Category: Government and Public Sector

Is this the end of interims in government?

A declaration of interest that feels like a confession:

My name is Penny and I have provided consultancy services for the public sector through my own company.  There, I’ve said it.  I’ve done work for the government without being on the permanent payroll. Which puts me beyond the pale, if you’ve been following recent exposes on consultancy among the senior civil service.

When is a consultant not a consultant?

Let’s start –  as any good civil servant would –  by defining our terms. Interim managers are not necessarily the same as consultants who are not necessarily the same as freelancers or temps.  However, all of us seem to be boiling in the same pot as far as the papers are concerned.   I’m taking heart from the belief that the papers don’t have their sights on people like me (though it’s hard to be sure).

They’re  concerned with people trousering six-figure pay cheques, who are effectively full-time civil servants but are paid as consultants.  One case  was a senior manager who’s been in post since 2007.  If true, it’s hard to argue that he is anything other than a government employee who should be paid accordingly.

My case is different. In both cases where I’ve worked as a consultant in government (one 6 month stint, one about 8 months) I’ve worked on projects that didn’t exist before I was hired to set them up and where the required skills hadn’t been found in-house.  I didn’t take over an existing job or manage full-time staff (consultants aren’t allowed to, I wonder how they’ve been getting round that one since 2007?)  In both cases I left once the projects were completed.

I suspect that employing me that way saved taxpayers a fair bit. They didn’t   contribute to my pension for example, or pay employer’s NI contributions, or  holiday pay or sick pay.  The day the projects ended so did the money – no redundancy package to cushion the blow and no help getting another job. My conscience is clear.

There’s a role for interims in government

The civil service employment story has moved on to bemoan the rising cost of redundancies and the corresponding number of people being taken on through agencies to fill the gaps. I now learn, thanks to a storming series of posts on this issue at Flipchart Fairytales, that the use of interim managers in government may be about to end completely.

Well.  I’m all for protecting the employment rights of those in work, and questioned the wisdom of cutting the civil service when massive changes are being made to how public services are delivered.   But it’s not as simple as saying permanent staff = good: interim managers/ freelance consultants = spawn of the Devil.

First, pushing permanent civil servants out of the front door while bringing  freelancers in through the back is only evidence of poor planning if the jobs the two groups are doing are the same.  Bringing in agency temps because staff cuts have been made over-hastily is clearly not good.

But I know from experience that there is a superfluity of general administrators in the civil service  and a lack of specialist skills in some key areas.  Interim managers or specialist consultants offer a flexible, highly skilled resource for government (or any other employer) to deliver specific projects, where there is an acute need for good quality, specialist management  NOW.

The importance of workforce planning

Whitehall has, frankly, never been great at workforce planning.  I went to a  seminar last year given by the head of the team which worked in the Home Office, planning a structured approach to matching the recruitment and retention strategy to their projected future business.  Until that sort of long-term strategic planning becomes the norm in government departments I suspect there will always be a need for interim managers to step into the breach.  Cutting themselves adrift from potential help because the papers disapprove of interim employment arrangements doesn’t seem like good business sense to me.

The finest democracy money can buy: in defence of lobbyists.

Everyone knows who  lobbyists are.  They’re the mouthpieces of shadowy, wealthy businessmen prepared to pay for access to Ministers so that they can influence defence contracts, divert spending on major infrastructure projects, and make junk food an acceptable part of health policy.  They’re Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking,  described (not entirely un-admiringly) as : pimp, profiteer … yuppie Mephistopheles.

Of course the  email campaigners and dogged defenders of the NHS, 38 Degrees, are also lobbyists.  So are the policy directors of the NSPCC, the National Trust and  the Child Poverty Action Group.  So’s Jamie Oliver.  Anyone who works to influence government policy is a lobbyist, even if that’s not what’s written on their business card.

I’d far rather policy was made in open debate with business, the voluntary sector, interested experts and concerned members of the public than not.  Access to Ministers is not, of itself, a bad thing – though it’s interesting that no-one seems to expect Ministers to be able to resist the lure of the lobbyists’ lolly while they’re making up their minds up.

While I completely agree that the people with the deepest pockets shouldn’t be able to buy a say in policy-making, I think it’s naive to assume that the current solution – a register of lobbyists  – would improve the situation.  Who’s to be listed? By whom? How’s the register to be kept? Updated? Administered? What would constitute an abuse of the system?  What sanctions will there be against abuse?  How will they be enforced? By whom?  Despite promising to be the most transparent government ever, the current administration seems to have difficulty reporting on the meetings it’s having now, I somehow don’t see a new register of meetings with lobby groups getting us very far.  I also don’t see how a curb on lobbying could have prevented the Fox/Werritty saga which seems to me to be more about an extraordinary sense of personal entitlement,  hubris and complete disdain for a devalued civil service.

