26 May 2006
Mike Thatcher reports from the 2006 Public Servants of the Year Awards ceremony held on May 17
'Wow. Even now, I can't describe it. If I try to describe it, words don't do it justice. It was unbelievable.'
It's fair to say that Anthony Vanterpool, known to his colleagues as Swifty, was pleased last week when he was named Outstanding Public Servant of the Year. The youth worker from the Connexions service in Lancashire won the top individual prize in the Public Servants of the Year Awards having already triumphed in the Raising the Standard (frontline worker) category.
'I've laid a few ghosts to rest tonight,' he said. 'It shows that you can better yourself – it's folly to think that you can't change things, because you can.' Swifty wasn't the only one surprised when the winners were announced. The staff of Sighthill Library in Edinburgh admitted they were shocked to pick up the prize for Outstanding Team of the Year.
'We thought we were lucky to win one award [for local government] and, as the evening went on, and we heard about all the other projects, we just couldn't believe it when we won the Outstanding Team of the Year Award. The whole occasion was very special,' said Evelyn Kilmurry, Sighthill's senior library officer.
Swifty and Sighthill were two of 13 winners recognised at the ceremony, which took place at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on May 17. The event was introduced by Sir Michael Lyons, chair of the judging panel, and hosted by broadcasters Sir Trevor McDonald and Felicity Barr.
A night that celebrated the pride and the achievements of public service workers was given added spice by an attack on the sector the previous evening by John Sunderland, outgoing president of the CBI employers' body.
Sunderland, the chair of Cadbury Schweppes, told an audience, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, that the profit motive was the key to raising standards.
Citing the amount spent on the health service and hospitals mired in deficits, he added: 'If this is the best the so-called “ethical” public sector can do with our NHS... maybe it's time we brought in more of the boys from the private sector.'
Lyons, who is also interim chair of the Audit Commission, rose spiritedly to the challenge in his introduction, defending public sector workers against what he described as a 'jaundiced' and 'pretty unpleasant' speech. '[Sunderland] spoke as if the public and private sectors were two irreconcilable, completely different tribes; the private sector innovative, adventurous and successful, wealth creators to a person; the public sector inefficient, defensive and squanderers of the wealth that is created,' said Lyons.
'It was something out of the Dark Ages. The public sector and the private sector work together across the economy every day. We understand that [public] services create wealth as much as people who make chocolate.' Lyons suggested that Sunderland's views might have been tempered if he had read through some of the 450 entries to this year's awards. If he had, he 'would have found all the appetite for risk-taking that he might want, all the dedication, all the innovation, all the creativity and all the wealth creation that he could have imagined'.
The guest speaker, Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, was also critical of Sunderland. He described the CBI president's speech as 'not very positive' and outlined his own four 'Ps' for success. 'I am delighted to say that not one of them is profit,' he added.
O'Donnell called for pride, passion, pace and professionalism across the public services. He said that it was important to celebrate success and to be proud of the public sector ethos.
'We live in a world where all of our problems are headlines and all of your achievements are, at best, footnotes.
'We are not perfect. We are innovating and we are risk-taking. That means that we will make mistakes. It is very important that we learn from our mistakes, but I am very proud of what we achieve.'
The Cabinet secretary stressed that policy skills were important, but that delivery was the key issue. 'The best training for policy advisers is to get some experience at the front line,' he said.
PFmay2006
