ROSS CLARK
Keir Starner will never grow economy if he keeps swelling civil service… workshy are being well paid for mediocrity
The average worker in the public services is producing less now than in 1997
WE’RE hearing more and more about the scandal of millions of people being left to languish on sickness benefits.
And here you can read shocking accounts of how it is blighting our communitities.
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But that is only one side to Britain’s growing workshy culture.
The other is those who do have jobs but are not doing nearly as much work as they should be.
This week the Office for National Statistics produced a figure which shames Britain — as well as explaining why our economy is so stagnant.
Output per hour worked, one of the standard indicators of productivity, was 0.9 per cent lower in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023.
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As Lord Price, former CEO of Waitrose, says, attitudes towards work in Britain have undergone a significant shift since Covid-19.
Having spent months at home watching television while the Government’s furlough scheme paid their wages, some Britons seem to have decided they rather enjoyed their foretaste of retirement.
Employers tell of being unable to recruit suitable staff, in spite of 5.79million people on out-of-work benefits.
Even when people do respond to job adverts, they often fail to turn up for an interview — or for their first day at work.
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Private companies have still managed to increase their output — though that may change once Labour’s Employment Rights Bill comes into force, giving employees the right, for example, to demand flexible working.
In the public sector, productivity has been on the slide for years, falling by 2.6 per cent in the past 12 months alone.
WFH FURY Civil servants will STRIKE over two-day work from home order as bosses order them back in after waiting times rose
That hasn’t, by the way, prevented workers enjoying above-inflation pay rises averaging 5.2 per cent.
Productivity in the public services is still down 8.5 per cent from the eve of the pandemic in 2019.
Unbelievably, the average worker in the public services is producing less now than in 1997.
Technological advance ought to have made us vastly more productive over that time, yet has failed to make an impact on the public sector.
Put it another way, if the entire economy behaved like the public sector we would be no richer than we were the day Tony Blair walked into Downing Street.
Like the Soviet Union in its wretched last years, Britain would be the land that time forgot.
If you look to public servants for an understanding of their astonishing failure to improve working practices, you will be left wanting.
Far from recognising that they have a problem, they are intent on coming up with wheezes to make themselves even less efficient.
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We have civil servants threatening to strike if they are made to turn up to the office for more than two days a week, and council workers demanding the right to work four rather than five days a week.
Astonishingly, civil servants at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — who are supposed to be leading the charge for Britain to cut its carbon emissions — are among those who have been granted the right to jet off to the sun and “work” there for two weeks a year.
This is in addition to generous paid holidays.
It was reported yesterday how working from home has been returning to the civil service with a vengeance since Labour came to power.
Attendance at 13 government departments has fallen, from the levels recorded in the days after Starmer first entered No10, The Telegraph reports.
Those with fewer staff behind desks after three months of Labour included the Treasury, Housing and Justice departments — which, in theory, should be among the busiest.
At the same time, the private sector is increasing the amount of time it expects employees to spend in the office.
But if civil servants feel so under- employed that they could get away with working four rather than five days a week, perhaps it is no surprise.
Since 2016, civil service numbers have exploded by 42 per cent from 384,000 to 546,000.
The rise was supposed to be justified, first by Brexit then by Covid, but both of those are now in the past.
So why are civil service numbers still so swollen?
One rare insight into civil service working practices was provided by Foreign Office whistleblower Raphael Marshall, who, on the weekend the Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021, was tasked with trying to evacuate Afghans who had worked for British forces.
It was never gong to be an easy job, but it was made much harder because the Foreign Office wouldn’t ask staff to work overtime, even in the midst of a crisis.
Marshall said staff had it drilled into them that working more than eight hours in a day meant they were inefficient, and that it put pressure on their colleagues to do the same.
Many employees, including his boss, were trying to work from home in spite of the emergency.
Just try telling anyone who runs their own business that they shouldn’t work more than eight hours a day.
If we all took that attitude, we would have no entrepreneurs, no wealth creators at all.
Sir Keir Starmer has set himself the target of growing the UK economy faster than our competitors.
If it wants to achieve that, he is going to have to give the public sector one mighty kick up the backside.
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But there is little sign of it yet.
On the contrary, by awarding fat pay rises to public sector workers while making no demands to improve working practices, and by imposing the Employment Rights Bill on private firms, the Government is entrenching Britain’s economic mediocrity.
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