Holy Cow: The Interview - Lord Jones

The NHS must shoulder more of the pain as government begins to slash public spending, argues former Labour trade minister Lord (Digby) Jones.

Lord (Digby) Jones of Birmingham is a man of strong convictions – some might even suggest he’s a tad opinionated (just ask Sir Humphrey), especially when the issue at hand pertains to Britain Plc. Perhaps – poor man – he simply just can’t help himself.

He is a lawyer by training after all: an expert with an expert opinion on most things and expected to be right at least 95% of the time. He was also director general of the bosses’ club, the CBI, a post he relinquished four years ago but hasn’t quite left, at least psychologically. He remains a passionate defender of British business and British manufacturing in particular.

 

He’s John Bull in a JCB (a company he advises), ready to ride roughshod over anything or anyone that encroaches on his beloved “real economy”.  He spent 15 months in Gordon Brown’s big tent of all the talents, as a British trade minister, a surprising non-Labour appointment, no doubt meant as a spit in the eye to the then opposition leader David Cameron. (Jones sounds like a Tory, looks like a Tory – in fact he could pass for a 19th century mill owner from a Catherine Cookson novel – but apparently isn’t one as he sits on the cross benches in the Lords.)

 

He was perhaps too blunt – or rather too full of bluster according to his enemies – to handle the murky underwaters of modern political life.  His brief tenure in government was not a happy one. Instead he has returned with gusto to  corporate life. The 54-yearold business leader not only chairs the International Business Advisory Board of HSBC, but is chairman of the revitalised Triumph Motorcycles, as well as adviser to UK Foodhall, the start-up company supplying meat to school caterers.

 

He is also a tireless campaigner for numerous charities, including Cancer Research UK; Sense, the charity for those born blind and deaf; and Mencap.

 

But the issue of the moment that has clearly got his dander up is the massive expansion of the state, which the new government is now trying to redress. “It’s time that the public sector shared some of the burden,” he declares. “Private businesses have shouldered short time working and pay freezes.” This must also include the NHS, he says. The health provider appears to have escaped too lightly, he feels.

 

 

He recently wrote a letter of advice to the new chancellor George Osborne, warning him not to tie his hands over NHS cutbacks. The “economic malaise” in the country was such that urgent action was called for. “The stakes couldn’t be  higher,” he warns. “We are at five to midnight.”

 

Spending on NHS bureaucracy could be cut so that the new coalition government could still pledge not to cut one doctor, nurse or building programme, according to Jones. “There are many things the Tories wanted to do that they now cannot afford,” he says. “They cannot now cut inheritance tax as they wanted just as the Liberals are saying we won’t replace Trident.

 

 

One of the major problems, he says, is that Gordon Brown poured money into the NHS without properly reforming it first. Much of the additional money poured in over the past 13 years had been wasted. “In my time at the CBI and as a minister, I saw how our public services are stuffed full of good, hard-working, decent people. But the system? Oh dear!” he says.

 

With more and better investment in technology, better training, management change, more flexible working practices, putting the interests of the taxpaying consumers first and not those of the employees, this country could deliver more and even better front-line services with far fewer administrative and backroom people, he argues.

 

But as Jones experienced at first hand, civil servants have little incentive to change, especially when their own jobs and comfort are at risk. His own 15-month tenure in the Westminster Village as trade minister was far from happy, though he clearly enjoyed flying the flag for Britain. He has the Union Jack cufflinks to prove it, which he proudly displays. But his dogged compulsion to tell it like it is, or was, got him into very hot water, especially with the Whitehall mandarins, half of whom, he suggested, should be sacked.

 

Surprisingly he bears no rancour over his experiences in government, despite describing them at the time as “dehumanising” and “depersonalising”.  Even more surprising – not least to the new coalition government – is his assertion that Labour has not ruined the economy: “On balance Britain is no worse a place in which to do business now than it was in 1997.”

