The case for civil and public services

Roger Seifert and Mike Ironside, PCS, paperback, 60 pages, free

The government is planning to slash over 100,000 jobs in the civil service, making wild claims about useless bureaucrats.

This booklet questions the government’s policy and the assumptions that lay behind it.

In particular it rejects the view that bringing the private sector into the civil service will make it more efficient. Rather public services will suffer.

The authors make a robust defence of “bureaucracy”, arguing that an accountable and transparent civil service is essential to the functioning of a modern democracy. They argue that it does matter who delivers public services and how they do it.

The booklet contains case studies, with real civil servants rather than caricatures explaining what they do. It is an important contribution to defending civil service jobs and the welfare state.