Labour creates 500,000 State jobs in just five years

by Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent, Daily Mail, May 27, 2004

The number of public sector jobs has swollen by more than 500,000 in just five years, it has emerged yesterday. Labour hit the half-million mark after 162,000 taxpayer-funded workers were taken on last year- a rate of 444 extra State jobs every day.

The figures mean the rate at which new public sector jobs are handed out almost doubled over the past 12 months despite the pledges of ministers to cut bureaucracy. A majority of these jobs appear to have been taken by penpushers rather than 'front-line' workers such as nurses or teachers.

Yesterday, Tories accused the Government of hiring just 4000 teachers in England last year among 88,000 new staff working in education. Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin said: "Public sector bureaucracy is completely out of hand."

The breakdown of State employment, published by the Office for National Statistics yester-day, showed that 162,000 new jobs were handed out between June 2002 and June 2003 - the largest number yet under Tony Blair's government. They included 88,000 posts con-nected to Education and 63,000 in the Health Service. The expansion of the State sector means that the number of public employees has reached 5,454,000. This is an increase of 509,000 since 1998, when there were 4,945,000. More than 18% of workers are now employed by one arm or another of government.

But between June 2002 and June 2003, the number employed by firms in the private sector dropped by more than 100,000. This suggests the real economy - which produces the taxes that pay for the public sector - is far from booming and that current low employment figures depend on the rapid growth in State employment. Over the period, private sector workers grew in total by 98,000 because 200,000 people became self-employed.

The Treasury declared that expansion of the public sector is a result of the Government's efforts to improve public services. "This reflects our priorities and shows that our invest-ment in public services is getting through to the front line," it said.

But critics say the heavy spending on education and health is producing mainly bureau-cracy. Recent studies show that six out of ten NHS staff are clerks or managers, while only 7% are doctors and fewer than a third are nurses. In education, local education authority officials far outnumber teachers.

Ruth Lea, Director of Tory-leaning Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, said:"The public sector is crowding out the private sector. I would have no objection if these jobs were for doctors, nurses, dentists and teachers, but, unfortunately, an awful lot of them are "Guardian" type" non-jobs which are a complete waste of time and money. Much of this employment is about buying votes - they are jobs that may well go if the Government loses power."

Here's are typical advertisements for pen-pushers.

If you have suggestions for additional subjects, or material to include in the pages linked to the subjects listed, please contact the webmaster.