During the recent party conference season, a great deal was made of how expensive it is to attend conference these days – more than £700 to mix with the Tories in Manchester, apparently.  Ordinary members are frozen out and the only delegates are professional lobbyists of one sort or another.  Michael Crick did much eye-rolling on Channel 4 news at the discovery that some lobbyists were actually paying  £800 to attend policy sessions with the party hierarchy.  His (presumably synthetic) astonishment was dismissed by the redoubtable Olly Grender who pointed out that political parties have few other means of funding their activities and that conference is generally a commercial opportunity for them.  If we’re serious about reducing the influence of murky money in the political process, it might be an idea to start looking seriously at the issue of party funding, as she suggested.  Much harder than just listing lobbyists, of course.  And suggesting that more cash should be diverted towards MPs at a time when funds are being withdrawn from social services would be electorally suicidal.  But it might help avoid headlines like this:  Andrew Lansley bankrolled by private healthcare provider – originally written when the Tories were still in opposition, but which re-emerged on Twitter yesterday as part of the campaign against his NHS reforms.

Tory PPB – Smart #PR or cynical stunt?

The Tories abandoned the usual Party Political broadcast format this evening,  in favour of an appeal from a range of Ministers and others on behalf of the East African famine crisis.  Twitter’s response so far has been mixed – from Jon Gaunt castigating them for “using dying kids to get votes” to others describing it as “decidedly different” and “random” – there will no doubt be a more varied response if it’s repeated after the news at 10, when the politicos settle down with their cocoa and get ready to luxuriate in Newsnight.  I’ll look out for the debate.

With much relief I can reveal that I disagree with Gaunty.

Personally I think it might be the most interesting piece of political PR the Tories have done in a long time, as well as a pragmatic response to a difficult content issue.

What would have been the point of  a standard pitch for votes when the nearest election where those votes might be useful is far over the horizon?   And what could they say about policy and politics which doesn’t raise the spectres of the many, many problems the electorate are currently facing and drag down the public mood?  So why not try something to position the Tories as caring and generous and concerned with bigger issues than petty politics?  Why not use it as an opportunity to humanise the party a bit – getting away from the notion that they’re just posh, white men in suits –  and let them send themselves up a bit?  Why not stress the party’s commitment to international aid – a rare example of policy that appeals to people from beyond the traditional Tory vote?  Oh, and in the process, why not try to raise some money for an extremely good cause?

They’ve obviously decided that the risks – that people will see it as exploiting human tragedy or a way of ducking out of a conversation about domestic politics – are worth taking.  It’s not been a great week for the Tories’ PR machine what with the cat flap, and the hasty re-write of the Leader’s speech – but this is an intriguing note to end on.   Smart PR, cynical stunt, generous gesture or all three?

Are summer schools the answer? Five questions for Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg is to announce that he will be spending £50m to set up summer schools for children on the verge of starting secondary school as a “compassionate response” to last month’s riots.

I’m all in favour of anything being provided for young people, who seem to be at the sharp end of a lot of current cuts.  But I do have some questions:

  1. This money seems to be being taken from the pupil premium fund designed to help schools to support children in most need (ie it doesn’t appear to be new money).  How does making schools spend their money in this particular way support the government’s notions of promoting freedom and school autonomy?
  2. Where’s the evidence that a fortnight’s voluntary summer school at 11 will have any impact on stopping young people “falling through the cracks” ?  Is the government already so clear about the causes of the riots that Ministers are prepared to spend a substantial sum (admittedly of someone else’s money) to put it right?  As Theresa May said earlier this month,  “it [is] not helpful for politicians to “suddenly speculate” over what happened. The causes would only be known once all the evidence had been analysed”.
  3. The summer schools are not, apparently, going to be compulsory.  Being realistic, how many of the target children, those seemingly at risk of falling through the cracks into rioting, criminality and beyond are likely to attend them? How will the impact of the scheme be measured?
  4. Assuming that the target children do turn out for the fortnight.  What is being planned to keep them on the straight and narrow afterwards?  Or is 14 days of the right kind of training going to be enough?
  5. How far would £50m go if it was put back into Connexions or some other form of careers advice for school leavers to “put them in touch with their own future” through  training or employment? (The Guardian reported recently that:  Under proposed reforms to careers guidance, a new national service is due to launch next April, which would see teenagers no longer entitled to any face-to-face careers guidance. Instead they will be pointed to a website or told to call a helpline. The duty to provide face-to-face advice will be transferred to schools, though they are to get none of the £203m central funding that pays for the existing service.)

