The Morality of the Public Sector
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2017
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's not very often you see the complete breakdown of the constitutional convention known as collective cabinet responsibility. The issue at stake is whether to loosen the reins on austerity by giving a pay rise to public sector workers, from prison officers and nurses to judges and senior NHS managers. Ministerial heavyweights have been falling over themselves to urge the government to reconsider the 1% pay cap the Conservatives had wanted to keep in place until 2020. The fragile general election result has prompted a serious re-think. The debate is not just an economic one; it also concerns the moral value we place on the public sector. Paying public sector workers more than the minimum required to recruit them is surely the best way to retain and motivate gifted and dedicated people in the service of others? Or should their awareness of being in a socially-useful job be compensation and motivation enough? Besides, is the lifting of the pay cap too high a price to pay, when the extra money inevitably has to come from the taxpayer or risks detracting from the services themselves? Is the special value ascribed to the public service ethos justified? Does society need to retain the principle at all costs; a vital necessity for people who hold our lives in their hands; a recognition that we can be motivated by higher values than the mere pursuit of profit? Or - at a time in which the traditional distinctions between the public and private sectors are outdated - is it a self-serving myth? The morality of the public sector - our Moral Maze this week. Witnesses are Sean O'Grady, Dr Mary Bousted, Dr Jamie Whyte and Chris Graham.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.6 | Good evening. It was Winston Churchill, inevitably, who said that the trouble with civil servants was that they were neither servants nor civil. |
| 0:11.9 | Grossly unfair, but it does capture some of the ambiguities of working in the public service, |
| 0:16.8 | particularly in a week when the 1% cap on their annual pay increases has both divided the cabinet and occupied most of the front pages. |
| 0:25.1 | There is an ethos about public service, it said, that makes a job with the state or the council a matter of working for the common good, |
| 0:33.1 | that to be a nurse, a fireman, an administrator even, is more than a job, a calling, a special duty |
| 0:39.2 | with a higher moral value than the occupations of those of us who scrabble in the marketplace. |
| 0:44.9 | It's an argument that's been used on both sides of the negotiating table by those who say |
| 0:49.4 | it should be rewarded better and those who say the public are served ill by those who want to |
| 0:54.7 | maximize their rewards. |
| 0:56.9 | There's no doubt the pay cap, which has been in place since 2011, has eroded the living |
| 1:01.7 | standards of millions of public sector workers. |
| 1:04.8 | In fact, as the Institute of Fiscal Studies pointed out in May, they are still paid on |
| 1:09.7 | average more than similarly qualified workers |
| 1:12.5 | in the private sector and often have superior pensions. But the gap is narrowing, and the |
| 1:17.6 | interesting argument is how the comparison should be made. Is there something special about working |
| 1:23.2 | in the public sector, or is the idea of an ethos a self-serving myth? What should our attitude |
| 1:29.5 | be towards those who work for the state and for us? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel |
| 1:35.2 | Anne McElvoy, senior editor on the economist, Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas, the Chief |
| 1:40.2 | Executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and Shiv Malik, co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation. |
| 1:47.7 | Claire Fox, is there something morally special about the public sector? |
| 1:51.2 | Well, actually, I'm a great fan and believer in the public service ethic as a virtue, as very important, |
... |
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