Better Public Services

White Band Day 2007 union briefing

Listen to the South!

Support global standards

Even more so than in the UK, in developing countries public services can be a life or death issue.

In the developing world, each day:

• 4,000 children will die from diarrhoea, because they don't have access to safe water and sanitation
• 1,400 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth due to the absence or inadequacy of health care
• 80 million children of school age - most of them girls - will not go to school - because there are none - or because there isn't equality of access

The UK didn't achieve nationwide access to health, education and clean water and sanitation through private sector provision - and it's ridiculous to think that NGOs, churches and companies working for profit can meet the scale of need in the developing world, and respond to the impact on water supply and health that climate change will have in future years. That's why British unions areinvolved in supporting the development of the public sector in developing countries - combining trade unionists' experience at the heart of the UK public sector with the British trade union movement's longstanding internationalism - because we know that the public sector belongs at the heart of the solution to these challenges.

Where they don't exist public services need to be developed, and where they do exist they need to be protected and expanded.

Aid such as through DFID's Sector-Wide Approach in Malawi, which has increased health workers' salaries across the board to stabilise and expand the health workforce, can bring much-needed additional funds into public services. However, sustainable funding of public services through developing country governments, accountable to civil society and their electorates, is the only way forward for coherent large-scale responses to the poor majority's health, education and water and sanitation needs.

This requires the International Monetary Fund to adopt a more flexible approach to those public expenditure controls which it imposes on developing country governments, so freeing up the possibility for greater investment in public services, and to similarly lessen the public expenditure conditionalities that a country seeking international debt relief has to meet.

In addition, existing public services must be protected from the kinds of privatisation and marketisation which we are all too familiar with in the UK. Privatisation of water utilities has been a condition of obtaining debt relief, and UK taxpayers' money is currently being spent through the World Bank to promote privatisation in developing countries. Public service unions are at the forefront of the struggle to defend public services and to campaign for their further development, not their destruction.

Trade unionswelcome the opportunity to work in partnership with those NGOs who are prepared with us to fly the flag for public services. For instance, Oxfam's 'Essential Services' campaign is calling for funding for more health workers and teachers.

Individual affiliates such asUNISON areworking with the World Development Movement to lobby the UK Government to support water utilities in developing countries which are still in the public domain, and to cease its funding of the World Bank's privatisation agenda.