match funds – and that’s the intelligible bit.

  Civil servants, Quango staff, Local Government officers and voluntary sector workers have become very creative in piecing bits of funding together to access European money.  But it has a distorting effect on the way public services are designed and delivered in Wales.

  The amount of time, effort and imagination that is being absorbed by tapping into a relatively small funding stream must have a considerable opportunity cost.  Time spent on finding ways round opaque EU funding rules is time not spent on thinking new thoughts.

  Looking back the debates of ten years ago about ‘match funding’ seem rather quaint.  Anyone with a rough working knowledge of way the Structural Funding is working in practice knows that genuine ‘match funding’ is a myth.  But the amount of energy exerted keeping the myth alive is considerable.

  In a contracting public spending environment losing access to any top-up cash is regrettable, but it is a far more nuanced picture than the reports suggest.

   
• 

  Designed for Disposal

  felicity 8:24 am on 7 October, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: NHS (5), public sector

  Assembly Finance Minister Andrew Davies says the years of plenty have come to an end for the foreseeable future. Agonising decisions are going to have to be made about where the axe will fall to protect frontline services, but there’s at least one that shouldn’t be that painful.

  Take the National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare (NLIAH).

  This quango spent nearly £100m of public money last year “to support and share best practice in the NHS”. Its acting chief executive was paid £93,604. He and his senior executives cost the taxpayer more than £500,000 – enough cash to pay for 25 nurses.

  For several months, doctors and other health professionals have been calling for a review of NLIAH because of concerns about its transparency and value for money. Very few have heard of it, those who have, roll their eyes. Yet it has somehow emerged unscathed from last week’s NHS reorganisation, whose main aim we’re told is to streamline management and cut costs.

  The Assembly Government which created NLIAH four years ago (when other quangos were being abolished) insists the agency plays an important role. Some £88m of its budget it says, is spent on “supporting workforce planning” and commissioning non-medical professional training in the NHS. But people I have spoken to with experience of its services say they have been “far from impressed”.

  Given that Edwina Hart also had to bring in two of her new Health Board chief executives from outside Wales, there is enough evidence to question whether it is fit for purpose. 

  There is no reason why its functions can’t now be absorbed by the new Boards under an already expensive tier of management.

  We’re in tough times.  There’s no room anymore for bodies that are reluctant to divulge how they spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money or whose outcomes and benefits remain unclear.

  Let NLIAH now justify is executive salaries while public sector workers face losing theirs, or go to the top of the list for disposal.

   
• 

  If You've Got a Blacklist ...

  siobhan 9:18 am on 29 September, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly (21), Civil Society (3), lobbyists (2), media (10), public sector

  Some of you may have noticed that on Sunday’s Politics Show I offered a critical perspective on the prospective runners and riders to become Leader of Welsh Labour (if and when Rhodri ever tells us when he’s going – and please let this be soon because there are only so many years you can take to resign).

  I have been a bit surprised by the reactions I have had to these comments and a similar discussion on the Radio Wales Phone In programme earlier in the week. Not so much the hostility and those who said I was “brave” (a euphemism for foolhardy) but rather those who wanted to say how good it was that somebody was “telling it like it is” and “pulling no punches”.

  Now, I’m not so egotistical to think this has anything particularly to do with me as an individual but rather how few people are even prepared to peep above the parapet.  There are of course some notable exceptions who are prepared to don a hard hat and break cover … and some of them write on this blog.

  Wales is a small country certainly but its civic society is tiny, closely integrated and mutually dependent (apologies to the 2,902,585 people who aren’t inside the Cardiff Bay Bubble). This doesn’t only lead to ‘group think’ but perhaps also to a fear of speaking out because it means we won’t get those research funds; gain access to decision makers for our organisation, client or indeed ourselves; get to sit on this committee or that quango or even a medal in the New Years Honours List. To mix a couple of metaphors here there is a fear that if you’re not singing from the same hymn sheet or running out for Team Wales then you won’t be part of anything.

  I understand why people feel the need to remain neutral – as long as we realise that we all bring our own subjectivities to bear on anything we say and that neutrality can be a guise for actually being manipulatively partisan. This neutrality can also lead to debate and commentary that is not only anodyne but can also be asinine.

  A healthy mature democracy needs critique, criticism, challenge to orthodoxies and radically different ideas – and it also needs humour and sometimes biting satire. I once heard an AM say “if you haven’t got anything nice to say then say nothing at all!” … sometimes though there isn’t anything nice to say and it needs to be said.

   
• 

  Wales' second recession

  victoria 3:08 pm on 23 September, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Economy (16), local democracy (9), public sector

  At the Industrial Communities Alliance’s conference earlier today, Steve Thomas, Chief Exec of WLGA, raised the interesting question of whether Wales could be heading for a second ‘wave’ in the recession.  

