Last week, I met up for a coffee with the convener for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who had asked whether I could help make an economic case for the retention of civil servants locally within the North Wales area at a time when many jobs were being threatened by Government moves. This threat stems from an edict by Gordon Brown that 104,000 civil servant posts would go by 2011, with 10,000 jobs of those to lose their jobs being based in Wales.
Now if these were real efficiency drives, I don’t think anyone – including the unions – would have problems in working alongside employers in making the service better for everyone. However, the current consultation process demonstrates yet another ‘helicopter’ approach that looks at the big picture from above without any consideration of local issues. This is a problem that has also been seen with the recent hospital reconfiguration plans in Wales.
Perhaps the best example of this is the proposed downgrading of Llandudno Hospital. If one reads the relevant consultation document, it seems to have looked at a map with the location of the four general hospitals across North Wales and concluded that three were needed – one in the west one in the east and one in the middle, leaving no room for expanded services in Llandudno.
Of course, what such an approach did not take into account was the ageing local population in the Llandudno area, the difficulty in travel for many of these individuals, the massive expansion in potential patients during the tourism season, as well as all the other local factors which externally appointed consultants - who have been appointed with one result in mind - have little interest in.
The same appears to be true of the civil servants’ dispute where, in North Wales, the plan seems to see staff numbers in HMRC’s tax offices reduced from 219 to 70, and to have these centralised in Wrexham. The consultation, to date at least, has not taken into account the impact on government services within each area, and I am sure this is true across Wales, especially within more rural parts. There is also a lack of understanding within the halls of Westminster that Welsh is a living and breathing language in everyday use by many people in North West Wales and yet one of the proposals is to shut down the very offices that provide this bilingual facility.
The UK Government is suppose to be a responsible employer and yet there seems to be very little concern over the fact that staff, if relocated eastwards in the case of North Wales, will have to travel thousands of additional miles per annum at a time when environmental sustainability is allegedly at the heart of every government decision.
At a time when consumer services in the private sector are finally beginning to appreciate the importance of local delivery and greater closeness to the customer, the UK Government wants to go down the centralisation route in dealing with important face to face issues such as personal taxation.
It is difficult enough to attract jobs to the poorest areas of Wales, so many would be surprised if highly paid jobs within such areas were moved to more prosperous parts of the country. Indeed, the situation has already become such that highly trained civil servants are seriously thinking of looking for job in the local Tesco’s, which epitomises much of the new Wales today, where it is not the quality of jobs within a locality that counts but the number of jobs. It is no wonder that our relative prosperity has not increased over the last decade if well paid jobs keep being replaced by part-time largely unskilled positions.
Clearly, the PCS must make a valid case for the retention of the highly skilled and highly paid jobs in North Wales and I will be helping them as much as I can to make sure that happens. However, if Government, at both the Westminster and Cardiff levels, took their consultation processes over such major changes a little more seriously and engaged with the local people who are being directly affected by such decisions, perhaps a more conciliatory conclusion could be reached to the satisfaction of all parties.
Now if these were real efficiency drives, I don’t think anyone – including the unions – would have problems in working alongside employers in making the service better for everyone. However, the current consultation process demonstrates yet another ‘helicopter’ approach that looks at the big picture from above without any consideration of local issues. This is a problem that has also been seen with the recent hospital reconfiguration plans in Wales.
Perhaps the best example of this is the proposed downgrading of Llandudno Hospital. If one reads the relevant consultation document, it seems to have looked at a map with the location of the four general hospitals across North Wales and concluded that three were needed – one in the west one in the east and one in the middle, leaving no room for expanded services in Llandudno.
Of course, what such an approach did not take into account was the ageing local population in the Llandudno area, the difficulty in travel for many of these individuals, the massive expansion in potential patients during the tourism season, as well as all the other local factors which externally appointed consultants - who have been appointed with one result in mind - have little interest in.
The same appears to be true of the civil servants’ dispute where, in North Wales, the plan seems to see staff numbers in HMRC’s tax offices reduced from 219 to 70, and to have these centralised in Wrexham. The consultation, to date at least, has not taken into account the impact on government services within each area, and I am sure this is true across Wales, especially within more rural parts. There is also a lack of understanding within the halls of Westminster that Welsh is a living and breathing language in everyday use by many people in North West Wales and yet one of the proposals is to shut down the very offices that provide this bilingual facility.
The UK Government is suppose to be a responsible employer and yet there seems to be very little concern over the fact that staff, if relocated eastwards in the case of North Wales, will have to travel thousands of additional miles per annum at a time when environmental sustainability is allegedly at the heart of every government decision.
At a time when consumer services in the private sector are finally beginning to appreciate the importance of local delivery and greater closeness to the customer, the UK Government wants to go down the centralisation route in dealing with important face to face issues such as personal taxation.
It is difficult enough to attract jobs to the poorest areas of Wales, so many would be surprised if highly paid jobs within such areas were moved to more prosperous parts of the country. Indeed, the situation has already become such that highly trained civil servants are seriously thinking of looking for job in the local Tesco’s, which epitomises much of the new Wales today, where it is not the quality of jobs within a locality that counts but the number of jobs. It is no wonder that our relative prosperity has not increased over the last decade if well paid jobs keep being replaced by part-time largely unskilled positions.
Clearly, the PCS must make a valid case for the retention of the highly skilled and highly paid jobs in North Wales and I will be helping them as much as I can to make sure that happens. However, if Government, at both the Westminster and Cardiff levels, took their consultation processes over such major changes a little more seriously and engaged with the local people who are being directly affected by such decisions, perhaps a more conciliatory conclusion could be reached to the satisfaction of all parties.
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