Major's Crusade to Reform Public Service
GELB, NORMAN
GIVING PEOPLE MORE POWER Major's Crusade to Reform Public Service BY NORMAN GELB The Prime Minister of Great Britain is not an exciting personality. Whether in Parliament or to the public, the...
...Major has embarked on a campaign to guarantee the rights of individuals against the inefficiency and indifference that is widely-and often accurately—said to plague Britain's faceless bureaucracy...
...Still, none of that has dispelled the Prime Minister's public image as a nice bloke who happened to emerge as Conservative Party leader and, consequently, the occupant of Number 10 Downing Street...
...In general, the Charter is intended to give Britons the right and ability to demand better performance and more courtesy from their public services, both national and local...
...This document, along with its numerous spin-offs, is intended to provide everyone here with greater powers to wield against the civil servants who, notwithstanding their traditional anonymity, have a direct influence on the people's daily lives...
...But it would be a mistake to conclude from this, as untutored foreigners might, that Major is a figurehead...
...But in this less than best of all possible worlds his demands are likely to prove unrealistic...
...It all sounds very ambitious...
...The newspaper has asked whether the Charter can in fact deliver substantially better performance, "or is it a veneer to disguise the cracks in public service that are due to underinvestment...
...That is not completely unreasonable...
...William Waldegrave, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (a multipurpose government department, despite its archaic title), has been appointed Citizen's Charter Minister...
...No less than in the United States, any effort to "fight City Hall" here has traditionally been an uphill battle...
...Major has also required other Cabinet members to become personally involved, and specific charters?9 altogether—covering the areas under their administration have been distributed to homes around the country...
...A lot of the slack in public service surely could be taken up...
...But even before the Patient's Charter was created, the NHS, constantly trimming staff, received far more complaints about general practitioners than it could cope with...
...In addition, the various sectors are required to proclaim publicly their purposes and goals, and to assess how well they are achieving them...
...The Patient's Charter, for example, sets out an individual's basic rights within the National Health Service (NHS...
...The Citizen's Charter drive is conspicuously short on cash...
...Independent, impartial reviews are to be regularly conducted, with the results published openly...
...for example, individuals must be informed of the maximum waiting times for nonacute surgery at NHS hospitals, long a sore point here...
...Among them are the right to receive health care on the basis of clinical need, regardless of one's ability to pay...
...A dedicated civil servant himself, John Major expects all government employees to meet the challenges presented in the charters by working harder, more effectively and with a smile, in spite of their diminished resources...
...The much touted accountability procedures are certainly welcome...
...Major is thus trying to fundamentally transform the unconcerned attitudes and lax standards long prevalent in British public services...
...Now the battle may actually move to more level ground...
...While its response was predictable, the adverse comments from the London Times, usually friendly to Major, were not...
...His predecessor, Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher), had enemies galore...
...It has dismissed the Citizen's Charter approach as a sham invented to detract attention from Britain's economic woes...
...In any event, thus far the Citizen's Charter campaign has not generated anything close to the kind of public enthusiasm the Prime Minister had anticipated...
...Local councils and government ministries are being encouraged to trim staffs and transfer work to private contractors wherever doing so will boost efficiency...
...Criteria for health care, the police, mass transit, education, housing, and the like are being established and made available to everyone...
...and to be given a clear explanation of any treatment proposed, along with its risks and alternatives...
...Whether in Parliament or to the public, the Right Honorable John Major speaks with confidence and clarity but, alas, in a soporific drone...
...British Rail, held in unremitting scorn by commuters for years now, would soon go broke if, as promised, it compensated customers for cancellations and excessive delays...
...Indeed, that he has reached the nation's top office without being personally hated—or at least resented—by anyone is almost unprecedented in British history...
...It is especially difficult to think of him as an innovator, let alone a crusader, yet one year after taking office that is what he has become...
...There are no grayer Tory eminences manipulating his strings from behind the scenes...
...In complying with Major's insistence that all government departments help advance the campaign, Minister of Transportation John MacGregor has announced that he is accelerating measures to end rush-hour traffic congestion and bottlenecks...
...Drivers will be informed of the steps that have been taken and how they are expected to respond to them...
...Should support for it fail to gain momentum, he may have to look elsewhere for a way to brighten his image...
...The opposition Labor Party has been no help...
...Theoretically, this will pressure the better performers to maintain high standards and prod the rest to improve themselves...
...If the Prime Minister has his way, Britons will gain the right to sue civil service unions for organizing "unlawful industrial action" to the detriment of the public...
...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...
...Avenues for complaint by "customers," including the names and addresses of senior bureaucrats to whom objections can be directed, are already in circulation...
...nevertheless, by tone of voice, color of hair and general demeanor, he remains very much a gray man...
...John Major is certainly well liked...
...Implementing the plans with any degree of success will require hiring additional administrative personnel and finding the funds to pay them...
...To adhere both to their basic principle and the ones set out in the charters, then, they must get more productivity from civil servants who already claim to be seriously overworked...
...He is clearly his own man, particularly on matters of domestic policy, and he is bold enough to take issue with the intimidating Thatcher as she vainly tries to backseat-drive the government from the House of Lords...
...In due course, similar "league tables'' will show how NHS hospitals, local councils, and other public providers are faring...
...Britain's Conservatives, though, are determined to slash public expenditures...
...In short, this is to be abusiness-like productivity drive on a massive scale...
...Recently, he has switched from gray to blue suits...
...Should the crusade take hold, people may well find themselves less frustrated when dealing with bureaucrats...
...The centerpiece of his scheme is grandly called the Citizen's Charter...
...Meanwhile, people who seek assistance from police stations are requested to fill out questionnaires asking whether the service was "highly professional," "professional," "not very professional," or "very unprofessional...
...Listed, too, are some new entitlements...
...Yet it is hard to escape the suspicion that in his pursuit of such worthy objectives John Major is headed for a disappointment...
...He is attempting, in effect, a revolution...
...A number of London borough councils, for instance, have found that paying outside firms to collect garbage is considerably less costly than maintaining their own large sanitation departments...
...One must listen carefully to realize the depth of his convictions and the range of his aspirations, even when he unburdens himself on matters closest to his heart...
...Moreover, besides its expansion in Britain, the Citizen's Charter concept will be exported to the other members of the European Community...
...For he rarely displays emotion, a fact that is all the more remarkable when one considers his immense task of piloting the country through its worst economic slump in decades...
...Education Secretary John Patten has declared that he will soon issue charts comparing examination results of schools throughout Britain, to help parents make the best choices for their children...
...to obtain emergency medical attention at all times...
Vol. 75 • August 1992 • No. 10