  The public sector accounts for 63% of Wales’ GDP, he said.  Cuts in public spending could push the public sector into ‘recession’ just as the private sector emerges from it pulling the whole economy with it.   Add to this the challenge of an ageing population, climate change and waste disposal..There is still he acknowledged lots of ‘fat’ in the system – schools with 2 pupils, a plethora of WAG grants etc, but Steve also recommended public bodies should start  planning for absolutely massive cuts to help them reach innovative solutions. An all-Wales payroll? Mergers of local authorities? Shared services with other bodies? And considerable streamlining of processes. 

  As an aside, this was one of several superb presentations  - more posts on them to follow. But was anyone there from WAG to hear them?  No.

  PS  Heard this morning that Powys LHB and Powys CC are to merge – the first of the mergers. Will more follow?

   
• 

  There may be trouble ahead

  Lee 6:27 pm on 13 September, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly (21), Conservative Party (5), Economy (16), Labour Party (8), One Wales (16), Plaid Cymru (2), public sector

  So Gordon Brown will tell the TUC this week that we are “on the road to recovery”.

  I think not.

  Even if the economy does pick up the impact on public spending over the next ten years is going to be profound.  And last time I looked at the figures on the reliance of the Welsh economy on the public sector they left an impression on me that it was kind of important.

  The point doesn’t seem to have been lost on the TUC.  And clearly Brown is road testing his election strategy by painting the Tories as the slash and burn agents who will put the recovery at risk. 

  But putting all that aside, let me be parochial for a moment.  The impact of the cuts are going to have far reaching consequences for the Assembly Government, and indeed the future of the Assembly.

  For all the manoeuvring going on to replace Rhodri Morgan the overriding issue is how the WAG manages the huge reduction in public finances this Autumn and next following the Westminster election.   As an old sage reminded me this week, this more than anything else will determine the shape of things post-Rhodri.

  As the Holtham report found, the Assembly’s finances are already under strain.  Even in times of plenty the Welsh bank account was not getting a fair share from our Treasury masters.  But it is about to get a lot worse.  “Unmanageable”, according to my friendly sage.

  So what could the political fallout be? 

  How will the new Labour leader navigate the massive cuts, laden down with promissory notes made to Trade Unions others made during the leadership election? 

  How it will play out within Plaid?  Will the coalition survive this Autumn’s budget round?  My friendly sage thinks it will survive this autumn’s negotiations but is clear that it “definitely” won’t survive next Autumn’s.   It could be a messy divorce.  And this in turn raises very interesting questions about the All-Wales Convention and the timing of any referendum.  Do we really want to be making the case of moving from Part Three to Part Four of the Government of Wales Act against the backdrop of eye-watering public spending cuts and the lingering smell over MPs expenses?  And if not how will the inevitable disappointment be manged within Plaid (in other words can Ieuan Wyn get Adam Price on board)?

   

  The Tories in Wales are already worried about how the new crop of MPs will react to the LCO process, added to that they will have some difficulty navigating between a kind of the “one nation” approach in Wales and what is bound to be a savage attack on public expenditure and services should the Tories win the UK election.  Phrases like “now that we have really been able to look at the books the situation…etc”, will help Nick Bourne and his group for a while but it wont cut it for long. All of that  points to the Tories in the Assembly having already reached their high water mark for the foreseeable future. 

   

  But someone somewhere has to come up with a model of public service delivery in Wales that will be truly responsive to people’s needs, fairer in terms of accessibility and affordable  – especially in the next five to ten years.   There is little sign of anyone engaging in such thinking. 
   
• 

  Our money being used to hire lobbyists to lobby the government!!

  angela 2:56 pm on 4 August, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: lobbyists (2), public sector, waste

  The Tax Payers Alliance have a new report that shows how much government money (well its our taxes) is being paid to organisations , that then use it to lobby the government!

  Why not save money and just cut out the middle man.

  Now as someone who has to earn every penny, I am not happy at the amount of my taxes that goes to these political lobbyists,its over, wait for it £38million pounds. There is just something that is off kilter about this situation.

  The full report is on the Alliance web site.  Here are a few nuggets to chew on:

  The report’s estimate of £38m is composed of (a) public sector bodies spending on lobbying, by hiring political consultants and funding trade associations, and (b) funding of nominally independent political campaigns and think tanks. That is almost as much as the £38.9 million all three major political parties combined spent through their central campaigns at the 2005 election.

  The report is a conservative estimate of the total spend because does not include the huge amounts spent by councils and other public sector bodies on publicity, a certain proportion of which goes on lobbying.  Instead, it focuses on the amounts spent hiring external lobbying and public affairs support:

  • Public sector organisations spent nearly £4.9 million on hiring political consultancies. More than twice the amount found in earlier research by the Conservative Party.
  • 77 public sector organisations were found to be spending on political consultancies.
  • 14 consultancies received more than £100,000 in payments from public sector organisations.
  • 3 trade associations have a combined taxpayer funded income of more than £23 million (Local Government Association, Association of Police Authorities and NHS Confederation).

  I wonder how this fits into their grant conditions or if anyone has actually thought how ironic this is.