Physicians, heal thyselves!
“If people think they are going to get their pay cheque and they are going to keep their position irrespective of how good a service they deliver, irrespective of whether they adjust to change or not well you know human nature being what it is they sit back.”
So argued our former PM in the recent documentary The Blair Years. Tony is still clearly frustrated at the resistance of public sector workers to his much-vaunted programme of ‘modernisation’. Yet his remarks show a remarkable lack of self-awareness about his own former conditions of employment as a Member of Parliament. Let’s face it, if you happen to be in a job like Labour MP for Sedgefield (to pick an example purely at random!) it is fairly safe to assume that you will not suddenly find your employment terminated unexpectedly. Since they are largely immune from having their pay cheques withdrawn, it would seem to follow, MPs representing relatively safe seats will have a tendency to sit back rather than deliver a high quality service.
By contrast, we are continually told that today’s citizen is a savvy consumer, expecting to ‘shop around’ and pick the best deal from all the available options. So a business with sacks of correspondence in need of delivery will no longer be reliant on the Royal Mail as the only player in town. Similarly, patients will no longer be encouraged to look automatically towards the local district general hospital for their treatment, but rather compare a range of potential options. The cut and thrust of competition, so the argument runs, is necessary to deliver real choice and, ultimately, better services. It is notable, however, that one ‘service’ has been strangely immune from this logic of modernization, is that of parliamentary representation. New Labour MPs have been rather more keen on introducing competition for other public servants, than on modernizing their own working practices by reforming the system by which they are elected.
For it is an inevitable feature of the voting system used to elect our MPs, based on single-member constituencies, that a lone service provider is granted an absolute monopoly on undertaking parliamentary casework on behalf of his or her constituents. If, from an individual voters’ perspective, your MP is under-performing, unable to deliver on your requirements, or otherwise ill-suited to the task, you are simply stuck with what you’ve got at least until the next election and very possibly beyond. No ‘shopping around’ or sizing up the best provider allowed here. And yet, when it comes to the method of their own election, our members of parliament seem to have pre-determined that any possible reform should begin from the premise that this monopoly remains unchallenged! Why should the service given by MP’s to their constituents remain immune from the logic of reform which is restructuring the way all our other public services are delivered.
This does not mean calling into doubt the daunting amount of casework carried out by the vast majority of MPs, who conscientiously endeavour to represent all of their constituents to the best of their abilities. But if the rest of the public sector must accept a more challenging working environment, why should we not ask the same of our members of parliament? For here, too, increased competition could deliver a level of service more responsive to the needs of the individual service user. If the aim of modernisation is to guarantee that services are oriented around the needs of the service user then surely we should be asking whether introducing choice between parliamentary representatives in each constituency might advance the both the range and quality of choices on offer to the elector?
