Public Services: Workforce (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this report and I hope that the Government are taking it seriously. It describes both the workforce crisis in our public services and the demographic crisis; they are clearly interconnected.

However, there are other things about which we should be concerned. I am certainly concerned by those elements within the Conservative Party—which one has to call the “Republican right” of the Conservative Party—who denigrate public service as such and want to privatise as much as they possibly can and shrink the state. I see that Conservative Way Forward, formerly chaired by Steve Baker and now chaired by Greg Smith, has just published a new pamphlet that says that if only all the diversity and equality aspects of public services were cut, it would save a huge amount of money and there would be room for more tax cuts.

As the report makes quite clear, at paragraph 27,

“Changes in the needs of the UK population will mean long-term growth in demand for public services”.


Since the core Conservative vote is the elderly, it seems contradictory for the Conservative Party to support cuts in public services which benefit people of my age above all, rather than people of my children’s, let alone my grandchildren’s, age.

We need a change in the attitude of the Government and their supporters to public services. I know that this does not apply to the Minister, who has worked in public services and entirely understands their value. However, the sorts of right-wing think tanks which denigrate—for example—teachers for being entirely left-wing and indoctrinating their students, according to the Sunday Telegraph, demoralise public servants. Teachers, nurses, doctors and probation officers need to feel that they are valued. They also need to be paid well. The reduction in their real pay has highlighted the issue of how much they are paid. This applies not only to teachers and nurses, but to university teachers. Last week, I had a conversation with my son, who runs a 12-person biology laboratory at Edinburgh University. He has been approached by commercial companies that have offered him over twice the salary he gets as a senior university researcher. If that gap grows, the quality of our universities—one of the things that makes this country stand high in the world—will begin to decline. Pay is a matter all the way across public services, and so is pressure.

Pressure comes in partly because cuts to some aspects of public services affect others. The splendid head teacher who taught my children mathematics as a junior teacher told me some time ago that, in the leafy part of Oxfordshire where she has her school, the disappearance of children’s officers, truancy officers and other social services means that her teachers have to take on extra roles in their students’ catchment area. That is part of the pressure that makes teachers feel underpaid and undervalued. We need an overall change in the attitude of the Government.

We also need much stronger emphasis on local provision of public services, because far too much has been centralised. The budgets of local councils have been cut and we all know that personal social services are best provided, and recruited, at local level.

Beyond that, we also know that education is important. In Saltaire, we have a further education college that does its best with remarkably little funding and low pay. Apprenticeships in Bradford are underrecruited and underpromoted. One or two superb schemes attract huge numbers of applicants, but apprenticeships have not been fully exploited and I support everything said about all that. Further education colleges have to be part of the way in which people are encouraged to move into public services.

I also flag that, as we move towards an older society, with a retirement age closer to 70 than 65, and people often working for 40 to 45 years of their lives—as I have—the question of moving from one career to another or retraining becomes all the more vital. It was interesting to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about how the police force has adapted to that and is taking on people all the way through. I joked to my son-in-law that, when his bank finally sacks him, he will be a splendid physics teacher, as he has all the skills. The excellent new charity Now Teach has begun to catch people in their mid-40s and early 50s who will become very good teachers as second careers. That sort of thing needs to be stressed and encouraged at a national and even more at a local level.

Childcare facilities are very important. We all know that the proportion of women in the public service workforce has been rising. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, remarked on that in the police. If there are not decent, affordable childcare facilities then women cannot work when they have small children. That is another part of the package that needs to be supplied.

The role of the non-profit sector is extremely important. I did not entirely recognise the portrayal of the Procurement Bill in the Government’s response, which attempted to suggest that that Bill emphasises and values partnerships in procurement with the voluntary and social enterprise sectors. I must have missed that somehow in our consideration of the Bill. Non-profits are important, but I suspect that—as my generation, which has benefited enormously from good pensions, disappears, and those who follow me will not have such good pensions—it will be harder to find the voluntary workers in their 60s and early 70s who now sustain so many of our voluntary activities.

There are many things to learn from the report. I welcome it. I hope that those in the Government who are real Conservatives rather than libertarian right-wingers will take it seriously, and that both they and the successor Government who we all hope we will have after the next election will begin to take many of these lessons on board.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the committee for its excellent report. It and its recommendations show the value of cross-party working. I also thank my noble friend Lady Armstrong for her excellent introduction, despite her suffering from a cold. She made all the key arguments extremely well and I am grateful for that introduction.

