There are no ‘frontline’ services - only services

Another day, another cuts announcement.  And still, those responsible repeat their tired mantra:  “Don’t worry – ‘frontline’ services won’t be affected!” 

Last week alone, we were told by the Police Minister that there are '“Immense opportunities” to make savings in the police force without hitting the frontline'.  Amid the Arts Council funding announcements last Wednesday, the Hulture Secretary said the government had “Limited cuts to frontline arts organisations”.   

(If anyone can tell me what a back-line arts organisation is, I'd love to hear from you.  I imagine a secret chamber of painters, working away by candle light, occasionally throwing darting glances towards their bolted, oak-studded door, lest an intruder catch sight of their secret labours;  suspiciously covering their work with crooked elbows, like at a primary school spelling test.)

So, what’s a ‘frontline’ service?  And how does it differ from any other service?

First, let’s ask why we have public services.  Is it to provide sufficient office-space to house a national surplus of swivel-chairs?  Is it to create more jobs, like some bizarre Magnus Mills creation?

Or is it to fulfil a specific requirement that society has deemed to be necessary? 

                                                                                     

If the answer is the latter, and public service institutions indeed exist to provide public services, why do they employ staff?  Presumably to do the work which is required to provide that service. 

The reason that the government has to say “ ’Frontline’ services will be unaffected”, is that this bit of wordplay distances the sentence from its ugly cousin, which is simply: “ ’Services’ will be unaffected”.  Which is palpably false – since if you sack anyone, it follows that the service they previously provided will now cease to exist, whether they be telephony services, toilet-cleaning services, or teaching services. 

Most public service organisations are, by nature, huge and complex.  That means that in order to get the whole job of the organisation done, they need to employ a lot of people, doing a variety of different jobs.  The justice system wouldn’t work if it only employed judges.  The NHS wouldn’t work if it only employed nurses. 

So, what are these extraneous services being provided by public service bodies that are not ‘frontline’ services?  Is the NHS due to sack 150 croupiers from its hospital casinos, deemed unnecessary in these times of austerity?  Are the 2’600 military jobs lost today the result of a personnel audit that uncovered a hitherto unknown network of lion-tamers, drawing full-time wages but contributing little to the war-effort?

Or, to put it another way – have you, or anyone you have ever known or met, ever worked anywhere (in the public, private, or any other sector), where you and your colleagues have all gathered round and said,  “You know what?  I don’t know why we employ those extra thousand people downstairs in C division.  If they went tomorrow, we’d never notice the difference.”?

The fact that redundancies are being justified using sneaky word games instead of reasoned discussion should tell us something.  The false dichotomy between ‘frontline’ services, and other – unnamed – services, implied to be so much dead skin, is a rotten trick.  And the joke is on those of us who have need of the services that are being so cavalierly thrown to the wolves.