Respect?

My friend wants to move house. Actually, she needs to move. She worked for a long time as a nurse and brought up four fine kids and then got ill. She now lives on benefits. Not her choice. Could happen to any of us. It's all a bit of a struggle for her. No, I don't mean living on benefits, though that's hard enough. Her flat, rented from a housing association, has two bedrooms and she's now having to pay bedroom tax. Getting a move to a smaller flat is proving to be the problem. There's a shortage of smaller flats and to stand a chance of getting one, you need to amass points to put you into the right category so you can 'bid for a house.' Read that again: you have to bid for a place to live. You can give medical and social reasons for wanting a move, all backed up by letters and reports from doctors and social workers. So in the end who will judge whether you have enough points to get you into the right category to bid for a house? A medical person? Social worker? Housing officer? Fraid not. It'll be an admin person from the office of the housing association.

Actually, I'm sympathetic to the admin person: you're hired, you think, to file papers, take phone calls and do the typing and you find yourself having to deal with unhappy people in terrible situations - and you're most likely untrained and unqualified.

This is, I'm sorry to say, a symptom of Tory World. It seems anyone can work in the public sector - no qualifications needed: the English Care Quality Commission that is getting so much stick at the moment over poor maternity care that killed mothers and babies has 1,000 people - mostly either unqualified or not qualified in the specialism they are working in - looking after the interests of hospital patients, residents of care homes, children in nurseries, etc in 40,000 establishments in all.

Down south, they're also publishing the data for surgery carried out by NHS consultants so that prospective patients can see their doctors' 'success' rates. Not that patients are in any position, most of us, to make a judgement about whether a surgeon is any good or not, since most of us are unable to interpret the data anyway. I suspect the surgeons at the Southern General Neurological Institute in Glasgow have some pretty poor results, but then they are looking after some of the sickest people in the country for whom an operation by one of these surgeons might be the last possible hope. It's the judgement of these consultants that counts and I'm afraid statistics don't show that. But the consultants down south don't dare argue - only 5 - yes, 5 - have dared refuse to sign up to this system.

I was in the early 00s referred to an NHS clinic for 'stress management'. I found myself waiting in a room filled with sometimes deeply distressed people: folk with mental health problems, addiction issues, women looking for abortions - and had my first interview with a woman who, on questioning, told me she was an occupational therapist with no training in any therapy that would help me deal with stress. I left and never went back. But I've often wondered what harm that woman did directing people to the wrong place, as she was bound to do with no training.

This lack of respect for professionals now is awful: degrees, years of study, experience - none of these count. Someone in a 'management' position will come in with a form and a clipboard and a set of criteria and judge you.

This all started with Thatcher and education in the 70s and 80s: she couldn't understand why people who worked with small children needed to be trained and qualified. The attitude persists: witness the current Tory minister who thinks one worker in a nursery can look after 6 small children. And they probably can - right up to the moment either the nursery worker or a child needs to go to the toilet.

The downgrading of qualifications is pernicious. It's how we've ended up with honours graduates at best working reception at the Premier Inn or at worst serving pizza in Di Maggio's, sometimes on minimum wage and working lousy unsocial shifts. The dignity of labour? Respect? Do me a favour.