And here are some more rhetorical questions:  Is this anything more than a media gimmick to give Clegg a soundbite for his conference speech?  What’s the betting that we will hear this wheeled out over the coming months as an example of how the Lib Dems are stamping their belief in fairness all over the Coalition? Is there any wonder that another speedy response to the riots concluded that lack of trust in politicians was a cause?  Could Ministers attend summer schools in practical policy making next year, instead of pandering to their conference audiences?  What do you think?

Who the hell’s doing the Tories’ PR?

Having spent last night watching Hackney burning on TV and listening to police sirens screaming past on the road outside, I appreciate that there are more important issues at stake than David Cameron’s PR.  But, this blog is supposed to be about communications, so what the hell:

Who on earth is in charge of Tory PR?  And why did they not have the PM on a plane back from Tuscany immediately after the first night of rioting in London?

For once I have some sympathy for the politicians –  what on earth do we expect them to do when they get back?  As Shaun Bailey put it on Newsnight :

 “This is the thing that the media have been most childish about.  Do you think that David Cameron’s going to go down there with a shield and deal with the kids in Tottenham and then run over to Hackney?  We have a mechanism.  This is a big sophisticated society.  The police are here … we have leaders.  We have a Deputy Prime Minister, a Deputy Mayor, we have all manner of people.  The point is this, they are not the people who will put this problem right.  This problem is in our communities and in our economy.  What are our young people going to do for a job?  … We have lost control of our young people and that is our responsibility not politicians’ “

But whether there’s a practical need for them to be here or not, the image projected by the absence of senior ministers is poisonous to the Tories because it suggests that either:

  • they have no idea what to do and are hiding from the cameras so that they don’t reveal this to an anxious public;   or
  • they don’t want to get into a row – about cuts to police and youth services, or about soaring youth unemployment, or about how (if?) the clean-up will be paid for;    or
  • they simply don’t care – poor communities destroying themselves in unfashionable parts of London don’t matter enough to interrupt a holiday.

I think it’s the last one that’s the one that’s most damaging.   Cameron, Boris, Osborne, privately educated, Bullingdon-clubbers and multi-millionaires to a man, they already look startingly out of touch with “real people”.  It’s all too easy to imagine that they couldn’t care less about what happens on Mare Street.

Cameron cares about his image – that’s why he was  so sensitive to criticism for not tipping a waitress that he went back to find her.  But his priorities are badly wrong.  He should have been  here, striding purposefully about in Tottenham, talking to residents with a furrowed brow, sympathising with distraught shop-keepers and homeowners and promising that help is on its way.

Of course he’s back now, but it’s too late. In PR terms the damage is done.  The mood music is clear – they don’t care, they don’t act, we’re all in this together at the mercy of the mob,  they’re enjoying holidays in expensive private villas.  They’re the nasty party again.  Little by little the brand is being re-toxified.

 

Funding charity – survival of the fittest?

Lots in the papers about the damage being done to the voluntary sector by cuts in public funding, which has started another round of the “are charities too dependent on state funding?” debate.

Harry Cole is arguing in the Guardian that cuts will allow market forces to prevail, with “good” charities surviving while their flabbier, lazier  brethren – the ones who can’t wean themselves off the tit of public funding –  go to the wall.  In the end we will just have the charities that the public wants to pay for.  His link to the story was followed appropriately, in my Twitter stream, by a tweet from the RSPCA listing the impressive number of warders and rescue centres they fund completely from public donation.

Well, I’m tempted to say that that’s all very well for the RSPCA.  The British public are always happy to give  to puppies and kittens with  a hard luck story. (I’ve been talked into re-homing 3 rescue cats myself.  I’m not immune to the madness).

You know who doesn’t do so well out of public giving?  Drug addicts.  And old people, particularly those with dementia.  Refugees aren’t high on the list.  Nor are victims of domestic violence.  Or ex-offenders.