To emphasise cross-party consensus, I must start by saying that I really enjoyed my noble friend Lord Liddle’s contribution. Like him, I increasingly become more like an old-fashioned new Labour person.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

More?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Well, how could I change? I will continue that theme as I go through my contribution.

This report on the future of the public services workforce highlights something that we have all experienced, as I am sure everyone has, whether in failing to get a GP appointment or when visiting a relative in a care home: the “vicious circle” that the committee described of increased demand, an ageing population, staff shortages, low morale, and recruitment issues. The Government’s response is, as the committee puts it,

“at far too small a scale.”

The committee argues that its recommendations would

“make a substantial difference, and secure a more sustainable … workforce for the future.”

There is cross-party consensus on that, which is reflected in the Government’s response to the report. Unlike with many of the reports that I read from this House, the Government accepted all the recommendations. As my noble friend highlighted, there is a lack of any sense of urgency and, perhaps more importantly, of a cross-cutting strategy. I repeat the point made by my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley: as well as the Government accepting the recommendations, we need a clear plan for implementation. The Government mention in their response their commitment to

“engagement with service users and people with lived experience”.

That is absolutely vital.

The Government also stated, in terms of the committee’s recommendations, that it recognised the importance of having efficient and effective technology in the delivery of high-quality public services. The interesting thing, which I will come back to, is that it is not only technology to deliver at the front end of those services, it is how the Government should use technology to make plans for that delivery. One of the things to stress, and I am sure all noble Lords in the debate have had difficulty trying, is that no one action will resolve these issues. That is why the emphasis needs to be put on co-ordination and cross-cutting proposals.

Perhaps even more importantly, I suggest to the Minister that there should be a cross-cutting department with powers to intervene and that can set strategy. I assume that the Cabinet Office currently fulfils that role, but I am not sure that it has sufficient powers within all government departments. The committee did recognise that the Government do not have reliable data on the public service workforce and projections for future demand. It is really important in her response that the Minister is clear about how the Cabinet Office highlights not only best practice—which it did in its response—but how it can promote best practice on developing and sharing workforce data at all levels, both locally and nationally.

Many noble Lords have focused on the area of developing training programmes in partnership with service users so that they reflect service users’ needs and ensure that the workforce is better prepared. One of the things that came out of the debate, which the Minister could reflect on, is, as the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said, the issue of civil society. I did notice there was a slight change in tone in his voice when the noble Lord mentioned the words “trade unions”, as if they were a shocking part of civil society. Historically, though, they have been the key providers of services, particularly before the establishment of the National Health Service and national insurance. When I first started in the trade union movement, many of the people I worked with had been part of the support in providing national insurance benefits. Certainly, Ernest Bevin was very keen on developing health services for his members prior to the NHS.

The role of civil society is very important in terms of the preparation for work, and also in that changing world we now live in where work is no longer a career and a job is no longer for life. It is that lifelong learning that I think this Government have failed to properly address. It was an absolute shame that the Government withdrew support for TUC unionlearn and the ability of unions to encourage people to retrain and work with employers. That is something that could be better addressed.

I also know, from having met the Minister in her previous incarnation, that she knows the benefit of unions working in partnership with employers. One of the best examples of a partnership agreement was of course at Tesco, where both sides, instead of negotiating over differences, were part of a partnership agreement that focused on the success of the enterprise for the benefit of employees and employers. One of the key elements of that partnership agreement was handling that position of massive turnover but also looking at how you can help people train within the company and also for careers outside the company. There are many other examples of where that has been really important. I hope the Minister can address those issues.

One of the things that struck me in the report highlighted the Prison and Probation Service. We are now facing a situation in which there is huge demand in the Prison Service but also a huge turnover. I declare an interest: my father was a prison officer for many years before he died. I remember very clearly the sense of vocation within that service. Most of the prison officers I met as a child were extremely concerned about the welfare of prisoners. They were involved in training prisoners and supporting them as they came out of prison. I do not see that any more. There is a lack of investment in training in prisons, which has affected the sense of vocation that many prison officers had.

I had a large number of questions about the implementation of some of these recommendations, but I think the thrust of contributions from across the Floor stressed the importance of a co-ordinated approach and planning. Let us see that strategy and have a debate about a clear strategy. I welcome the report of the committee.