Citizen-Consumers and the UK Pension Debacle

Brisbane.
The next speaker at ANZCA 2009 is Gwilyn Croucher, who focusses on the citizen-consumer and researches this in the context of the pension debacle in the UK. There was a major push under the Blair government to give citizens more choice in public services, and during the 1980s and 1990s the UK government privatised pension schemes, but it is now required to compensate citizens for the loss of pension entitlements due to the systematic provision of incorrect information by the Department of Work and Pensions as part of the privatisation scheme. This information incorrectly implied a government guarantee for pension schemes, many of which subsequently collapsed.

This case indicates a reframing of the public; while on the one hand, this case is simply one of maladministration, at the same time, it is also linked directly with the rise of more media-centred government and a more customer-focussed delivery of government services. The DWP framed citizens as consumers of the service it provided, but clients understood interaction as morethan transactional and placed great stock in the advice provided by government.

This demonstrates the conflation of citizen and consumer, of state and market, of public and private, of political and economic, of collective and individual, and of righs and exchange. The mechanism of communication chosen by the DWP (pamphlets and brochures) was revealing of the way it viewed citizens, with an onus on citizens to inform themselves, and the reframing of citizens pervaded its logic of communication and administration.

Technorati : ANZCA 2009, UK, citizen, consumer, government, pension debacle
Del.icio.us : ANZCA 2009, UK, citizen, consumer, government, pension debacle