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A better normal

Delivering better work now
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3. Build public sector resilience

The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic confirmed the safety and security of our society relies on strong and resilient public services, and on our public sector workers who have worked tirelessly to keep essential services going during the crisis.

The pandemic exposed the damage that a decade of austerity inflicted on our public services, which went into the crisis weakened by years of funding cuts, real-terms cuts in pay and with no effective workforce strategy in key areas like health and social care, leaving services understaffed and stretched to the limit. These cracks were compounded by years of marketisation and outsourcing that undermined accountability, created unequitable access to service provision, and put workers and communities in harm’s way during the pandemic.

This crisis must mark a turning point. To ensure our public services are robust enough to carry us through this pandemic, and withstand the challenges of any future ones, our public services require a sustained period of investment that reverse a decade of cuts and ensure we have a stable and decently paid workforce able to deliver the services our country relies on.

Reversing a decade of lost pay for public sector workers

From frontline healthcare workers and public health officials, to teachers and school support staff, refuse collectors, care workers, bus drivers and transport workers, civil servants and those in local government, our key workers in the public sector have been at the frontline of responding to the pandemic.

However, after a decade of government-imposed pay restraint, many of these workers earn less today than they did in 2010, by up to £3,500 a year in some cases.

 

In November 2020, the Chancellor announced a public sector pause for 2021/22 that covered most of the major public sector workforces from teachers and the police to prison officers, civil servants and the judiciary.10 The below-inflation 2021 pay rises awarded in local government and the NHS also represented a pay cut in real terms. TUC research found one in five key workers faced financial difficulty during the pandemic, with many turning to foodbanks, debt or a second job to get by.11

While the Chancellor formally ended the public sector pay freeze in his comprehensive spending review of 2021, spiralling inflation and lack of early, significant pay rises for public sector workers, means many continue to be at the sharp end of the cost-of-living crisis.

Government can take immediate action to restore the public sector’s resilience by restoring the pay of our valued public sector workforce. Ending the pay squeeze on public sector workers is essential not only out of fairness to public servants but also to address the growing recruitment and retention crisis across the public sector. Public sector pay awards in 2022 and beyond should meet the cost of living, protecting the living standards of working families, including those in outsourced role - as well as moving towards restoring lost earnings over the last 11 years of Conservative rule. This should be reflected in government submissions to the independent Pay Review Bodies as well as its own pay remit for central government departments.

Address the staffing crisis to clear the backlog

Tackling the backlog in public services, most notably in health, is rightly a key priority for the government. By doing so, we can begin to restore balance and stability to the sector and shore up its resilience. But the government’s decision to hold down public sector workers pay has undermined these efforts, intensifying the staffing crisis facing key areas such as health, social care, education and justice. Areas where backlogs and access issues are most acute.

Across the public sector, unfilled vacancies put a huge strain on remaining staff, leading to burnout, sickness-related absence and high turnover.

In social care, 1.6 million older adults do not receive the support and care they need with essential living activities such as bathing, eating and getting dressed.12 This figure is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with friends and family stepping in to plug the gap in social care provision. Before and during the pandemic, the sector has approximately 122,000 vacancies and a turnover rate of 30.4 per cent.13

In justice, the pandemic exacerbated a pre-existing backlog of cases waiting to be tried in the criminal courts systems. The backlog has had significant impacts on defendants, some of whom are being held in custody on remand, and on victims and witnesses, some of whom have been denied for justice, waiting for months and years for even extremely serious cases to be heard.14

In the NHS, the backlog has reached record breaking proportions. Of the 5.8 million patients waiting to start treatment in September 2021, 300,000 have been waiting more than a year15 and 12,000 more than two years.16  In September 2021, NHS England was operating short of almost 100,000 staff due to unfilled vacancies. These shortages were exacerbated by high staff absences related to the Omicron wave during Winter 2021. 

While the government have indicated tackling the NHS backlog is a priority, investing revenue raised from a new increase in national insurance contributions, the health system’s ability to do this will be undermined without additional investment and planning to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis facing the NHS.

As noted by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee, the government are effectively flying blind in their bid to clear the NHS backlog, without any independent workforce projections, ministers have idea of whether “enough doctors, nurses or care staff are being trained”.17  The same applies to other areas of the public sector workforce. 

To build the public sector’s resilience, we need a fully funded, long-term public sector workforce strategy, developed with unions and employers. This must include measures to maintain and improve upon current staffing levels, with a focus on job creation in key growth areas such as social care, and annual reporting on staffing levels. Without this, our public services will struggle to meet the daily challenge of responding to the current pandemic, let alone begin to tackle the massive challenge of clearing the backlog or readying themselves to meet any future crises. 

Any workforce strategy must be backed up by a new public sector funding settlement that reverses a decade of sustained cuts. This must include increased funding for non-ring-fenced areas such as the justice sector, whose 2019/2020 budget was 25 per cent lower than in 2010-2011.18

Recommendations

  • Government should fund sustained increases in pay for public sector workers that restore what they have lost through ten years of cuts and slow growth.
  • Government must set out a long-term public sector workforce strategy with a focus on job creation, union engagement and an immediate end to any planned cuts to civil service headcount and any other public sector departments.
  • Government must deliver a new funding settlement for our public services that, as a minimum, reverses the last decade of sustained cuts and ensures services can clear the Covid-19 backlog.
Contents
01
A snapshot of the new normal
02
1. Bring unions and business together in a ‘working better’ taskforce
03
2. Embed fair flexibility
04
3. Build public sector resilience
05
4. A new focus on workplace safety
06
5. Boost Workers financial security
07
6. Banish global vaccine inequality
08
List of recommendations
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