Public sector workers need 'discipline and fear', says Oliver Letwin

Oliver Letwin says he is determined to 'instil' fear among public sector workers to push productivity. Photograph: David Levene

Oliver Letwin, the coalition's policy minister, has revealed the government's determination to instil "fear" among those working in the public sector, who he claimed had failed for the past 20 years to improve their productivity.

Letwin, architect of the coalition's plans to reform public services, told a meeting at the offices of a leading consultancy firm that the public sector had atrophied over the past two decades.

In controversial comments angering teachers, nurses and doctors, he warned that it was only through "some real discipline and some fear" of job losses that excellence would be achieved in the public sector.

Letwin added that some of those running schools and hospitals would not survive the process and that it was an "inevitable and intended" consequence of government policy.

"You can't have room for innovation and the pressure for excellence without having some real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers that things may go wrong if they don't live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them," he said.

"If you have diversity of provision and personal choice and power, some providers will be better and some worse. Inevitably, some will not, whether it's because they can't attract the patient or the pupil, for example, or because they can't get results and hence can't get paid. Some will not survive. It is an inevitable and intended consequence of what we are talking about."

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU), reacted angrily to Letwin's comments, describing them as "nonsense".

He added: "Public sector workers are already working in fear – fear of cuts to their job, pension, living standards and of privatisation. Far from improving productivity, the cuts are creating chaos in vital public services."

Letwin was speaking at the launch of a liberal thinktank's report at the London headquarters of KPMG, one of the biggest recipients of government cash, which won the first contract for NHS commissioning following the decision to scrap primary care trusts and further open the health service to private companies.

Letwin's recent white paper on public sector reform had been dismissed as watered down earlier this month amid speculation that the Liberal Democrats had vetoed radical change. But Letwin said on Wednesday that he believed he was prosecuting "the most ambitious set of public service reforms that any government in modern Britain has undertaken", adding that productivity had improved across the economy except in the public sector in the past 20 years.

A spokesman for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said he did not know where Letwin had sourced his figures. However, an ONS analysis that works back to 1997, shows that productivity in public services fell on average by 0.3% a year between 1997 and 2008 because the level of inputs, such as staff and equipment, increased faster than the output, such as operations performed and numbers of pupils taught.

Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, said last night that she did not recognise Letwin's portrayal of the public sector. "Death rates in hospitals have been falling, satisfaction levels have been rising," she said. "What hasn't changed is the Tories' antipathy to public services. And the idea that the way to improve public services is to put fear into those who provide them is absolutely grotesque."

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "It is widely acknowledged that there is a problem with productivity in public services. The government's policy is to improve it and provide the best value for the taxpayer."

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Iran public execution outrages human rights groups

WARNING: contains graphic images

A disturbing video of the public execution of three men in Iran has sparked anger among human rights activists.

The graphic video, released by Amnesty International on Thursday, showed guards standing on top of buses draping ropes around necks of three convicts sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of rape. The men were later hanged from an overhead bridge after the vehicles drove away.

The executions, which took place on 19 July in the western city of Kermanshah, home to Iran's Kurd minority, attracted significant crowds, including children. Some of the crowds appear to be filming hangings by mobile phones.

The video, which was supplied to Amnesty by an Iranian human rights activist, Fazel Hawramy from kurdishblogger.com, highlights the use of public executions, in which officials publicly hang convicts from a large crane or a high place in front of crowds.

"What is so alarming about this video is the apparent normality of the event. Thousands of people are watching as if it were a football match. People are shouting and cheering. But what is most shocking is the participation of children in this barbaric 'spectacle'," Hawramy said.

The release of the video follows human rights groups' alarm over the sharp escalation in capital punishment in Iran.

Activists said two weeks ago that Iran has executed an average of almost two people a day in the first six months of this year. Iran insists the executions are related to serious crimes such as drug-trafficking although at least two political activists have been identified among those hanged in the first half of 2011.

Amnesty said Iranian authorities have acknowledged public executions of at least 28 people so far this year.

Speaking to the Guardian by phone from Kermanshah, the Iranian who filmed Amnesty's video said: "I was there, the executions took place at the centre of the city in Azadi Square at 10 in the morning when people were busy with their businesses or shopping.

"Authorities didn't have any consideration for innocent children who were accompanying their parents and suddenly watched an execution which I would guess would be carved in their mind for ever."

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa deputy director, said: "Not only those executed, but all those who watch public executions, including, children, are brutalised and degraded by the experience. These public displays of killing perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence and bloodlust, rather than a belief in justice."

She added: "It is deeply disturbing that despite a moratorium on public executions ordered in 2008, the Iranian authorities are once again resorting to this inhuman practice."

Amnesty said Kermanshah's executions follow "several widely publicised gang rapes of women this year in Iran. In some cases, officials blamed the victims for failing to adhere to the official code on dress or gender segregation."

In criticism to Iran's use of capital punishment as a solution to the country's rape issue, Hadj Sahraoui said: "Executions after speedy, unfair trials are no solution to the extremely serious problem of rape in Iran, which feeds on the acceptance of violence against women at all levels of society.

"The Iranian authorities should be aiming to combat this culture of violence rather than perpetuate it through these public displays of brutality."

Rebin Rahmani of HRANA, a human rights website, said 450 people in Kermanshah prison, convicted of charges such as rape or drug-trafficking, have been handed down death sentences and are currently awaiting execution.

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