Councillor Thomas Heald is a Scottish Conservative councillor for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, former Scottish Conservative and Unionist candidate for Dunfermline and former political advisor in the Scottish Parliament.
Imagine putting yourself in the shoes of an employee who works for an organisation that you are told will be abolished. The department you work for, you are told, will be merged with another department and your responsibilities will be redistributed. However, the good news is that nobody can lose their job consequently and that includes you.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
That is exactly the situation facing public employees as the Scottish Government embarks on its latest pet project: public sector reform.
John Swinney’s government is proposing the most substantial shake-up of Scotland’s public sector in a generation. Thirty-two councils could be replaced by a yet decided smaller number of regional authorities, while fourteen health boards are to become just two.
There is a perfectly reasonable case for examining whether these two organisations remain fit for purpose. Indeed, this scrutiny is long overdue after almost twenty years of SNP dominance.
But the investigation published in the Sunday Times at the weekend has highlighted the fundamental problem with the SNP Government’s approach. The investigation revealed that around 800 public sector employees are reportedly receiving their salaries while awaiting permanent redeployment, at an annual cost of at least £27.6 million for the public purse. At least 255 of these employees have been awaiting permanent positions for more than a year, while 49 have been in this position for 5 years or longer. One NHS employee, according to the Sunday Times, has reportedly been awaiting permanent redeployment for 17 years.
These are extraordinary figures, particularly at a time when public services remain under immense financial pressure, the very pressures which have caused the Scottish Government to look seriously at efficiencies and structural redesign. They are also the predictable consequence of a political commitment which has become increasingly difficult to justify.
Since 2007, the SNP has maintained a policy of no compulsory redundancies across much of Scotland’s public sector. I hear this mantra in the council chamber repeatedly from SNP councillors and I see the political attraction in doing so. After all, making this commitment gives the SNP a get out of jail free card with the voters and the troublesome trade unions who the party have courted for decades.
Nobody wants to see people lose their jobs, or at least nobody on the sensible end of the political spectrum. (Remember the phantom net zero council officers which Reform were determined to abolish out of existence?) Redundancy can have serious consequences for individuals and their families, and any responsible employer should explore every reasonable alternative before pursuing it. But organisations change. Technology advances, services evolve and the demands placed upon employers rarely remain constant. Sometimes particular jobs are simply no longer required. Pretending otherwise does not make the problem disappear.
Now, the outcome of the Sunday Times investigation is not evidence that hundreds of public servants are sitting at home doing nothing. Redeployment can involve temporary duties, retraining and valuable work elsewhere in the organisation. Many of those affected will have had little control over their circumstances. That is precisely why the situation, in my opinion, is a huge failure in political leadership and management, not a criticism directed at individual employees.
A system which can leave people without permanent positions for 5, 10 or even 17 years is surely not working as it was intended. It is difficult to see how such arrangements benefit employees, employers or the taxpayers who ultimately fund them.
Yet, only days before these revelations the Scottish Government reaffirmed their commitment to no compulsory redundancies as part of its proposed NHS restructuring. This is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
As mentioned before, the Scottish Government’s intention is to replace Scotland’s 14 territorial health boards with just 2 which is meant to remove duplication, simplify management and improve the use of resources. These are perfectly sensible objectives and there is no reason that Scotland must retain its existing number of boards indefinitely. But meaningful restructuring inevitably requires changes to the workforce.
The Scottish Government has pointed to redeployment, retraining, natural turnover and voluntary departures as ways of managing these changes. All have a legitimate role. Indeed, they should always be the preferred options wherever possible.
What is far less convincing is the suggestion that every conceivable reorganisation can be undertaken while ruling out compulsory redundancies in advance. Of course, the justification for merging organisations in the first instance is often that the existing arrangements involve unnecessary duplication. Maintaining employment indefinitely where roles have genuinely disappeared risks preserving the very same costs that the restructuring was supposed to address. In short, it makes it a pointless exercise.
Scotland could end up with 2 health boards instead of 14, while maintaining the expense associated with the previous arrangements. That would be a rather expensive way of changing the stationary and crucially, I am at a loss to see how these new arrangements will improve patient care.
The very same issue arises with the long overdue proposed restructuring of local government. As a councillor, I am certainly not opposed to examining the structure of our local authorities. There are good reasons to consider greater co-operation between neighbouring authorities, especially when councils face impossible financial decisions every single year. In Forth Valley, the potential for closer working between Stirling, Falkirk and Clackmannanshire demonstrates the importance of looking beyond boundaries for co-operation on shared services. But local government reform must be about improving these services not just creating an artificial boundary on a map.
Larger authorities might offer opportunities to eliminate duplication. Equally, they could also place important decisions further away from the communities impacted.
The difficult part is rarely the announcement. It is dealing with the practical consequences and the competing demands which emerge once the initial enthusiasm has subsided.
Across Scotland, businesses are adapting to changing economic circumstances. Jobs are created, responsibilities change and, regrettably, some positions disappear. Few private or third sector workers enjoy an absolute guarantee that their employment will continue irrespective of whether their role remains necessary. Meanwhile, public employees must operate withing a political framework which can make adjustments considerably more complicated. A reasonable degree of job security is desirable. An absolute guarantee detached from operational requirements is another altogether.
There is, of course, a legitimate debate about the size and structure of the Scottish public sector. Conservatives should approach it with a clear understanding that public services exist to meet public needs, not to sustain institutions for their own sake.
That does not mean regarding public employees as disposable or assuming that every reduction in staffing produces a corresponding improvement in services. Good organisations depend on experiences, motivated staff and poorly managing restructuring can cause lasting damage. But it does mean accepting that responsible government sometimes involves difficult decisions.
After nearly twenty years in power, the SNP cannot credibly present itself as an innocent bystander to the challenges facing Scotland’s public services. The structures it now proposes to reform have operated throughout its entire time in office. The employment protections it continues to defend have been central to its approach to government since 2007. It is therefore entirely reasonable to judge ministers not merely on the ambition of their proposals, but on whether they are prepared to address the problems which have developed under their stewardship. Scotland ultimately needs better public services, not differently designed ones.
Patients will not judge NHS reform by the number of health boards that disappear. Parents will not judge education by the size of their local authority. Taxpayers will not be impressed by new organisational structures if the costs and frustrations of the old system remain.
John Swinney, Ivan McKee and Jenny Gilruth are right that reform is necessary. But genuine reform requires more than the political courage to announce the abolition of some familiar institutions. It requires the willingness to challenge the assumptions and commitments which prevent those institutions from adapting.
The SNP have spent nearly two decades presenting itself as the defender of Scotland’s public services. In doing so, it has too often confused defending services with defending the machinery of government itself.