'WHY WE MUST BACK OUR PUBLIC SERVICES'

30 JANUARY 2002

Many people say that the top issue in South Tyneside is jobs - and of course getting ourselves off the bottom of the league for unemployment is vital for our future.
That is why the independent Transformation Commission set up by the council to chart a new vision for the borough will have job creation and business development at its heart. It is a vital initiative that has taken brains and guts to set up, and I will return to its importance in a future column.

But in the week when the Prime Minister has been in the north east giving full backing to the excellent efforts of public servants across the country to improve our schools and hospitals and cut crime, it's a good moment for me to say that I see strong public services as critical issues to our social and economic success.
It was a folly of the 1980s to believe that you could have a strong economy without good public services - education to give people skills, police to keep business free of crime, a health service to get people back to work when they are ill.

In the six months I have been MP for South Shields, I have met fantastic people in our public services. I don't just mean the headteachers, the consultants and police commanders who provide strong and effective leadership. I mean people throughout the public services, from top to bottom. Any nurse will tell you that running a ward depends on porters, cleaners and cooks as well as doctors. Any teacher will tell you the classroom assistants, the dinner ladies, the school secretary are vital to the effective running of the school. There are also countless people behind the scenes who do not get much credit when things go right, because they don't get noticed, but who are often in the firing line when people have a complaint.

Public service stretches through all kinds of occupations, across local government on whom we depend on for local services right through to the BBC. Many people serve the community by a sense of vocation and wanting to help others, but public services cannot be run on goodwill alone. It was therefore significant last week that as the Prime Minister was speaking, the Government was announcing details of pay rises for teachers - so the new starting salary is £17, 628, rising to £25, 746 in five years at which point a teacher can apply to pass a performance threshold that would take their pay up to nearly £28 000 a year.

I am pleased that the Government is committed to hiring more teachers, more doctors and nurses and more police officers. They are part of the commitment to a decent society on which the Government was elected. But things are never simple, let's remember two things. First, with recruitment must go reforms, so that people and resources are put to best use. With that, I can see real improvements in the quality of provision in the years ahead. Second, there is no free lunch. If we want the services that we think we have the right to expect, we have to be willing to pay for them. The choice in the end is about what sort of society we want to live in.