David Craig, author of Plundering the Public Sector, has written this article about what he thinks of the country Tony Blair is on the brink of leaving behind. Do you agree with him? Or is there another way of looking at it? Have a read, leave your comments below and David Craig will get back to you.
SO, Blair is finally off and millions of words will be written by hordes of pundits, self-styled insiders and the man himself about his legacy.
On the plus side, of course, we finally have something looking like peace in Northern Ireland – an achievement that should be recognised. However Blair’s ambition to be seen as an international statesman was wrecked by the Iraq debacle and his European strategy hit the rocks when he was comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Chirac – the French keep their agricultural subsidies, we start losing our rebate. So, apart from Ireland, that just leaves the so-called ‘transformation’ of public services as Blair’s potential legacy.
So do we have schools, prisons and hospitals that are the envy of the world?
The answer is not hard to find...
Blair has given over £70 billion of our money to management and IT systems consultants to develop and implement New Labour’s public sector reforms. These consultants run the two key Downing Street policy bodies – the Strategy Unit headed by David Bennett from McKinsey and the Delivery Unit run by Ian Watmore from Accenture. And in department after department, Blair’s favourite consultants have been busy implementing complex reorganisations and developing massive computer systems.
We have seen administrative chaos and billions wasted on failing reorganisations and worthless computer systems at the Home Office, Child Support Agency, Passport Office, Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise, Ministry of Defence, Education and throughout local government.
But it is, of course in the NHS that Blair’s consultants are causing the greatest devastation.
Under the Blair/Hewitt ‘reforms’, around 13,000 NHS employees have lost their jobs while the number of managers and senior managers has doubled from 20,000 to 40,000. The new NHS computer system was scheduled to cost about £2.3bn and take three years – we are now told it will cost £12bn, take at least 10 years and may never work at all. Meanwhile according to the NHS’s own estimates, around 34,000 people die unnecessarily in NHS hospitals each year and another 25,000 are unnecessarily permanently disabled. Compare this to Iraq where 35,000 people died in violence in 2006 and we call that a ‘civil war’.
As £70bn of our money disappears into the offshore bank accounts of Blair’s fair-weather friends from the consultancy industry, one could almost feel sorry for the man as he realises how easily and comprehensively he has been fleeced out of our money. But rather than admitting any mistakes, Blair’s natural reaction has been to twist, spin and lie to cover his own Government’s managerial incompetence. All governments lie, but none have lied as flagrantly and as consistently as Blair’s New Labour. This is Blair’s real legacy – complete contempt for the truth in the belief that with sufficient PR you can fool all of the people all of the time.
By David Craig, author of Plundering the Public Sector, ISBN 978-1845293741
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I work opposite a hospital and it's frustrating to see that money's been lost on two fronts - through a misguided war and through a misguided health policy. Interesting reading.
Posted by: Fritha | May 23, 2007 at 11:54 AM
Anyone who watched Andrew Marr's HISTORY OF POST WAR BRITAIN on BBC2 would clearly see that the National Health Service is the most important achievement in this country over the last fifty years. It is what defines us as against other nations. What the programme also showed is that it has always had problems from its inception. It was born riddled with money problems. As Bevin said, after facing down the consultants who did not want to work for the state in 1949 'I have filled their mouths with Gold'. No change there then!
Posted by: Leo | May 23, 2007 at 12:34 PM
It's amazing how effective Blair has been at deflecting attention from these issues.
Posted by: Themis | May 23, 2007 at 12:34 PM
Blairs legacy is a chimera. Our perceived prosperity is mortgaged until way into the future, with the country groaning under a cloud of debt, with PFIs which will take for ever to pay back. At the same time we have allowed our manufacturing sector to fall behind even the poorer European countries.
Posted by: andrew | May 23, 2007 at 02:23 PM
David Craig has just been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 22nd Nov 12.30 You & Yours about rip-off consultants employed by incompetent public sector & whitehall depts. He commented how jobs-for-the-boys consultants are taking taxpayers for a ride to nowhere. The manipulation that passes for business as normal is synonymous with corruption. PFI making the rich richer and plundering from the poor to do so. If we remain as we are we are being made into wage slaves - bad enough slogging for ourselves, why slog for crooks in government and their flunkies?
Posted by: rita | November 22, 2007 at 12:58 PM