Fundraising works fine when you’re promoting a service the public feel emotionally warm about – cancer, children, abused donkeys – (the top ten charities by donation in 2006 were Cancer Research UK, Oxfam, National Trust, British Heart Foundation, RNLI, NSPCC, Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Relief, RSPCA, Save the Children).  We are surpassingly generous in times of natural disaster.  But services many – shall we say less-photogenic – people depend on wouldn’t exist if it was left up to us to put our hands in our pockets.

Calling them charities is a misnomer these days.  Lots of third sector/ voluntary sector bodies are effectively small businesses working as not for profit arms of the public services.  I can’t say I mind.  Personally I care more about private sector companies making sizeable profits from government contracts to provide public services, but I guess a mixed-economy of providers is a good thing.  What we’re really talking about when we mention cuts to voluntary sector funding is cutting the services that the voluntary sector provides.  I’d much rather the focus was on that rather than arguing about whether we need a survival of the fittest, fight to the death funding strategy for charities.

The 1948 show – a bloomin’ bit of all right

I love everything about this 1948 COI film about the NHS.  The message – of course – but the look and the music too.  As a piece of animation it’s  energetic and engaging – quite right that it’s introduced by the COI equivalent of the MGM lion, and carries its own music, design and director credits.

It’s packed with social detail about class and family.  Watch the high street shops that Charley cycles past, for example. Charley’s doll-faced missus sits happily darning his sock while he eats his dinner and only gets animated when she has to rescue the baby from the coal-scuttle and give him a (tin) bath.  The voiceover is Mr Cholmondeley-Warner at his most patronising, but the film is clear and informative and, at 8′ 37, much longer than a modern attention span would be deemed able to cope with.  (In those pre-TV days it must have been intended for cinema screening, so I guess had a captive audience.)

Compare and contrast with this, government communications fans…

Same approach – animation with voiceover, illustrating illness by animating what’s happening inside a body –  but no-one with an accent like that would have got anywhere near a film studio in 1948, unless they were going to sweep it.  Accents aside, I really prefer the old one  – which may be just the charm and strangeness lent by its age.  Charley’s insides samba to a sassy beat and magical medicines hover around his bed.  Change 4 Life’s faceless plasticine blobs just get gunged up with internal cotton wool and expire early on their faceless high street.  It’s just as patronising in its own way, too.

I’d be intrigued to see what an equivalent film introducing Andrew Lansley’s new model of the NHS would look like.  What would clinician led commissioning, Foundation Trusts and a new role for Monitor look like?   Could it be done in less than 8 minutes?  Would Charley and his missus think it was still a bit of all right?

Making money out of the old and sick

I ran a workshop for the management team of a chain of private care homes a few years ago.  They were concerned about their internal communications. They had a number of homes scattered across a wide area of the North East with a staff of workers technically described as unskilled, though Lord knows I couldn’t do the job.  The staff worked irregular shifts, many had English as their second language, almost none had access to a computer.  The standard internal techniques were obviously not going to work so we spent some time looking at  creative alternatives.

I was struck by the huge pride the staff took in the quality of the care they offered and by how beleaguered they felt as an industry.  They believed they were demonised as heartless profit-seekers,  maximising income by grabbing  granny’s life savings and offering her workhouse conditions cared for by untrained staff on minimum wage.

My workshoppers evidently didn’t fit that pattern.  They cared enough about their staff to spend time and money thinking about how to communicate with and train them.  They were proud of the  standard of care in their homes.  I went away chastened that I had bought into the stereotype too.

I’ve  thought of them again recently: when the debate started about whether the public sector should bail out the failing private provider Southern Cross; when the row over the private Castlebeck  home blew up; and when I read an interview with the magnificent Diana Athill in today’s Guardian under the heading “You can’t make money out of old people“.

Athill has lived in a care home she describes as “a dream” for more than a year and it does sound idyllic.  Crucially, in her opinion, her home is run as a not for profit Trust rather than a business required to clear a profit for shareholders.

You can believe as I do, and as my workshop showed, that not all private care homes are Castlebecks, that not everyone who works in the private sector  is a rapacious monster, and not everyone who works in the public sector is a selfless angel.  You can argue that the cost of providing high quality care for a rapidly aging population is  too high to be met out of general taxation alone.  But if your prime concern is to ensure that older people have a dignified, safe, comfortable home in which to see out their final years it’s hard to argue with Athill when she says:

You don’t set up an old people’s home as a private company unless you think you’re going to make a profit.  You can’t make a profit out of old people … Where need is serviced by the third sector it is civilised.  When it’s serviced by people trying to turn a profit, it’s not … If life is miserable in the main tranche of care homes, it is because the private sector is unsuited to this work.