Kevin Rowan column

May 16 2005 By Kevin Rowan, The Journal

As a recipient of pretty decent local government services, the parent of children who go to a pretty good school, a patient who received excellent service from the NHS, I do despair at the constant attacks on the public sector from the CBI.

I welcome an interesting and lively debate about key issues affecting the region, but I prefer those arguments to be based on evidenced fact, rather than prejudice, opinion and assumption.

And I'm afraid it is the latter characteristics that seem to inform this needless attack on the public sector, somehow trying to convince us all of the `private sector good - public bad' ethos and seeking to assert some kind of private business entrepreneurialism as a recipe for the good society.

Take last week's regurgitated diatribe about absenteeism. The early pitch of the CBI's report (based on employer opinion) was that absenteeism is costing us all billions as the public sector can't manage their staff properly.

This was quickly followed up by the claim that we are a nation of malingerers, regularly throwing `sickies' to allow ourselves an earlier start to our weekends of fun and a bit longer to recover from them. What total rubbish.

Rather than relying on employer opinion, the CBI would have been wiser to consult with the Office of National Statistics, whose research shows, based on fact, that absenteeism on Fridays and Mondays is lower than absenteeism on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, somewhat undermining the CBI's claim.

And while long-term absence is higher in the public sector than the private sector, the reverse is true for short-term absenteeism.

Analysis would expose the fact that many public servants, particularly social workers and others in particularly stressful jobs, are increasingly finding the pressure and intensity of work hard to deal with and are enduring long periods of absence with mental illness.

Around 28.5pc of employment in the North-East is in the public sector, compared with 20.9pc in the South East (19.1pc in London). Yet if you compare the percentages of population rather than employment the picture is very different - 11.8pc of the population in this region work in the non-marketed public sector, ie health, education and public administration, compared to 10.8pc in the South East and 11.6pc in London. So the issue is more about increasing employment levels, and in particular increasing the jobs growth in the private sector, than it is about the public sector share of the labour market. And that is something private sector employers have been telling us is their strength. My message to the CBI is `get on with it then' and stop whingeing about the public sector.