 

However, he says, tellingly, “we did not decrease inefficiencies, regulations and red tape and we did not hang on to our tax competitiveness”.  Those restrictions have not prevented him from returning to the corporate world with gusto, where he has quickly gathered up a clutch of advisory roles. Jones has been accused in the past, perhaps unfairly, of being overly corporatist, only interested in pursuing the interests of big business. He has been a vociferous defender of  the banks, arguing that any populist revenge taxes by Osborne and his Treasury team will only drive them offshore to  Switzerland and elsewhere, thus depriving the UK  public purse of vital tax revenues.  He remains fiercely patriotic.

 

He believes that the public sector, including the NHS, has a duty to buy British wherever possible. “I would say to… procurement chiefs, could you have bought that meal, could you have bought the fruit and vegetables from a British farmer? Did you even ask the supplier where the produce came from?  If you didn’t then shame on you because your wages, Mr Head of Procurement, are paid by the British taxpayer!”

 

Some reading this might scoff. Faced with the pressure to constantly cut costs, many procurement chiefs might find it far easier to purchase supplies overseas, or from some other largescale central supplier. Jones remains unrepentant. “Taxpayers create jobs,” he insists, “they have a right to say ‘you local authority or civil servant, your wages are paid by us’.” If local UK suppliers are more expensive, he says, and local authority buyers can’t in all conscience go with them because they are charged with delivering value for the taxpayer, then they should at least give local suppliers a chance to change the way they produce and sell their products. “If they did that and the supplier still can’t make it, then fair enough, but if they didn’t at least give them that chance then shame on them,” he says. “We have to trade our way out of recession. There has never been a bigger need for quality management, of maximisation of human resolve, purchasing power and marketing.

 

 

These three things are the manager’s responsibility and in Britain we’re not dreadful at them, but we certainly could be a whole lot better.” Part of the problem lies with serious skill shortages, or as Jones says with schools and parenting. He  describes the current state of affairs whereby only half of those sitting GCSEs this summer are predicted to get a grade C or above in English and Mathematics as “Britain’s dirty little secret”. “After 11 years of compulsory education why is it  that we have so many youngsters who have not mastered rudimentary literacy and numeracy?” he asks.

 

Welfare dependency, he feels, is largely to blame. He recently urged British politicians to adopt Americanstyle ‘workfares’ where youngsters who refuse offers of work are denied benefits.

 

He also believes that the education system needs to do make a greater effort to engender a more positive attitude towards future employment, and just to prove that he had not lost his propensity to tell it like it is, he recently berated a couple of long-term unemployed middle-class youngsters who appeared on BBC TV’s Panorama. “The whole idea of  coming out into the world of work not fi t for work – not in the habit of work, get your hands out of your pockets, get  your hair cut, look me in the eye, don’t believe that the pleasure of earning a living is entirely mine – all of these are  things which should be inculcated during the education process.”

 

Jones certainly appears to have  made the best of his own educational opportunities. A clever boy from a modest family background, he won a scholarship to Bromsgrove, a smart public school for boys, where he excelled at both sports and  studies.  It was a great advantage for a boy from the backstreets of Brum, whose parents ran a local corner store near the Austin car plant in the days when the Mini was totally British-owned. “There was plenty of love, but no money,” he says of his childhood.

 

But Jones was not such a paragon that he had no naughty side. He was head boy, but ended up getting expelled after being caught by the headmaster streaking stark naked around the school for a bet. It was two weeks before his final end of term and fortunately he had already secured his university place. He joined the Royal Navy before going on to become a corporate lawyer.

 

That career is still going strong. He is still massively in demand as a high-level business-fixer and networker and as a public opinion guru. Hardly a day goes past without Jones being called upon to comment about one aspect or another to do with the British economy. He races from meeting to meeting and now he’s off to talk on TV about the ongoing BP  disaster unfolding off the American coast. BP, Jones fears, has lost its ability to continue as the emblematic driving
force for British industry. Jones, with his frenetic workload, clearly has not.