The pen-pushers who are costing Britain a fortune
ATAX increase to save the NHS: that is how the Government has presented its bold plan to inject more cash into the health and social care systems through a hike in National Insurance.
But the great danger for the Tories is that much for the extra funding, which amounts to a colossal £36billion over the next three years, might never reach the front line, but instead will be squandered through waste and bureaucracy.
Profound disillusion will arise if this vast largesse, rather than clearing the Covid waiting list backlog and ending the social care crisis, is used as subsidy for the expansion of bloated officialdom.
The NHS is our most cherished institution because of the dedication of its professionals and its unique, historic principle of free access. But that high level of public affection cannot hide the reality that its resources are not always used wisely.
Staff regularly complain about how much of their time is swallowed up by pointless administration, much of it generated by pen-pushers with paper-shuffling exercises and endless meetings.
WORRYINGLY, there are already signs that this could be happening with the new cash settlement. On the day after Boris Johnson’s announcement of his plan, it was reported that the NHS is currently recruiting 42 new chief executives, on an average salary of £223,000, to oversee the establishment of “integrated boards”.
These will watch over the co-ordination of healthcare and other social services – a fashionable political cause, although there is little evidence that it delivers any real improvements.
Yet this kind of recruitment is rife in the NHS. So the health service’s improvement agency is currently hiring a “Deputy
Director of Strategy”, a “Head of Reward and Recognition” and a “Director of Operations and Performance”, on salaries of up to £108,000. Similarly, Camden and North West London NHS Trusts believes it cannot manage without a “Deputy Director of People” on a salary of £115,000.
During the first years of the Second World War, Churchill regularly grumbled about the inefficiency of the British army in North Africa, which he felt spent far too much on its “tail” at the expense of its fighting “teeth”. The same complaint could be made about much of the modern state sector in Britain, where the interests of the jargon-spouting management classes are put before the real needs of the public.
That is certainly true of the Home Secretary Priti Patel’s department, miserably failing in its duties to protect our streets or secure our borders. But its inadequacies can hardly be blamed on lack of resources.
The Home Office has a gross expenditure of over £19billion and has 288 civil servants paid more than £70,000, including the current permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft who is on a £235,000-a-year package.
Funds that could go into the fight against crime are instead frittered away on 41 Police and Crime Commissioners, with their own bureaucratic empires.
So the £87,000-a-year Thames Valley Commissioner Matthew Barber has at his side a £110,000 Chief Executive and a £95,000-a-year Chief Finance Officer. Derbyshire Commissioner Angelique Foster has a Head of Operations, a Head of Compliance, a Policy and Partnerships Officer, an Executive Assistant and an Engagement Co-ordinator.
PARTS of the public realm could now be described as a dependency culture for well-rewarded executives. Typical is the BBC whose bleats about financial pressures are undermined by the revelation its payroll has over 110 employees in senior leadership positions on over £150,000-a-year, among them Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore on £402,000 and Director of Creative Diversity June Sarpong on £267,000.
Local authorities continually wail about underfunding yet in the year 2019-20 there were 2,802 town hall staff on over £100,000. Last summer it was revealed that the number of London Transport employees on over £100,000 was 557, an increase of 42 on the previous year.
Two thirds of our universities reportedly have more administrative than faculty staff, many of them indulging in “creeping forms of corporate escapism” “fanciful strategy development exercises” and “managerial vanity projects”, according to one education insider.
It would be a tragedy if the additional money for the NHS were to disappear down a bureaucratic black hole. But, judging by its own record, the Government has not yet got a grip on this kind of excess.
‘Additional money for the NHS might vanish down a black hole’